How to Run a Board Effectiveness Review: A Practical Guide for Smaller Charities
Quick Answer
A board effectiveness review is a structured process where trustees assess how well the board is performing its governance role. For most charities with income under £10 million, there is no legal requirement to carry one out — but it is strongly recommended by the Charity Governance Code as good practice. Done well, it improves decision-making, accountability, and trustee confidence.
Key points:
- Charities under £10m income are not legally required to conduct a board effectiveness review
- The Charity Governance Code recommends regular reviews as good practice
- Many reviews are carried out by a single volunteer and never properly embedded
- The real challenge isn’t doing the review — it’s making the findings stick
Introduction
Most charity trustees know they should review how their board is performing. Far fewer actually do it — and of those who do, most struggle to make the findings mean anything six months later.
For smaller charities, this isn’t a sign of bad governance. It’s a sign of limited time, limited resource, and a shortage of practical tools designed for organisations of your size. The board effectiveness review has become one of those governance tasks that feels important when it lands on the agenda, but quietly disappears when a volunteer moves on or a busier season kicks in.
This post explains what a board effectiveness review actually involves, what the law requires (and doesn’t), and how to approach it in a way that creates lasting improvement — not just a completed checklist.
Do You Have to Do One?
Let’s clear this up first.
If your charity has an annual income of under £10 million, there is no legal requirement under charity law in England and Wales to conduct a formal board effectiveness review. The Charity Commission does not mandate it. Yet.
What the Charity Governance Code does — for charities of all sizes — is recommend that boards carry out regular reviews of their own effectiveness. The Code sets out principles and recommended practice, but it isn’t law. Trustees are expected to apply it on a “comply or explain” basis, meaning you should either follow the recommendations or be able to explain why you haven’t.
For smaller charities (the Code defines these as those with income under £1 million), expectations are lighter-touch. But “not required” shouldn’t mean “not worth doing.” A review, done properly, helps your board identify gaps in skills, address poor dynamics before they become problems, and demonstrate accountability to funders and stakeholders.
How Most Charities Actually Approach It
Here’s the reality for most small and medium charities.
A trustee — often the Chair, sometimes a particularly organised board member — takes it upon themselves to lead the review. They find a self-assessment questionnaire, usually from the Charity Commission or a governance body, and send it round to fellow trustees. Responses trickle in. A summary gets written up. It gets discussed at a board meeting. A few actions are noted.
And then what?
Often, nothing much. The person who led the review moves on – volunteers do after all – and the outputs sit in a folder or worksheet somewhere, unmaintained and unreviewed. The next person to tackle the subject starts from scratch, maps everything to the Charity Governance Code again, and the cycle repeats.
This isn’t laziness. It’s a structural problem. The review lives with a person, not with the organisation.
The Problem With One-Off Reviews
A board effectiveness review that isn’t followed up is arguably worse than no review at all. It creates a false sense that governance is being managed, when really the hard part — acting on the findings — hasn’t happened.
The most common breakdown points are:
- Actions not assigned — findings are discussed but no one is clearly responsible
- No follow-through mechanism — there’s no way to track whether actions have been completed
- Institutional memory loss — when the person who ran the review leaves, so does all context
- Annual repetition without progress — the next review covers the same ground as the last one
The review itself isn’t the problem. What’s missing is a way to turn it from a snapshot into an ongoing process.
Why Consultants and “Free Audits” Often Miss the Mark
If you’ve looked for external help with this, you’ve probably noticed a few things.
Most governance consultants specialise in larger organisations — NHS trusts, housing associations, large national charities. Their day rates reflect that market. For a charity with income of £500,000 or £2 million, paying £3,000–£10,000 for an external review is simply not viable.
At the other end, you might have been offered a free governance health check — perhaps by a professional services firm, a local infrastructure body, or a well-meaning contact. These can be genuinely helpful, but it’s worth understanding what they are. A free audit from a professional services firm is almost always a business development activity. Expect a follow-up conversation about paid services. That’s not necessarily a problem, but go in with your eyes open.
There are also a small number of digital tools emerging in this space, for example DigiBoard, particularly for boards wanting a more structured self-assessment process and looking for affordable solutions.
The honest gap in the market is practical, affordable support for small and medium charities — something that helps you run a decent review and, critically, embed the outcomes into how you work day to day.
Making It Work: Turning Findings Into Ongoing Practice
The shift that makes a board effectiveness review valuable isn’t in how you conduct it — it’s in what you do with the results.
Rather than producing a report that sits in a folder, the goal is to convert findings into actions, assign ownership, and track progress in the same place where your governance activity already lives. That means:
- Assigning actions with clear owners and deadlines, not just noting themes
- Linking findings to your governance calendar so follow-up doesn’t rely on individual memory
- Creating an audit trail — so when trustees change, the context travels with the organisation, not the person
- Revisiting regularly, not just annually
This is where a platform like Governance360 can genuinely help — not to run your board effectiveness review for you, but to make the whole process easier to manage. When your board papers, actions, decisions, and governance records all sit in one place, a reviewer or auditor can see the full picture quickly. There’s no chasing documents across email threads or trying to reconstruct what happened and when. The working is already there.
That saves time. And for a small charity relying on volunteers, time is everything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a board effectiveness review a legal requirement for charities?
For most charities in England and Wales with income under £10 million, no — there is no legal requirement under charity law to conduct a formal board effectiveness review. The Charity Governance Code recommends it as good practice, but it is not enforceable by law.
How often should a charity board review its effectiveness?
The Charity Governance Code recommends that boards review their effectiveness regularly. For most smaller charities, an annual light-touch review with a more thorough process every two to three years is a reasonable approach.
What does a board effectiveness review typically cover?
A review usually looks at board composition and skills, decision-making processes, trustee engagement and attendance, how well the board understands the organisation’s strategy and risks, and the quality of information trustees receive. It may also assess the Chair’s leadership and the effectiveness of sub-committees.
Can we run a board effectiveness review ourselves, without external help?
Yes, and many charities do. The Charity Commission and several sector bodies publish self-assessment tools that boards can use without external support. The challenge is not running the review — it’s ensuring the findings lead to real change.
What’s the Charity Governance Code and do we have to follow it?
The Charity Governance Code is a set of principles and recommended practice for charity boards in England and Wales. It isn’t law, but trustees are encouraged to apply it on a “comply or explain” basis. It has separate guidance for smaller charities (under £1m income) and larger ones.
What should we do with the results of a board effectiveness review?
Prioritise a small number of clear actions, assign ownership to specific trustees, set realistic deadlines, and review progress at subsequent board meetings. Avoid generating a long list of recommendations that no one has capacity to act on.
How long does a board effectiveness review take?
For a small charity doing a self-assessment, allow two to four weeks from sending questionnaires to discussing findings at board level. A more thorough review involving interviews or external facilitation could take six to eight weeks.
Key Takeaways
- It’s not a legal requirement for most charities, but the Charity Governance Code strongly recommends regular effectiveness reviews as good practice.
- Most reviews are a one-off exercise led by a single volunteer — when they leave, the institutional knowledge goes with them.
- Free audits come with strings attached — understand the motivation before accepting one.
- The review is the easy part — turning findings into lasting change is where most charities struggle.
- Embedding governance into a workflow — rather than leaving it with an individual — is what makes the difference between a review that’s done and one that actually works.
The bottom line: A board effectiveness review is worth doing, but only if you have a way to act on what you find. For smaller charities, that means keeping it simple, assigning clear ownership, and making sure the process lives within your organisation — not just with one committed volunteer.
Next Steps
Start here:
- Download the Charity Commission’s trustee self-assessment or the Charity Governance Code self-assessment tool
- Agree at your next board meeting who will lead the review and by when
- Set a board meeting date specifically to discuss the findings — don’t leave it as an agenda item that gets squeezed
In the next month:
- Review how you currently store governance records and whether a reviewer could easily find what they need
- Look at whether your current tools help you track actions to completion — or whether things slip between meetings
Want to see how Governance360 helps charities manage their governance in one place? Take a look at how we support boards with workflow, action tracking, and a clear audit trail — making life easier whether you’re preparing for a review or acting on one.
Last Updated: May 2026 Reading Time: 5 minutes