Being given the task of convening, or in more common english, running a board meeting sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? And yet…
The moment you become responsible for convening a board meeting — whether as a charity’s Company Secretary, as a Trustee, or a Chair picking up the slack — you quickly realise it carries more weight than the word suggests.
To convene isn’t just to send a calendar invite. It’s to formally bring people together for a purpose. And in the governance world, that distinction matters.
What does “Convene” actually mean?
The word comes from the Latin convenire — to come together, to agree, to be fitting (apologies – the founder of Governance360 is a classicist by background, there has to be payback on that education at some point!).
It has been in English use since the 15th century, largely in formal and legal contexts. When a court is convened, or Parliament is convened, there’s an implied authority behind it. Someone has the standing — and the duty — to call the meeting into being.
That’s exactly how it works in charity governance. Under the Charities Act and most charitable constitutions, there is a formal obligation to hold trustee meetings. Convening them isn’t optional, and it isn’t casual. It’s a governance act.
Other Words for the Same Thing
You’ll come across a handful of terms used interchangeably — sometimes helpfully, sometimes confusingly:
Call a meeting — the most everyday phrase. Informal, but widely understood. Often used in board minutes: “A meeting was called for the purpose of…”
Summon — more legalistic. You’ll see this in older constitutions and Companies Act language. It carries a sense of obligation on the recipient to attend.
Assemble — used less often in governance, more in constitutional and parliamentary contexts.
Requisition — specific and important. Members of a charity or company can requisition a meeting — formally requesting that one be held, usually with specific agenda items. This is a legal right in many organisations and something trustees should understand.
Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) — worth knowing, though it is a different category altogether. An EGM is a meeting of an organisation’s members, not its board of trustees or directors. The board may resolve to call one — for example, to put a constitutional change to the membership — but the EGM itself is a members’ meeting, with its own notice requirements and quorum rules. If you’re a trustee focused on board governance, EGMs sit at the edges of your world rather than the centre of it.
The weight of expectation and duty weighs heavy
Here is where many smaller charities quietly struggle. Convening a meeting properly means:
- Giving the right amount of notice (check your governing document — it’s often 14 days, sometimes more in most)
- Sending the agenda in advance, not on the day
- Circulating board papers with enough time for trustees to actually read them
- Making sure the meeting is quorate before it starts — and knowing what to do if it isn’t
- Keeping a clear record of who convened it, when, and on what authority
None of this is rocket science. But when it’s being managed by a volunteer trustee between a full-time job and everything else, it’s easy for things to slip. Papers arrive late. Notice periods get fudged. Quorum is assumed rather than checked.
And when things go wrong — a decision challenged, a funder asking for evidence of proper governance — the absence of a clear record of how the meeting was convened can become a real problem.
A note on “Convene” in practice
It’s worth knowing that when your governing document says a meeting “shall be convened by the Chair” or “may be convened on the written request of any three trustees,” that’s not just formality. It defines who has authority, under what circumstances, and with what process.
Some constitutions use the phrase “duly convened” — meaning properly convened in accordance with the rules. A meeting that isn’t duly convened may not be legally valid, even if all the right people were in the room.
So yes — convening a meeting is a big task. Or at least, it deserves to be treated as one.
Making it easier with Governance360
The administrative burden of convening board meetings well – circulating papers securely to members, tracking attendance, maintaining the audit trail and more – is exactly the kind of thing that board governance software is designed to take off your plate.
At Governance360, as former Charity Trustees ourselves, we built our platform specifically for smaller charities and voluntary organisations, where there’s rarely a dedicated governance manager and trustees are doing their best alongside full-time lives. Meeting scheduling, document management, agenda building and attendance tracking are all in one place — so the next time you need to convene a meeting, the process looks after itself.