How to Appoint Charity Trustees

What Is a Charity Trustee?

Charity trustees are the people who are ultimately responsible for governing a charity — making sure it carries out its charitable purposes for the public benefit, manages its resources responsibly and acts in the interests of its beneficiaries. In England and Wales, trustees carry that accountability under the Charities Act 2011 (as amended, most recently by the Charities Act 2022) and the Charity Commission’s regulatory framework. It is a personal legal responsibility for the charity’s governance, quite different from the advisory or representative roles that the word “trustee” can suggest in other contexts.

This guide explains what charity trustees are, how trustee appointments work in practice, what the Charity Commission expects, what a strong trustee candidate looks like, and how to run a trustee recruitment process that produces the board the charity actually needs. It is written for chairs, chief executives and nominations committees, and it draws on Exec Capital’s work on board-level and senior appointments, including in the charity and not-for-profit sector.

Trustee appointments differ from non-executive director appointments at commercial companies in important ways. The legal framework is different, governance good practice is set out in the sector’s own Charity Governance Code rather than the FRC’s UK Corporate Governance Code, and the motivation and payment dynamics are materially different. Understanding those differences is the starting point for an effective appointment. If you are also recruiting into commercial or listed boards, our non-executive director recruitment practice covers that market, and the same disciplines — a clear skills brief, a wide search and a structured assessment — apply to trustee boards. For a shorter overview of trustee and not-for-profit board searches, see our charity and not-for-profit non-executive recruitment guide.

The single most useful principle to take from this guide is that trustee appointments deserve the same rigour as senior executive appointments. A trustee who joins through a personal introduction, without a role description, without a conflicts of interest declaration and without a structured induction, creates governance risk that can take years to surface and is hard to resolve once it does. The Charity Commission’s guidance on trustee governance is clear and freely available; the charities that run into governance failures are rarely the ones that have read and applied it.

The Charity Commission Framework

In England and Wales, a charity must register with the Charity Commission unless it is exempt, excepted or below the income threshold for compulsory registration, which is currently £5,000 a year. All charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs) must register, whatever their income. Registered charities are subject to the Commission’s regulatory oversight, including annual reporting and, where things go wrong, statutory inquiries and other enforcement powers. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own regulators — the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland — but the core principles of trustee responsibility and good appointment practice are consistent across the UK.

The Charity Commission’s guidance The Essential Trustee (CC3) sets out six main duties of a charity trustee:

• ensure the charity is carrying out its purposes for the public benefit;
• comply with the charity’s governing document and the law;
• act in the charity’s best interests;
• manage the charity’s resources responsibly;
• act with reasonable care and skill; and
• ensure the charity is accountable.

Within these duties, CC3 is explicit that trustees must declare and manage conflicts of interest (or loyalty), must not let them affect decisions, and must record them and how they were handled. Trustees who breach their duties can, in some circumstances, be held personally liable for the consequences — which is why every prospective trustee should read CC3 before accepting an appointment, and every charity should send it to candidates as part of the recruitment pack.

Alongside the Commission’s guidance sits the Charity Governance Code. The Code is written by a cross-sector steering group rather than by the Commission, and compliance with it is not a regulatory requirement, but CC3 points trustees to it as a benchmark for reviewing good practice. A new edition was published in 2025, replacing the 2017 Code and its 2020 refresh. The 2025 Code is a single code for charities of all sizes (the previous version had separate editions for larger and smaller charities) built around eight principles: foundation, organisational purpose, leadership, ethics and culture, decision-making, managing resources and risks, equity, diversity and inclusion, and board effectiveness. It operates on an “apply or explain” basis: charities that adopt it are encouraged to explain in their annual report how they apply each principle, or what they do instead.

Trustee Responsibilities in Practice

The six duties translate into specific practical responsibilities that every trustee needs to understand before accepting an appointment — and that every charity should be able to describe clearly in its trustee role description.

Strategic direction. Trustees set the charity’s direction — its mission, its strategy and the priorities that decide how its resources are used. This is a collective responsibility: the board as a whole makes strategic decisions, not individual trustees acting alone. Trustees who defer entirely to the executive team on strategy are abdicating this responsibility; those who micro-manage the executive team are overstepping it. The boundary between the board’s strategic role and the executive team’s operational role is one of the most important, and most frequently mismanaged, parts of charity governance.

Financial oversight. Trustees must make sure the charity’s finances are properly managed — that the charity is solvent, that its resources are applied to its charitable purposes and that its financial reporting is accurate. A trustee who does not read the management accounts, does not understand the reserves policy, or does not engage with the auditor’s or independent examiner’s findings is not meeting the duty to manage resources responsibly. For charities with more complex finances — trading subsidiaries, restricted funds, international operations — trustees need enough financial literacy to provide meaningful oversight, even if they are not accountants themselves.

People and employment oversight. Trustees are responsible for employing the chief executive and, through delegation, for the senior executive team. That covers the CEO’s appointment, performance management, remuneration and, where necessary, dismissal. A board that has no clear process for CEO performance review, has not set clear expectations for the role, or confuses friendship with the CEO for effective oversight is creating organisational risk and exposing itself to criticism if things go wrong.

Risk management. Trustees must make sure the charity has a risk management framework suited to its size and complexity — identifying major risks, assessing their likelihood and impact, and making sure appropriate controls are in place. Done properly, this is a governance tool rather than a compliance exercise: it helps the board decide where to focus limited time and money.

Safeguarding. For charities that work with children or adults at risk — a large proportion of UK charities — safeguarding is a primary trustee responsibility. The board is accountable for making sure the charity has effective safeguarding policies and practices, that they are embedded in the charity’s culture, and that serious incidents are reported to the Charity Commission and, where required, to the police and statutory safeguarding authorities. Safeguarding is a regulatory priority for the Commission, and failures here are among the most damaging a charity can suffer.

Trustee vs NED vs Director: Understanding the Differences

The charity trustee role is often described as the equivalent of a non-executive director at a commercial company. That is a useful analogy, but it needs careful qualification.

In governance terms, both roles involve independent oversight of an organisation without executive authority. Both carry legal duties. Both require the individual to act in the best interests of the organisation and to manage conflicts of interest. These similarities are real, and they mean that experienced commercial non-executives can make excellent trustees — and that trusteeship is a well-trodden route for executives building a portfolio career. Our guide on how to get on a board of directors covers that path from the candidate’s side.

But the differences matter. Trustees carry their duties under charity law and the Charity Commission’s framework, not only under the Companies Act. Their accountability runs to the charity’s purposes and beneficiaries rather than to shareholders. And the payment position is fundamentally different: the vast majority of charity trustees serve as unpaid volunteers, even at large national charities. Paying a trustee for being a trustee needs specific legal authority — a power in the governing document or authorisation from the Charity Commission — and the Commission’s guidance treats it as the exception rather than the rule.

For a charitable company limited by guarantee, the trustees are also the company’s directors, so they carry company law duties under the Companies Act 2006 as well as their duties as charity trustees. Trustees of a CIO are not company directors, but the Charities Act 2011 gives them their own statutory duties, including a duty to act in the way they decide, in good faith, would be most likely to further the CIO’s purposes, and a duty of care. In both cases the dual framework can add complexity when a decision engages both sets of duties, and trustees of incorporated charities should understand which rules apply to them before they join.

Public bodies add a further variation: appointments to the boards of non-departmental public bodies and some public-benefit organisations are regulated public appointments with their own process and principles. Our public sector NED appointment guide explains how those processes differ from a charity trustee appointment.

Trustee Eligibility and Disqualification

Not everyone can serve as a charity trustee. CC3 sets a minimum age: trustees must be at least 16 to serve on the board of a charitable company or a CIO, and at least 18 for any other type of charity. Beyond age, the Charities Act 2011 sets out automatic disqualification rules that stop certain people from acting as trustees unless the Charity Commission grants a waiver.

The rules were expanded on 1 August 2018, when changes made by the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 came into force. The list of disqualifying grounds was widened — adding, among other things, certain money laundering, bribery, terrorism and sexual offences, contempt of court and perverting the course of justice — and the rules were extended beyond trustees to people holding senior management positions, broadly the chief executive and the most senior finance role (the test is the function performed, not the job title). Other grounds include unspent convictions for offences involving dishonesty or deception, being an undischarged bankrupt or subject to an individual voluntary arrangement, being disqualified as a company director, and having been removed as a trustee by the Commission or the courts. The Commission’s guidance on why some individuals can’t act as charity trustees explains the checks charities should make and links to the full list.

Charities should take reasonable steps to confirm that a prospective trustee is not disqualified before appointing them. The Commission’s recommended approach is to search the relevant public registers and to ask the candidate to sign a declaration confirming they are not disqualified. It is normally an offence to act as a trustee while disqualified unless the Commission has granted a waiver — and the Commission cannot waive a disqualification that comes from the charity’s own governing document. Where the charity provides regulated activity for children or adults, trustees should also expect the charity to request an enhanced DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check, including a barred list check where the role is eligible.

A practical point for nominations committees: run these checks as part of the process, not after the board has made its decision. Discovering a disqualification after an offer has been made is awkward for everyone; discovering it after the appointment has been made can leave the charity in breach.

Charities Act 2022: What Changed for Trustees

The Charities Act 2022 amended the 2011 Act to give charities more flexibility in a number of areas, and it came into force in stages. The government’s Charities Act 2022 implementation plan shows the first provisions commencing on 31 October 2022 and the final scheduled phase, covering ex gratia payments, commencing on 27 November 2025. As at November 2026 the commencement programme is therefore complete, although a statutory review of the Act is still to come.

Several of the changes touch on trusteeship directly:

• Payment for goods as well as services. From October 2022, the statutory power that lets a charity pay a trustee (or a person connected to a trustee) for services, subject to strict conditions, was extended to cover goods supplied in connection with those services.
• Remuneration powers. A later phase, which commenced in March 2024, made further changes to the provisions on remuneration of charity trustees, so boards should read the Commission’s current guidance rather than older material when considering any payment.
• Governing documents. Changes to the rules on amending charity constitutions make it simpler for many charities to modernise their governing documents — which is often where trustee appointment powers, term limits and the number of trustees are set out.

None of these changes alters the basic position that trusteeship is voluntary and that trustees act in the interests of the charity rather than for personal gain. But a board reviewing its appointment process should check that its governing document still reflects how it wants to appoint and, if relevant, pay trustees, because the 2022 Act may have made the necessary changes easier.

Conflicts of Interest in Trustee Appointments

Conflicts of interest are one of the most significant governance risks in charity trustee appointments, and one of the areas where charities most often fall short of the Commission’s expectations. A conflict arises when a trustee has a personal interest — financial, personal or a loyalty to another organisation — that could influence their judgement as a trustee, or that others might reasonably see as doing so.

Managing conflicts needs three things: a clear policy that sets out what kinds of interests must be declared and how; a register of interests that is kept up to date, reviewed at least annually and accessible to the board; and a consistent process for handling conflicts in meetings — typically the conflicted trustee withdrawing from the discussion and the decision, with the conflict and how it was handled recorded in the minutes.

At the point of appointment, the charity should obtain a full declaration of interests from the prospective trustee and assess whether any of them create material conflicts with the charity’s activities. A candidate who supplies goods or services to the charity, has a family member employed by it, or sits on the board of a funder or a similar organisation is not automatically ruled out — but the board needs a clear, documented approach to managing those conflicts before the appointment is confirmed.

The Trustee Appointment Process

The mechanics of appointing a trustee depend on the charity’s governing document — the articles of association, constitution, trust deed or CIO constitution that sets out how the charity is governed. Most governing documents specify how many trustees the charity must have (a minimum and usually a maximum), how they are appointed (by the existing board, by the members, through nominated or ex officio places, or a combination) and how long they may serve (term lengths and limits on reappointment). Read it before you start: an appointment made outside the governing document’s rules may be invalid.

Skills review and brief. Good trustee recruitment begins with a skills and diversity review of the current board, identifying the gaps the next appointment should fill. This is far more likely to produce the right appointment than replacing a departing trustee like for like. The output should be a short role description, a person specification that separates essential from desirable experience, and an honest account of the time commitment.

Recruitment and advertising. Many charities now advertise trustee vacancies openly — through their own channels, sector job boards such as CharityJob and volunteering platforms such as Reach Volunteering — rather than relying solely on personal networks. For specialist or senior roles, such as a treasurer for a charity with complex finances or a chair for a large national organisation, a targeted search that approaches people who are not actively looking will often reach a stronger and more varied field. That is where an executive search approach, of the kind used for board of directors recruitment in the commercial sector, adds most value.

Assessment. The process should include a structured conversation about the candidate’s understanding of the charity’s work and purposes, the skills and experience they bring, their understanding of trustee duties, and any conflicts they would need to declare. Using the same criteria for every candidate makes the decision fairer and easier to explain. The process should also give the candidate room to ask questions: a prospective trustee who does not ask about the charity’s finances, governance and current challenges is not doing the due diligence the role requires.

Checks and appointment. Before the appointment is confirmed, complete the disqualification declaration and register searches, any DBS check the role requires, and the declaration of interests. Then make the appointment in the way the governing document requires, minute it, and update the charity’s details with the Charity Commission (and, for a charitable company, with Companies House).

Induction. Trustee induction is one of the most consistently under-provided governance activities in the sector. A new trustee who receives a bundle of papers and a seat at the next board meeting has not been inducted; they have been put in a position where they cannot contribute properly until they have spent months building context they should have been given. A structured induction — covering the charity’s history, strategy, finances, beneficiaries, staff, key risks and governance — pays for itself in the quality of the trustee’s contribution from the first meeting.

Trustee Diversity and Inclusion

The Charity Governance Code gives equity, diversity and inclusion a principle of its own: boards are expected to take deliberate steps to build a diverse board, to benefit from different perspectives and experience, and to understand and reflect the communities the charity serves. Many charities still have some way to go, with boards drawn from a narrower range of backgrounds than the people they work with.

Improving trustee diversity needs the same interventions as improving commercial board diversity: examining the hidden filters in the role description and process; advertising more widely; reaching out to networks and communities that are under-represented on the current board; and treating diversity as a deliberate design objective in recruitment rather than an aspiration. Our guide to hiring senior executives for charities and not-for-profits covers how the same principles apply when the charity is recruiting its executive team.

For charities serving particular communities — disabled people, ethnic minority communities, LGBTQ+ people or young people, for example — there is a further dimension: lived experience. A board that includes people with direct experience of the issues the charity works on is better placed to make decisions about those communities. This is a governance quality issue as well as a representation issue, and it also explains why the minimum age of 16 for trustees of charitable companies and CIOs matters to youth charities.

Trustee Remuneration and Expenses

Most UK charity trustees serve without payment. The Charity Commission describes being a trustee as generally a voluntary role, and its guidance on payments to charity trustees explains the rules for each type of payment. The principle that trustees act in the interests of the charity without personal financial gain is fundamental to the public trust that charities depend on.

Expenses are different. Charities can reimburse trustees for the costs they reasonably incur in carrying out their role — travel, accommodation, childcare or care costs, and access costs for disabled trustees, for example — and this is not treated as a trustee payment or benefit. The Commission suggests charities encourage trustees to claim expenses so that nobody has to step down for financial reasons. Charities that have no clear expenses policy, or that informally expect trustees to absorb their own costs, end up excluding less well-off candidates and undermining their own diversity aims.

Payment is a separate question, and the legal position needs to be understood precisely:

• Paying a trustee for being a trustee requires a power in the governing document or authority from the Charity Commission. Governing documents rarely contain such a power, and the Commission’s guidance says this kind of payment should be considered only in exceptional circumstances and for a temporary period.
• Paying a trustee for goods or services they provide to the charity in another capacity — professional services, for example — is possible under the statutory power in the Charities Act 2011 (extended to goods by the 2022 Act) or under a power in the governing document, provided the conditions are met, including that the amount is reasonable and that the trustees are satisfied the arrangement is in the charity’s best interests.
• Employing a trustee, or a person connected to a trustee, and compensating a trustee for loss of earnings are each covered by their own rules in the Commission’s guidance.
• Trustee indemnity insurance can generally be bought by the charity to protect trustees against personal liability, subject to the statutory conditions and anything in the governing document.

Unauthorised payments to trustees are a breach of trust, and trustees who receive them can be required to repay them. Any charity considering paying a trustee should take legal advice, read the Commission’s guidance in full, record its reasoning, and be ready to explain the decision publicly — the Commission has been clear that the primacy of voluntary trusteeship should be the starting point.

The wider debate continues in the sector. Supporters of payment argue that, for large and complex charities where the governance role is substantial, paying trustees — particularly the chair — would widen the pool of candidates and remove a financial barrier for people from less affluent backgrounds. Opponents argue that voluntary governance is fundamental to the charity model and that payment risks blurring the line between governance and management. For most charities the practical answer remains the same: keep trusteeship voluntary, reimburse expenses properly, and make the time commitment realistic.

Common Governance Failures in Trustee Appointments

1. Appointing friends and colleagues instead of running a proper search. The most common route to trusteeship — personal networks — is also the route most likely to produce a board that lacks diversity, independence and the right range of skills. A structured process, even for a small charity, produces better appointments than informal introductions.

2. Failing to check disqualification status. Checking that a prospective trustee is not disqualified is not optional. A disqualified person acting as a trustee without a Commission waiver is normally committing an offence, and the charity’s governance is compromised whether or not the board knew.

3. Not managing conflicts of interest proactively. A conflicts policy that exists on paper but is not applied in meetings does not protect the charity. Conflicts need to be managed consistently — the conflicted trustee withdrawing, the conflict recorded — every time they arise, not only when they are most obvious.

4. Confusing governance with executive management. The most dysfunctional charity boards are those where the boundary between governance and management has collapsed — either because trustees are micro-managing day-to-day operations, or because they have delegated so much to the CEO that they no longer exercise genuine oversight. The right balance is a board that sets strategy, oversees performance and holds the executive to account without doing the executive’s job.

5. Too little financial understanding on the board. At least one trustee — usually the treasurer or the chair of the finance committee — should have substantial financial expertise. But the board as a whole needs enough understanding to approve budgets, understand reserves and act on management accounts. A board that relies entirely on the treasurer has created a single point of failure.

6. Ignoring the governing document. Appointments made by the wrong body, beyond the maximum number of trustees, or after a trustee’s term has expired can be open to challenge. Check the governing document at the start of every appointment, not only when a problem arises.

How Exec Capital Approaches Charity Trustee and Senior Appointments

Exec Capital supports charities and not-for-profit organisations with trustee, chair and senior executive appointments, alongside its commercial board practice. Our approach to trustee searches follows the same structured process as our non-executive recruitment work: a skills and diversity review before the brief is written, open advertising supplemented by direct approaches to people who are not actively looking, structured assessment against consistent criteria, and support with induction planning before the appointment is confirmed.

For many charities the most significant decision the board makes is the appointment of its chief executive. We run CEO searches for charities with the same discipline we bring to commercial leadership searches — structured assessment, references from former chairs and board colleagues, and induction planning. Where the charity needs a new chair, our chair recruitment service applies the same approach to the board’s most important individual appointment. Every search is run by our specialist team, with Adrian Lawrence FCA overseeing each mandate.

The Trustee-CEO Relationship

The relationship between the trustee board — and particularly the chair — and the chief executive is the most important governance relationship in a charity. When it works well, with clear boundaries between governance and management, mutual trust and honest communication about performance and challenges, the charity operates effectively and the CEO has the support and accountability they need. When it fails — through micromanagement, unclear boundaries, distrust or, at the other extreme, rubber-stamp oversight — the charity suffers and the CEO’s effectiveness is compromised.

The trustees’ role is to govern, not to manage. That distinction is simple in principle and difficult in practice. Trustees set the strategic direction and hold the CEO accountable for delivering it, but they do not manage the staff, direct programme delivery or substitute their own operational judgement for the CEO’s. A chair who intervenes in staff management decisions, a trustee who bypasses the CEO to give instructions to staff, or a board that rewrites the CEO’s operational plans is crossing the governance-management boundary in a way that undermines both the CEO and the board.

The annual CEO appraisal is the main formal mechanism for managing the relationship. The chair usually leads it on behalf of the board, based on agreed objectives that reflect the charity’s strategy and the board’s expectations. A well-run appraisal — honest assessment, clear objectives for the year ahead and a genuine development focus — strengthens the relationship and gives both sides a shared understanding of expectations. An appraisal that is perfunctory, avoids difficult issues or has no board-agreed criteria provides neither accountability nor development.

Financial Governance: What Every Trustee Must Understand

Financial governance is the area of trustee responsibility where inattention most often leads to serious problems. Regulatory cases involving charities frequently feature a financial governance failure of some kind — unauthorised payments, weak internal controls, failure to spot fraud, or misuse of restricted funds.

Every trustee, not just the treasurer, should be able to read the charity’s management accounts at a basic level: understanding the difference between restricted and unrestricted funds, seeing whether the charity is spending within budget, judging whether its reserves are adequate, and recognising the warning signs of financial distress. A trustee who relies entirely on the treasurer to interpret the numbers, without developing their own basic financial literacy, is not meeting the duty to act with reasonable care and skill.

Restricted funds — money given to the charity for a specific purpose — carry a particular obligation. They must be spent only on the purpose for which they were given, and the trustees must be able to account for how they have been used. Mixing restricted and unrestricted funds, or using restricted money for general running costs without proper authority, is a serious governance failure that can lead to regulatory action.

Charities that prepare accruals accounts follow the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP). A new edition, Charities SORP 2026, applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2026, and it changes the structure of the trustees’ annual report — including a new section on sustainability — with reporting requirements that scale with the charity’s size. Boards with complex finances, several funding streams or significant restricted funds should make sure at least one trustee has the expertise to judge the quality of the financial statements against the SORP. When recruiting a treasurer, a qualified accountant with charity or not-for-profit reporting experience is usually the right brief.

Trustee Board Effectiveness and Annual Reviews

Board effectiveness is one of the eight principles of the 2025 Charity Governance Code, and regular review is part of good practice under it: the board should assess how well it is performing its governance role and what would make it more effective. Many charities still do not carry out these reviews, either because they are unfamiliar with the practice or because they assume their governance is adequate without testing it. The findings should feed directly into the brief for the next trustee appointment.

A useful board review covers: the quality of the information trustees receive from the executive team; the quality of board meetings — their structure, their focus on strategy rather than operations, and the quality of discussion; the effectiveness of committees such as finance, audit and risk, and safeguarding; the board’s composition — whether it has the skills, diversity and experience it needs; and the quality of the chair’s leadership. The review should produce a small number of specific, actionable priorities rather than a long list of everything that could theoretically be better.

Larger charities, or those with a high public profile, increasingly supplement self-assessment with a periodic external review carried out by an independent governance adviser. An external review typically involves structured conversations with each trustee and the senior executive team and produces a confidential report with prioritised recommendations. Whatever the format, the most valuable output for recruitment purposes is an updated skills matrix: it tells the board exactly what the next trustee appointment needs to bring.

The Chair of the Trustee Board

The chair of the trustee board is usually the most important governance appointment a charity makes. The chair leads the board, manages the relationship with the CEO and is often the public face of the charity’s governance. Their effectiveness largely determines the effectiveness of the whole board.

The chair’s responsibilities include: running board meetings with enough rigour to keep discussion strategic without straying into management; overseeing the CEO’s performance, including leading the annual appraisal; representing the board to external stakeholders such as the Charity Commission, major funders and the media; and leading the board’s own effectiveness, including its composition, diversity and succession planning.

Appointing a chair follows the same principles as any trustee appointment — a skills assessment, a structured search, formal assessment including a conflicts review, and a proper induction. What sets the chair appointment apart is the importance of the chair-CEO relationship, which should be assessed as carefully as any other part of the candidate’s credentials. A chair who cannot build a productive, trusting relationship with the CEO while keeping genuine independence will undermine the effectiveness of the whole board. Succession matters too: a board that waits until the chair’s final term has expired before thinking about a successor is likely to end up with a rushed appointment.

Further Reading and Authoritative Sources

The Charity Commission’s Essential Trustee guidance (CC3) is the foundational reference for all charity trustees, and should be part of every trustee recruitment pack and induction. The Commission also publishes separate guidance on conflicts of interest, on decision-making, and on trustee expenses and payments, all available on GOV.UK. The Charity Governance Code website hosts the 2025 Code and supporting resources for boards applying it.

For trustee recruitment, sector job boards such as CharityJob and volunteering platforms such as Reach Volunteering are widely used for advertising trustee vacancies, while infrastructure bodies such as NCVO, ACEVO and the Association of Chairs publish practical guidance on trustee recruitment, induction, the chair’s role and the CEO-board relationship.

For charities in Scotland and Northern Ireland, OSCR and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland publish their own guidance on trustee duties and appointments, which should be read alongside — or instead of — the material referred to here.

Frequently asked questions

Who appoints charity trustees?

It depends on the charity’s governing document. Trustees may be appointed by the existing board, elected by the charity’s members, nominated by another organisation, or hold their place ex officio. The governing document also sets the number of trustees and their terms of office, so check it before starting any appointment.

How old do you have to be to be a charity trustee?

According to the Charity Commission’s CC3 guidance, you must be at least 16 to be a trustee of a charitable company or a CIO, and at least 18 to be a trustee of any other type of charity.

Are charity trustees paid?

Generally, no. Trusteeship is a voluntary role, and paying a trustee for being a trustee needs a specific power in the governing document or Charity Commission authority. Trustees can, however, be reimbursed for reasonable expenses such as travel and childcare.

What checks should a charity carry out before appointing a trustee?

At a minimum: search the relevant public registers and obtain a signed declaration that the candidate is not disqualified, take a full declaration of interests, and request an enhanced DBS check where the role is eligible because the charity provides regulated activity.

How long do charity trustees serve?

Term lengths are set by the governing document. Many charities use fixed terms with a limit on reappointment, which helps keep the board refreshed while retaining continuity.

Can a recruitment firm help appoint charity trustees?

Yes. Many charities advertise trustee roles themselves, but for senior or specialist roles — chair, treasurer, or trustees with particular professional expertise — a structured search can reach strong candidates who are not actively looking and give the board a consistent, defensible assessment process.