The Governance App: improve your governance, together

We’ve combined the Charity Governance Code with DSC’s successful face-to-face model for improving governance, and created an online tool that any Board can use to review their governance – and turn it into collective action and improvement.

The Governance App:

• Gathers responses from your whole Board
• Gives you a performance score out of ten in seven different areas, including leadership, board effectiveness and equality, diversity and inclusion
• Highlights where board members have different views on performance
• Makes it easy to have targeted discussions about what’s going well, and where to focus on improving

‘We know how hard it is for trustees to find and prioritise time to review their own performance, especially with all of the other critical issues many Boards are dealing with at the moment. The Governance App makes it easy for all charities, irrespective of size or focus, to get clear data on how and where they can improve their governance, and helps them to start doing it together. It helps trustees  to do a really detailed assessment that involves the whole Board, gathers their feedback outside of the usual meetings, and means they can spend their precious time together having much more targeted conversations, about the things that matter most.’
Ben Wittenberg, Director of Development and Delivery, DSC

 

‘Personally, I’m delighted to see that DSC have launched a new governance app. As it’s free to access the app provides an invaluable, accessible aid to help charity boards review, refine and enhance their governance arrangements.  The app’s close alignment to the Charity Governance Code will also give charities an easy way of assessing and explaining their use of the Code in their annual reports.’
Rosie Chapman, chair of the Charity Governance Code steering group (commenting in a personal capacity)

So if you’re looking to review your governance but don’t quite know where to start, can’t afford the time or expense of a consultant or facilitator, and want an easy way to involve your whole board in the process, check out the Governance App from Directory of Social Change!

How to get started

For further information, please contact Jose Blázquez, Development Manager, via email at jblazquez@dsc.org.uk

Notes to editors:

Founded in 1974, the Directory of Social Change (DSC) is a national charity which supports an independent voluntary sector through campaigning, training and publications. DSC is the largest supplier of information and training to the voluntary sector, and its work helps tens of thousands of organisations every year achieve their aims. Learn more at www.dsc.org.uk

DSC delivers governance support to thousands of trustees every year, with a range of bespoke in-house support, public courses including Duties of a Trustee and Legal, Governance and Risk Management, and publishes the best-selling The Trustees Handbook by Mike Eastwood and Jacqueline Williams and It’s a Battle on the Board by Debra Allcock Tyler

The Governance App has been developed by Directory of Social Change and has been funded by The Clothworkers’ Foundation, The Tudor Trust and Lloyds Bank Foundation.

We are hugely grateful to all of the individuals and organisations that have been involved in helping us to develop the Governance App, especially our testers from Charity Finance Group, Girl Guiding UK, Black Heroes Foundation, Hull and East Riding CAB, Muslim Aid UK, Berkshire Community Foundation, Lloyds Bank Foundation, FSN Charity, Imagine Independence, Blackbird Consulting and the Charity Commission.