The Foundation Principle in the 2025 Charity Governance Code Update

If you’re a charity trustee or board member, November 2025 brought an important change to the Charity Governance Code that affects how you approach your role. The updated Code introduces a new Foundation Principle—making it the first of now eight principles—and it’s worth understanding what this means for you and your organisation.

What Is the Charity Governance Code?

Before we dive into the changes, it’s worth clarifying what the Charity Governance Code actually is. The Code is a voluntary best practice framework for charity governance—it’s not a legal requirement and trustees won’t face penalties for not following it. However, it’s widely recognised across the sector as the gold standard for good governance, developed by sector experts and endorsed by organisations including the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

Whilst compliance isn’t mandatory, many funders, commissioners, and stakeholders increasingly expect charities to demonstrate they’re following the Code’s principles. More importantly, the Code provides a practical framework that genuinely helps boards operate more effectively and protects trustees from risk. Think of it as a helpful guide to doing governance well, rather than another compliance burden.

What’s Changed?

For years, the Charity Governance Code operated on seven principles that assumed charities were already meeting their legal and regulatory responsibilities. It was an unspoken foundation that trustees were expected to understand their duties and comply with the basics. The 2025 update makes this explicit. Rather than an assumption buried in the small print, it’s now a standalone principle that every board must actively demonstrate they’re meeting.

What Is the Foundation Principle?

At its core, the Foundation Principle focuses on three essential areas that form the bedrock of effective trusteeship:

Understanding your legal role: This means genuinely knowing your legal duties as a trustee, understanding your organisation’s governing document inside out, and being clear on the principle of public benefit that underpins all charity work.

Continuous learning: Governance doesn’t stand still, and neither should your knowledge. The Principle expects trustees to stay current with regulations, best practice, and sector developments.

Putting the charity first: This includes managing conflicts of interest properly, maintaining transparency, and ensuring that every decision is made in the best interests of the charity and the people it serves.

Why This Matters for Volunteer Trustees

If you’re like most charity trustees, you’re probably juggling your board role alongside a day job, family commitments, and other responsibilities. You may have accepted a trusteeship because you care deeply about the cause, not because you’re a governance expert. This is precisely why the Foundation Principle matters.

The days of “I didn’t know” or “I thought someone else was handling that” are effectively over. The Code now asks boards to demonstrate—not just assume—that trustees understand their responsibilities and are actively developing their knowledge. This isn’t about creating more bureaucracy; it’s about protecting you, your fellow trustees, and ultimately the charity itself.

The Key Questions You Need to Answer

The Foundation Principle asks your board to honestly address:

• Can every trustee clearly explain their legal duties and the organisation’s governing document?
• How does your board ensure ongoing learning? Are you keeping pace with changing regulations and evolving best practice?
• Is your approach to conflicts of interest genuinely robust, or merely a tick-box exercise?
• Does your board foster a culture where mistakes can be acknowledged and improvements made openly?

These aren’t meant to catch you out—they’re designed to help your board operate more effectively and protect trustees from personal liability.

Making Compliance Manageable

The challenge many volunteer boards face is finding the time and resources to meet these expectations. Between scheduling meetings, managing actions, keeping documents organised, and now ensuring all trustees have proper ongoing training, governance can feel overwhelming when it’s being squeezed between your other commitments.

This is where having the right tools makes all the difference. Governance360 was built specifically for boards like yours—organisations under £10 million revenue where governance needs to work efficiently without enterprise-level complexity or cost.

The platform brings together everything you need in one place: streamlined meeting management that eliminates email chaos, a simple risk register that replaces unwieldy spreadsheets, action tracking to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and crucially, a CPD-accredited digital learning platform designed specifically for trustees and board members.

Rather than piecing together multiple tools or relying on informal processes, you can demonstrate compliance with the Foundation Principle whilst actually saving time and reducing admin burden—time you can redirect toward your charity’s mission.

The Bottom Line

The Foundation Principle isn’t about adding more work to already busy trustees. It’s about making governance more intentional, more effective, and ultimately, protecting both your charity and you personally. With the right approach—and the right tools—meeting these expectations becomes part of good practice rather than an additional burden.

Ready to see how Governance360 and the Director Academy can help your board meet the Foundation Principle whilst saving time?

Email [email protected] to book a demo or click here to find a time that suits you.  Or better still, start your free trial now.

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