Governance Support and Services

How’s your arts charity’s governance?

• Are you looking to refresh your Board membership?

• Have you new Board members who would benefit from governance training?

• Are you working well and looking for a confidential sounding board to bounce future plans off?

• Or are you facing a specific challenge that demands difficult top-level decision making?

Whatever your situation, we want to help you: because we know good governance means stronger arts organisations.

A&B NI’s Governance Programmes include:

• A&B NI Board Matching Programmes: Are you recruiting new board members? We can help! Our Young Leaders and Business Leaders on Arts Boards programmes match up-and-coming leaders and strategic thinkers with the Boards of our Arts Member organisations. This benefits everyone: the new Board members develop their leadership skills in a different environment, and the arts organisation taps into the fresh insights and specialist skill set of their newest member. To register your interest in taking on a new board member through our Leaders on Arts Boards programme, click here. 
  

• Annual Governance conference
  

• Resources and toolkits - Free resources, guides and toolkits for our arts members in our exclusive arts member area  

• Governance Healthchecks – Space to discuss your current governance practice objectively and in confidence

• Whole Board Sessions - on topics such as Fundraising, Governance Roles & Responsibilities, Strategic Planning. For more information, or to talk governance contact Brona Whittaker, b.whittaker@artsandbusinessni.org.uk.

Board Member Recruitment:

We’ve been successfully recruiting and matching skilled and committed individuals with arts boards for over 35 years through our Leaders on Arts Board programme. However, if you have an urgent board recruitment need, you may want to explore an open recruitment process instead. We can offer advice to our members and support recruitment processes by sharing your vacancies with our networks.

Our trusted links below share tips on things to consider when recruiting including skills audit resources, how to recruit and where to advertise.

• How to recruit new board members - DIY Committee Guide
• Charity Commission – recruiting new charity trustees 
• Building Better Boards (hbr.org)
• Charity Chair, Committee & Trustee Roles & Responsibilities (charityexcellence.co.uk)

A&B NI is a Helper Group for the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland and also an active member on the Developing Governance Group who developed and maintain the voluntary Code of Good Governance and the underpinning resource site diycommitteeguide.org. Download the Code of Good Governance here.