If you’re an executive manager in a charity, you’ll know the feeling. It’s Tuesday evening, you’ve finally wrapped up your ‘day job’, and now you’re facing three hours of board admin. Chasing trustees for their declarations of interest. Tracking down who’s actually read the latest safeguarding policy. Collating feedback on the strategic plan from eight different email threads.
It’s the work that needs doing, but it’s also the work that keeps you from the work that really matters.
The Hidden Cost of Board Administration
Most executive managers don’t factor in just how much time goes into supporting their board. It’s not just the quarterly meetings themselves. It’s the preparation, the follow-up, the document management, and the endless coordination. One charity CEO we spoke to estimated she spent roughly a day and a half each month just on trustee-related administration. That’s eighteen days a year that could be spent on fundraising, service delivery, or strategic thinking.
The frustration isn’t just about time. It’s about the scattered nature of it all. Minutes in one place, policies in another, declarations stored in someone’s old email folder. When a trustee asks a simple question, what should take thirty seconds becomes a ten-minute hunt through various systems and files.
Where the Friction Lives
Board management creates friction in predictable places. Getting documents to trustees securely. Making sure everyone’s read what they need to read before meetings. Keeping track of who’s completed their annual declarations. Managing the paper trail when decisions are made between meetings. Recording actions and actually seeing them through to completion.
Then there’s the governance housekeeping that sits in the background. Tracking trustee terms. Managing conflicts of interest. Ensuring policies are reviewed on schedule. Maintaining an audit trail for the Charity Commission. None of it is glamorous, but all of it is necessary.
A Different Approach
This is where platforms like governance360 change the equation. Rather than information living across emails, shared drives, and filing cabinets, everything sits in one place. Your board papers, your policies, your meeting records, your trustee details.
The practical difference is immediate. Need to share a sensitive document? Upload it to governance360 and trustees access it securely, rather than sending it via email and hoping for the best. Want to know who’s read the new data protection policy? You can see it at a glance. Need trustees to confirm their declarations of interest before the AGM? Send a quick reminder through the system rather than crafting individual emails.
The platform handles the routine coordination that usually eats into your evening. Meeting invitations go out automatically. Documents are distributed without the usual rigmarole. Action points are tracked so nothing slips through the cracks. Trustees have one place to go for everything they need, which means fewer ‘quick questions’ landing in your inbox at odd hours.
What Time-Saving Actually Means
When charity executives talk about saving time, they’re often talking about saving their sanity. It’s not just about doing things faster. It’s about reducing the mental load of keeping track of everything. It’s about not having that moment of panic when you can’t immediately find a document someone needs. It’s about feeling organised rather than perpetually behind.
Good governance doesn’t have to mean drowning in administration. The trustees need proper support, the organisation needs proper oversight, and you need to be able to do your actual job. A platform that handles the routine mechanics of board management isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about putting your time where it actually makes a difference.
If you’re spending your evenings doing admin that could be streamlined, it might be worth seeing what’s possible. Because eighteen days a year is a lot of time to get back.