I have attended enough charity board meetings in the last fifteen years to know when a collective paradigm shift is underway. There is a quality to the silence that descends on a board room when a trustee asks a question to which no one in the room has an answer.
I felt it last week when our youngest board member quizzed us on our charity’s approach to algorithmic bias in our beneficiary selection process.
Their question was met by a sea of blank faces and pursed lips not of apathy or fatigue but of trustees who, although experienced and giving years of their lives in service to their causes, did not know how to discuss the issue at hand.
It was in that room that it clicked: charity governance is changing, fast.
I’ve been sensing a shift in the air for some months now, but this experience confirmed that 2026 trustee competence (and beyond) is going to look drastically different from the experience of our 2016 trustees. We are no longer in an era of evolution but a time of seismic shifts and, like several of my fellow board members at this recent meeting, trustees are behind.
Charity governance has not changed that much since the 1980s. Yes, there have been iterations to the guidance on board roles and duties, regulation compliance expectations, and statutory duties, but the sum total is more a story of evolution than revolution. In 2026, trustees are heading into completely new territory. The modern trustee role is undergoing a fundamental shift as charities enter an era of digital transformation, impact transparency, and ongoing crisis.
Three core shifts in expectations and focus are redefining the trustee role and characterise effective UK charity board leadership in 2026.
I will explore each in turn and conclude with three observations on what boards must do if they are to lead their charities through the trust sector’s new frontier.
Digital Literacy as a Board-Level Requirement
The End of Digital Exceptionalism
The first shift in trustee requirements is the rise of digital literacy as a board-level skill. Charity boards have for too long approached digital matters as specialist operational issues on which trustees should be excused any meaningful oversight role. If a trustee was not digitally literate in 2016, there was a high chance they could safely retreat to the comfort of being the “non-tech board member.”
You might even be forgiven for nodding with nostalgia at the memory of the trustee who looked confused by the IT acronym bingo that inevitably arises during any conversation around digital service delivery. Such people did exist once, not long ago. “I’m not very good with computers” is no longer a playful admission of ignorance that trustees can make about their digital capabilities but a cheeky insouciance (look it up) that is rightly reprimanded should they make the same declaration about their safeguarding knowledge or financial literacy.
The trustee skills 2026 landscape needs something very different. Digital literacy is no longer a nice-to-have but a new table stake. It is not enough for trustees to understand what a website is, how to use Twitter or Facebook, or what cloud means in the context of file storage. Nor is it enough to know how to use the popular tools and software in use across the sector. Digital literacy as a board requirement is about understanding the governance, strategic, ethical, and impact implications of technology decisions, data choices, and service delivery. In other words, no matter what, board decisions have a digital dimension.
Cyber-security is a primary example of a domain where trustee literacy is absolutely crucial. Over the past eighteen months, I have seen three charities in my networks suffer substantial data breaches. In each case, cyber-security reports had been presented to the board, yet those boards had no literacy with which to interrogate the reports adequately. They didn’t know the difference between at-rest and in-transit encryption. They could not adequately evaluate if their incident response plans were fit for purpose or even identify what such a plan would need to include. They had no awareness of the full range of risks and impacts associated with a data breach incident and the potential fallout from it until they were facing a response and recovery scenario.
The Charity Commission has been saying this for years now, and if the reports and updates I have seen in my networks are anything to go by, many boards are still not getting the message. Cyber-security is not an operational or technical issue delegated to staff but a governance one squarely within the fiduciary remit of trustees. When charities lose donor data or have to close temporarily because of a ransomware attack which cuts off service delivery, those boards will struggle to credibly claim that this was not a governance and board responsibility. The board is responsible for having systems, policies, oversight, and responses.
Data Ethics and the Governance Challenge
Cyber-security is only the tip of the iceberg. The core challenge is data ethics, where many charity boards are in dire straits. We collect and use more and more data about our beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, staff, partners, and other stakeholders. We use this data for service targeting, personalisation, impact, funding, and more. Yet the ethics of our data use are a topic few charity boards have even discussed seriously let alone grappled with meaningfully.
I recently remember a conversation on our board about a new beneficiary management system that would use predictive analytics to assess which of our beneficiaries were at risk of slipping into crisis. The efficiency gains were clear, the potential to intervene earlier and save costs obvious, the prospect of better targeted services and outcomes very appealing. I asked the obvious follow-up question: what ethical framework would we apply to govern these predictions? Who would have access to these risk scores? What was the potential for algorithmic bias? I fell a sense of the conversation drying up and board members drawing inwards because they had not thought this through.
This is the frontier of charity digital governance work in 2026. Trustees need to understand things like algorithmic accountability and transparency, data minimisation and what it means in practice, how to structure digital consent to respect beneficiary agency. They need to ask what data we collect and why, who has access and under what conditions, how long data is kept for, what are the power relations in our data practices and what is the potential for our systems and services to be discriminatory.
This is not the technical domain of IT staff but the core governance role of the board. A board that cannot ask and understand these questions is failing in its mission and its duty of care to beneficiaries and responsible stewardship of the charity.
Artificial Intelligence: The Governance Imperative
Finally, AI. By 2026, AI tools will be pervasive in all aspects of charity operations. Chatbots answering donor queries and queries from beneficiaries. Machine learning optimising fundraising appeals. Natural language processing doing sentiment analysis on feedback and donations data. Predictive analytics highlighting at-risk donors and at-risk beneficiaries. Advanced AI models to predict which grant applications have the highest likelihood of success.
The governance implications here are enormous. Yet, as is often the case, most boards I encounter are not so much blind to these issues as looking at them with enthusiasm and a wilful ignorance that should give us all pause. I have sat in board meetings when trustees have voted through AI implementations with no real idea of what was being voted on, how it worked, the data it used, and the biases it would likely reflect and reproduce.
We are abdicating our governance responsibilities in a cloak of AI enthusiasm. Trustees do not need to be data scientists, but they must know enough about how AI systems work and do not work to understand the basics of how AI is used, the limitations, the potential risks and harms. They need to be able to ask questions like, what training data are these systems using and could it have historical biases? What are the transparency issues around the decision-making process? What human oversight exists? What happens when it gets it wrong? How do we hold the model accountable?
It is why I believe that by 2026 every charity board should have at least one trustee with a deep and working digital knowledge not to be delegated to in digital discussions but as an enabler to the rest of the board as they develop their own digital literacy and capacity to ask meaningful questions. But we cannot stop there. Every trustee must have baseline digital literacy as part of their understanding of what good stewardship of a charity is.
Digital Service Delivery and Strategic Oversight
The final dimension to this new digital reality is the board oversight of digital service delivery. The pandemic has accelerated a pre-existing shift to online and digital services across the sector. Counselling services and support groups moved online. Advice and information services were handled by chatbots and through social media. Community organising was conducted in and through social media and messaging platforms.
For many charities, the move to digital was an emergency response to the pandemic that has become normalised and “just the way we work now.” Yet very few boards are set up to provide effective digital service delivery oversight. They have no ability to judge if the platforms or channels they use are fit for purpose, if they are accessible to all, if they are exclusionary or, if they are delivering the same quality of services as offline.
I have sat in many boards where trustees have approved digital service strategies, not understood or asked about the digital divide that this new provision will engender. The absence of basic questions about whether beneficiaries had the devices and connectivity to engage with digital services, whether those without were being left behind, what the safeguarding implications are for an online world, and the data protection implications of handing over donor and beneficiary data to third-party platforms is all too frequent.
Effective UK charity board leadership in 2026 requires trustees with the digital literacy to engage with and oversee strategic choices in a sector that is rapidly digitising and where digital service delivery is not optional. Trustees need to know the strategic questions to ask, to understand the new ethical dimension of data use in the charity sector, and be able to ask the right questions of their staff. Digital literacy does not mean tech skills but rather an awareness of the risks, opportunities, strategic choices, and ethical dimensions of a world where every charity decision is a technology choice.
The best boards in 2026 will be those that know how to engage on these questions and will be actively working to build their trustees’ digital capacity in service of mission. In 2026 the boards that will not have invested in their trustee development and team capacity on digital matters will not be able to perform their fiduciary duties effectively.
Beyond Compliance: Impact Governance
The Compliance Trap
There’s a ritual that takes place in charity boardrooms up and down the UK on a depressingly regular basis. The agenda comes to “Compliance Update” and trustees dutifully check off a list of regulatory requirements. Safeguarding policy: reviewed. Data protection: compliant. Health and safety: up to date. Financial controls: adequate. Tick, tick, tick. Everyone feels reassured that they’ve done their governance duty and the meeting moves on.
I’ve sat through this ritual hundreds of times in my career as a trustee and a charity governance consultant, and I’ve come to see it as a trap – a way of confusing activity with impact, process with purpose. Don’t get me wrong: compliance is vitally important. Charities have legal and regulatory obligations to meet, and failure to do so can have serious consequences. But when governance becomes primarily about compliance, we’ve lost sight of what we’re actually here to do.
The movement towards charity impact governance is a fundamental reimagining of the trustee role. It’s a shift from asking “Are we doing things right?” to “Are we doing the right things?” From “Have we followed the rules?” to “Have we made a difference?” From box-ticking to genuine stewardship of impact.
This transition is being driven by a confluence of forces. Funders are demanding more evidence of outcomes, not just outputs. The Charity Commission is making it clear that demonstrating public benefit means showing actual impact, not just good intentions. Beneficiaries and communities are asking harder questions about whether charities are genuinely improving lives. And the public – whose trust we rely on – wants to know that their donations and support are making a real difference.
The Impact Measurement Challenge
The problem is that most charity boards are ill-equipped for this shift. We’ve spent decades perfecting compliance governance; we’re novices when it comes to impact governance. We know how to review policies and approve budgets, but struggle to assess whether our interventions are actually working.
I experienced this first-hand when I joined the board of a youth charity three years ago. We had robust activity data: thousands of young people engaged, hundreds of sessions delivered, dozens of partnerships established. But when I asked what difference we were making to young people’s lives, the answers were vague and anecdotal. We had stories – powerful, moving stories – but we didn’t have systematic evidence of impact.
The board had never really interrogated our theory of change. We’d never asked whether our activities were the most effective way to achieve our mission. We’d never established clear outcomes we were trying to achieve or metrics to track progress. We were busy, we were well-intentioned, and we were possibly making very little difference.
This is the uncomfortable truth that impact governance forces us to confront. It requires boards to ask fundamental questions: What change are we trying to create? How will we know if we’re succeeding? What evidence do we have that our approach works? Are there more effective ways to achieve our mission? Should we be doing something completely different?
These questions are harder than compliance questions because they don’t have clear right answers. They require judgment, debate, and sometimes painful honesty about whether we’re achieving what we set out to do. They demand that trustees engage with evidence, understand research methodologies, and grapple with the messy reality that social change is complex and difficult to measure.
Embedding Impact in Governance Structures
The Charity Commission future points clearly towards greater emphasis on demonstrating impact and public benefit. The question is how boards can embed impact thinking into their governance structures rather than treating it as an add-on or afterthought.
In my experience, this requires several fundamental shifts. First, impact must become a standing agenda item at every board meeting, with the same weight and attention given to financial performance. Trustees should regularly review impact data, discuss what it’s telling them, and use it to inform strategic decisions.
Second, boards need to develop their own impact literacy. Most trustees are comfortable reading financial statements, but how many can critically assess an impact report? Do they understand the difference between outputs and outcomes? Can they spot weak evaluation methodologies? Do they know what questions to ask about causation versus correlation?
I’ve found it valuable to bring in external expertise to help boards develop this literacy. Impact measurement specialists, academic researchers, and evaluation consultants can help trustees understand what good impact evidence looks like and how to use it for governance purposes. This isn’t about outsourcing impact governance – it’s about building internal capacity.
Third, boards should establish clear impact frameworks that connect activities to outcomes to mission. This means developing or refining theories of change, identifying key outcomes, establishing metrics, and creating systems for regular monitoring and reporting. The framework should be simple enough to be usable but robust enough to provide genuine insight.
I’ve seen this work powerfully in practice. One board I work with now receives a quarterly impact dashboard alongside financial reports. It shows progress against key outcome indicators, highlights areas of concern, and includes qualitative data from beneficiaries. This has transformed board discussions. Instead of focusing solely on activity levels and financial performance, we now spend significant time discussing what’s working, what isn’t, and what we should do differently.
Outcome-Based Reporting and Strategic Learning
The move towards outcome-based reporting represents a maturation of the sector. It acknowledges that charities exist to create change, not just to deliver services. But it also creates new governance challenges.
Outcome data is often messy, ambiguous, and slow to emerge. Social change takes time, and attribution is difficult. A young person who turns their life around may have been influenced by multiple factors – family, school, peers, personal resilience – not just our intervention. How do we honestly assess our contribution?
This is where impact governance requires intellectual humility and sophistication. Trustees must be comfortable with uncertainty and complexity. They need to understand that impact measurement isn’t about proving success – it’s about learning what works and continuously improving.
The best boards I’ve worked with treat impact data as a tool for strategic learning rather than a performance management stick. They create cultures where it’s safe to acknowledge when interventions aren’t working, where failure is seen as an opportunity to learn, and where evidence genuinely shapes strategy.
This requires a significant cultural shift for many boards. We’re often more comfortable celebrating success than examining failure. We want to believe our interventions are working because we care deeply about the mission. But genuine impact governance demands that we follow the evidence wherever it leads, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Real-Time Transparency and Stakeholder Accountability
Looking towards 2026 and beyond, I expect to see increasing pressure for real-time impact transparency. Funders, regulators, and the public will expect charities to share impact data openly and regularly, not just in annual reports. Technology makes this possible – dashboards, online reporting, social media updates – and stakeholders will increasingly demand it.
This creates both opportunities and risks for governance. The opportunity is to build trust and demonstrate value through radical transparency about what we’re achieving. The risk is that we’ll be judged on short-term metrics that don’t capture the full complexity of our work, or that we’ll game the system by focusing on easily measurable outcomes at the expense of deeper change.
Boards need to think carefully about how they’ll navigate this transparency landscape. What impact data will we share publicly? How will we communicate uncertainty and complexity? How will we balance accountability with the need for honest learning? How will we resist pressure to focus only on what’s easily measurable?
These are governance questions that require thoughtful, principled answers. The boards that get this right will be those that embrace transparency while maintaining focus on genuine impact rather than performative metrics.
The shift from compliance to impact governance is perhaps the most profound change facing charity boards. It requires new skills, new structures, and new ways of thinking about the trustee role. But it’s also an opportunity to reconnect with why we became trustees in the first place – not to tick boxes, but to make a difference. The boards that embrace this shift will be better positioned to fulfil their missions, secure funding, maintain public trust, and genuinely serve their beneficiaries.
Resilience Mandate: Governance for an Age of Permanent Crisis
A New Normal
I still remember the dusty folder at the back of the filing cabinet marked “crisis management”. Flicking through the photocopied pages, it was a folder that we never really thought we would need – a bundle of procedures and contacts for improbable emergencies, data breaches and disasters.
Until 2020. Until the pandemic. The cost-of-living crisis, the funding squeeze, the energy price shock, and the rolling series of reputational crises that have buffeted the sector. We’ve learned since 2020 that crises are no longer exceptional events. They’re not even regular interruptions to business as usual. They’re the new operating environment.
The charity I chair has faced four significant crises in the past three years. A safeguarding incident that required immediate action and external review. A cyber-attack that took our systems offline for a week. The sudden loss of a major funder that threatened our financial sustainability. And a staff wellbeing crisis driven by burnout and overwork. Each one required intensive board engagement, difficult decisions, and rapid adaptation.
What struck me most wasn’t the crises themselves (every organisation faces challenges, after all) – it was the cumulative effect and the speed at which they arrived. We barely had time to recover from one before the next hit. The traditional model of crisis management – respond, recover, return to normal – no longer applies because there is no normal to return to.
This is the context for what I call the resilience mandate: the recognition that charity risk governance 2026 must fundamentally reorient around building and maintaining organisational resilience. Crisis management can no longer be a reactive function activated when things go wrong. It must be baked into governance structures, strategic planning, and everyday decision-making.
Concurrent Crises and Systemic Risk
The challenge isn’t just that crises are more frequent – it’s that they’re increasingly concurrent and interconnected. A financial crisis affects staff morale, which impacts service delivery, which threatens reputation, which makes fundraising harder, which deepens the financial crisis. A climate event disrupts operations, which affects beneficiaries, which attracts media attention, which exposes governance weaknesses, which triggers regulatory scrutiny.
I’ve watched boards struggle to cope with this complexity. They’re set up to handle one crisis at a time, with clear incident management procedures and defined roles. But what happens when you’re simultaneously managing a safeguarding issue, a funding shortfall, and a staff retention crisis? When the CEO is overwhelmed, the board is meeting weekly, and trustees are exhausted?
This is where traditional governance models break down. The assumption that boards provide strategic oversight while staff handle operations becomes untenable when multiple crises demand board-level attention simultaneously. The neat separation between governance and management blurs. The quarterly meeting cycle is too slow. The committee structure is too siloed.
Effective crisis leadership in non-profit work requires boards to think systemically about risk and resilience. This means understanding how different risks interact and compound. It means identifying the critical dependencies that, if disrupted, would threaten the organisation’s survival. It means stress-testing strategies against multiple concurrent scenarios rather than single-point failures.
I’ve found scenario planning invaluable for this. We regularly ask: What if we lost our largest funder and our CEO simultaneously? What if a climate event made our building unusable during our busiest period? What if a data breach coincided with a safeguarding crisis? These aren’t pleasant exercises, but they force us to think through our vulnerabilities and build redundancy into critical systems.
Financial Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty
Financial resilience deserves particular attention because it underpins everything else. A charity without financial reserves has no capacity to weather shocks, adapt to change, or invest in resilience. Yet many boards have been reluctant to build reserves, worried about criticism for “hoarding” money that could be spent on beneficiaries.
This attitude is changing, and rightly so. The Charity Commission has been clear that maintaining adequate reserves is part of trustees’ fiduciary duty. Funders are increasingly recognising that unrestricted reserves are essential for organisational sustainability. And the sector is having more honest conversations about the false economy of running on empty.
But financial resilience isn’t just about reserves – it’s about diversified income, flexible cost structures, and the ability to scale up or down quickly. It’s about understanding your cash flow, knowing your break-even point, and having contingency plans for different financial scenarios.
I’ve pushed the boards I work with to develop much more sophisticated financial resilience frameworks. This includes stress-testing budgets against different income scenarios, maintaining reserves at levels that reflect actual risk exposure, diversifying funding sources, and building flexibility into cost structures. It means having honest conversations about what we’d do if income dropped by 20%, 40%, or 60%.
These conversations are uncomfortable because they force us to confront difficult trade-offs. Which services would we cut? Which staff roles are essential? What’s our minimum viable organisation? But having these discussions in advance, when we’re not in crisis mode, means we can make more thoughtful, values-aligned decisions if we ever need to implement them.
Operational Resilience and Adaptive Capacity
Financial resilience is necessary but not sufficient. Organisational resilience UK charities need also depends on operational resilience – the ability to maintain critical functions when systems, people, or infrastructure are disrupted.
The pandemic taught us harsh lessons about operational resilience. Charities that had invested in digital infrastructure, remote working capabilities, and flexible service delivery models adapted relatively quickly. Those that hadn’t struggled or failed. The difference often came down to governance decisions made years earlier about technology investment, risk management, and strategic flexibility.
Looking ahead, boards need to ensure their organisations can withstand a range of operational shocks. This means having robust business continuity plans that are regularly tested and updated. It means investing in redundant systems for critical functions. It means cross-training staff so that key roles aren’t dependent on single individuals. It means maintaining relationships with partners who could provide backup capacity if needed.
But operational resilience also requires adaptive capacity – the ability to change quickly when circumstances demand it. This is about organisational culture, decision-making processes, and governance structures that enable rapid response rather than impede it.
I’ve seen boards that are so risk-averse and process-heavy that they can’t adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Every decision requires multiple committee approvals. Every change needs extensive consultation. Every risk must be eliminated rather than managed. These organisations are brittle – they may avoid small failures, but they’re vulnerable to catastrophic collapse when faced with major shocks.
Resilient organisations, by contrast, have cultures that embrace experimentation, tolerate failure, and learn quickly. Their governance structures enable rapid decision-making when needed. Their boards trust leadership to act decisively in crises while maintaining appropriate oversight. They’re comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Resilience Committees and Governance Innovation
Given the centrality of resilience to future charity governance, I believe we’ll see increasing adoption of dedicated resilience committees or the integration of resilience thinking into existing committee structures.
A resilience committee would have oversight of enterprise risk management, business continuity planning, crisis preparedness, and organisational adaptation. It would regularly review risk registers, conduct scenario planning exercises, oversee stress-testing of strategies and systems, and ensure the organisation is building adaptive capacity.
This isn’t about creating more bureaucracy – it’s about ensuring resilience receives the sustained board-level attention it requires. Too often, risk management is squeezed into already-packed audit committee agendas or treated as a compliance exercise rather than a strategic priority.
I’ve also seen boards experiment with other governance innovations to enhance resilience. Some have created rapid response protocols that allow smaller groups of trustees to make urgent decisions between meetings, with full board ratification to follow. Others have established trustee “on-call” rotas so there’s always someone available to support leadership during crises. Some have brought in external advisors with crisis management expertise to provide independent perspective during difficult periods.
The key is recognising that traditional governance structures were designed for stability, not volatility. They assume predictable operating environments, clear boundaries between governance and management, and time for deliberation. None of these assumptions hold in an age of permanent crisis.
Building Psychological Resilience
Finally, we must acknowledge the human dimension of resilience. Governing through permanent crisis is exhausting. Trustees are volunteers who already juggle governance responsibilities with work, family, and other commitments. When crises hit, the demands intensify dramatically – emergency meetings, difficult decisions, additional scrutiny, emotional strain.
I’ve watched trustees burn out. I’ve seen people resign because they couldn’t sustain the intensity. I’ve felt the exhaustion myself – the Sunday evening dread before another crisis meeting, the constant worry about what might go wrong next, the guilt about not doing enough.
Boards need to think about their own resilience and sustainability. This means being realistic about what we can expect from volunteers, ensuring we have adequate trustee numbers to share the load, creating support structures for trustees dealing with difficult situations, and being willing to bring in external help when needed.
It also means being intentional about board culture and dynamics. Resilient boards are characterised by psychological safety – trustees feel able to raise concerns, admit uncertainty, and challenge each other constructively. They have strong relationships built on trust and mutual respect. They balance rigour with compassion, accountability with support.
The boards that will thrive through 2026 and beyond are those that recognise resilience as a strategic imperative, embed it into governance structures and decision-making, and invest in building adaptive capacity at both organisational and individual levels. Crisis management is no longer a specialist function – it’s core to what it means to govern a charity in the 21st century.
Conclusion: The Call to Governance
I’ve written a lot here about the challenges of charity governance as I see them both now and in 2026 and beyond. But before I sign off, I just want to pause for a second on what I see as the real imperative for us as governors.
We’re seeing a transformation of charity governance – and it’s not optional. As I said earlier, this is not something being done to us by regulators, funders, or society. It’s something we need to lead.
The rise of digital literacy as a key governance competency, the move from compliance to impact stewardship, and the embedding of resilience thinking in boardroom practices – these aren’t separate trends, they’re different facets of the same fundamental shift in what effective charity governance must look like.
These are the elements that will define good governance in a world of technological change, stakeholder accountability, and constant uncertainty. Taken together, they point to what effective charity governance must become.
The hard truth is this transformation is going to be uncomfortable for many boards. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be quick, and it’s not going to be fun. It will require new skills, new ways of thinking, and new governance practices.
It will demand that we question our assumptions, disrupt our comfortable routines, and embrace complexity. It’s going to ask trustees to commit to learning and development even after decades of service. And it will require boards to be honest about our own limitations and willing to ask for help when needed.
But the alternative is worse – the clear failure of governance models and structures developed for an analogue world to address the needs of a digital one. Boards that fail to develop digital literacy are going to be unable to discharge their fiduciary responsibilities in a digital world. Those that remain focused on compliance to the detriment of impact will not be able to demonstrate value to funders, regulators, or the public. And organisations that don’t prioritise resilience in their governance structures are going to be overwhelmed by crisis after crisis.
The good news is that we’re not starting from zero. The sector is already full of innovative boards that are experimenting with new approaches, developing new competencies, and discovering new ways of fulfilling their responsibilities effectively. We can learn from each other, share what works and raise governance standards for the whole sector.
We also have tools and resources that previous generations of trustees could only dream of. Tech platforms like infoodle can provide the underlying infrastructure that makes good governance possible. Training and development, governance networks, sector communities, and professional advisors can help boards develop the capabilities they need. The Charity Commission and sector bodies are providing clearer guidance and expectations.
All of this will take commitment from us as individual trustees – the time and energy to invest in our own development. It will require board commitment to make governance effectiveness a priority. It’s going to take sector investment and resourcing of good governance. And it will need funders and regulators to recognise that governance capacity is not a luxury but essential infrastructure that needs investment.
The trustees who will thrive as governors in 2026 and beyond are the ones who embrace this with energy and purpose. These are trustees who’ll be digitally literate without being techno-deterministic, focused on impact without losing sight of compliance, and resilient without being reactive. They’ll be humble in what they don’t know, but confident in their ability to learn.
Above all, they’ll be remembering why they became trustees in the first place. To serve a mission we care about, not to attend meetings or review policies. The transformation of governance that we’re experiencing is not an end in itself. It’s a means to more effective mission delivery, better outcomes for beneficiaries, and stronger, more sustainable charities.
The future of UK charity governance is being written right now in boardrooms across the country by trustees like us who are struggling with the challenges we’ve discussed and finding new ways forward. The question is whether we write that future intentionally and thoughtfully, or whether we let it be written for us.
I know which future I’m working towards. I hope you will too.
How infoodle Charity CRM Can Help With Charity Governance
So far, I’ve talked about what charity governance is facing from a conceptual level. We’ve covered why digital literacy is a key requirement for boards; how we’re seeing a shift in impact measurement from compliance to stewardship; and why resilience is emerging as a key boardroom issue. But it’s not enough to talk about these issues at an abstract level – boards need practical tools and systems that will help them fulfil their responsibilities in these areas. This is where the right technology infrastructure becomes not just nice to have but essential.
In my work in governance, I’ve seen charities with systems that are so disjointed it’s difficult for trustees to access the information they need to govern effectively. Financial data in one system, beneficiary information in another, impact data in spreadsheets, and risk registers in Word documents. Trying to compile a meaningful and up-to-date picture for board reporting and decision-making is a major task.
This is where infoodle comes in. Our platform is designed to support the whole range of operational and governance needs for charities. As one of the best CRM nonprofit solutions, it’s built with the specific needs of charitable organisations in mind. We understand the unique demands that charities face in terms of not only delivering mission and service but also complying with regulatory requirements, measuring impact, and working with limited resources.
For boards looking for help with the digital governance challenges we’ve discussed, infoodle offers robust data management and security features to ensure trustees that their organisation is handling information appropriately. With comprehensive permission settings, audit trails, and data protection measures, our platform supports GDPR compliance as well. This is an essential tool for trustees seeking to meet their cyber-security and data ethics responsibilities.
The system is also one of the best CRM for nonprofits in terms of impact measurement and reporting. Charities can use infoodle to track the outcomes and key metrics that matter for their organisation’s mission. The software is highly configurable so boards can set up custom fields and reports that track their unique theory of change. Trustees can receive regular impact dashboards showing progress on strategic objectives, not just activity metrics.
In terms of resilience and crisis management, infoodle’s cloud-based platform ensures organisations can continue operations even when offices are inaccessible. Real-time access to critical information about beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, and programmes can be essential when you’re in crisis mode and have to make rapid decisions based on the best available data.
In terms of charitable software, infoodle also stands out in its user-friendly design and functionality. It provides a unified system that combines contact management, communications, event management, volunteer coordination, donation tracking, and reporting. For boardroom governance, this level of integration is critical – it means trustees can access a full picture of organisational health and performance without having to switch between different systems.
The reporting capabilities of infoodle are another key benefit for trustees. Boards can access real-time dashboards of key metrics, generate custom reports for board meetings and drill down on specific areas when questions arise. The transparency and ease of information access that the software provides supports much more informed and strategic boardroom discussions.
I know cost and complexity are genuine concerns for charities when it comes to new systems – and this is a valid governance consideration. But infoodle has been designed with affordability and accessibility in mind. It’s a platform that’s affordable for small to medium charities, with pricing based on organisational size. Implementation is simple and the system is intuitive to use with training and support included. Boards can be confident they won’t face major implementation issues.
Among CRM systems for charities, infoodle is also a great solution for the kind of stakeholder engagement that effective governance now demands. The platform makes it easy to communicate with donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries. Infoodle also makes it easy to segment audiences for targeted communications and track engagement over time. This supports boards in their governance responsibilities around fundraising oversight, volunteer management, and beneficiary engagement.
Flexibility is also key to good governance. As we’ve discussed, boards will need to adapt to changing requirements around digital literacy, impact measurement, and resilience. infoodle can support boards in this evolution. As new metrics to track emerge, new reports needed, or new governance processes that the board wants to implement, infoodle can be configured to support those changes without the need for expensive customisation or technical skills.
For boards that are serious about digital transformation, impact governance, and organisational resilience, the right tech infrastructure isn’t an add-on – it’s the foundation. infoodle provides that infrastructure in a way that’s accessible, affordable, and specifically designed with the needs of the charitable sector in mind.
