Survey finding: the skill that trustees want most on their board is… digital

The new National Trustee survey by ACEVO / nfpSynergy has an interesting and surprising finding that has not surfaced in the commentary. Third Sector ran with  'trustees under pressure’, focusing on the fact that over 70% of trustees think that the requirements of the role is increasing – an important but perhaps unsurprising finding, given negative press coverage of governance and more muscular regulation (or perhaps it’s just a case of ‘declinism’ - the tendency of people to think that things are getting worse, regardless of the objective truth?).  Joe Saxton, of nfpSynergy, in his summary of the survey, notes only that ‘Management / organizational development’ was the skill that most trustees thought that they contributed.

But the question about board skills elicited a more interesting and unexpected response: trustees ranked web/digital/online skills as the ones that they most needed on their board – far ahead of the kinds of skills that people tend to assume that boards most want, like financial or fundraising and income generation. The nearest competitor for this pole position was ‘campaigning’.  The detail is informative too: trustees were asked to rank skills from the ‘most needed’ to ‘already had sufficient expertise’, and digital skills came out clearly as winner across the board -  both the most needed, and the least held. And to a point I’ve heard made quite a few times:  it’s not that boards don’t see the point of digital skills, and therefore haven’t prioritized them – only 1% felt that digital skills were not relevant to their board. Compared this with the 12% who thought campaigning skills were not relevant.

Reach is an ardent advocate of the need for trustee boards to embrace digital. We recently launched a campaign to promote digital expertise at board level and to help boards recruit in these skills – building boards for a digital age. However, whilst we are convinced of the underlying need, and can happily agree all day with other like minded organizatio#ins about how important this is, we weren’t sure if many charity boards felt the digital skills gap so keenly. Now we know that they do! Trustees are often accused of being risk averse and old fashioned. I read this survey as an endorsement of trustees’ attitudes – their willingness to look forwards, to embrace the new and unfamiliar, and to consider how their organisation should operate in a new digital world.

Happily, there are some great people with digital experience that are ready and keen to join trustee boards - have a look at some of their profiles

It’s time to plug that skills gap on the board and recruit a ‘digital trustee’!

Building boards for a digital age is a collaborative campaign led Reach Volunteering, with support from The Charity Commission, Zoe Amar Associates, and IBM. The campaign offers free, direct support to charities wanting to recruit digital expertise to their board, and to digital experts wanting to become trustees. It also brings to together useful guides and articles about digital and trustees.

Third Sector coverage

nfpSynergy Summary