Posted on 11 February 2020 by Tracey Bird

The Scottish Governance Code for the Third Sector was launched at the end of 2018 and more and more organisations have been using both the Code and SCVO’s Good Governance Checkup to see where they are on their journey to good governance.

Good governance matters, because it underpins successful organisations and is vital for their effectiveness and sustainability. Good governance matters in all sectors, but especially in ours, where our purpose is to serve our beneficiaries as best we can. Good governance is also the best way to protect and enhance the reputation of our individual organisations and all the voluntary sector.

SCVO’s purpose is to support, promote and develop a confident and sustainable voluntary sector in Scotland. We think it’s important to practice what we preach, so we’re going to be using the Checkup to look at our own governance. We’ll explore each of the five principles of the Scottish Governance Code so that we can evidence and demonstrate good governance in the national membership organisation for the voluntary sector in Scotland.

On Wednesday we’ll have the first SCVO board meeting of 2020 where we’ll welcome three new trustees to the board - Pauline Lunn, James Adams and Manish Joshi. They, like most of our board, were elected from our membership, and will bring new skills, experience, and enthusiasm. They’ll join the Board in being responsible for the strategic management of SCVO, controlling and supervising our activities, setting a vision for SCVO, and ensuring that we’re run in a way that will achieve our mission and values.

I’m going to be working with Kenneth Pinkerton, charity law expert and SCVO Board member, to go through each of the five principles of the Code with the SCVO Board. We’ll be charting our progress throughout the year in regular blogs, being open about the highs and lows as we go along. If you’d like to take your own Board on a journey to good governance, find out more by contacting SCVO’s Information Service. And, if you’re super keen to get started, you might also like to join us at our workshop on Good Governance at the Gathering on Thursday 20 February. There are a few places left, it would be good to see you there.