(5 minute read)
Published: 3 March 2025
Written by Sufina Ahmad, Director, John Ellerman Foundation
This blog is about John Ellerman Foundation’s Board Shadowing Scheme 2024 Learning Review, which you can read in full by clicking here.
Setting up and then delivering John Ellerman Foundation’s Board Shadowing Scheme has taken some time. We first started thinking about the idea of a Board Shadowing Scheme in 2021. We eventually launched in February 2024. This gap wasn’t due to a lack of interest in the work, but more so due to our desire to ensure that as a small team and Board we had the capacity and capabilities to deliver a Board Shadowing Scheme that was meaningful and impactful. If we had rushed, we risked this being a one-off diversity initiative that could be tokenistic and performative.
Waiting allowed us to plan and implement a six month programme beginning in May 2024 that offered individuals from diverse backgrounds with lived experience of poverty to join our Board as active observers and contributors (i.e. without the ability to vote on decisions). We had the following three core aims for the Board Shadowing Scheme:
1. Provide new perspectives and a positive learning experience for our Board, especially since we have limited levels of change at a Trustee level, with Trustees committing to two terms of five years, and our next known Board retirement happening in 2025.
2. Support the diversification of Trustee boards within charities, especially the trust and foundations sector – with statistical data from the Association of Charitable Foundations, Reach Volunteering, Getting On Board, Young Trustees Movement and Action for Trustee Racial Diversity showing a lack of diversity on charity Boards.
3. Offer Board experience to individuals who may not ordinarily consider Trustee roles.
We were surprised and thrilled by the level of interest in our Board Shadowing Scheme – with our LinkedIn posts attracting thousands of views and hundreds of comments and the work being picked up in articles for Philea (a European membership network for philanthropic organisations), Third Sector and Civil Society Media. From a pool of 19 candidates, we appointed three: Nell Hardy, Hirra Khan Adeogun, and Charlotte Leask. Between them they have experience of working in and running small and medium charities, delivering work relating to the arts, environment and health and wellbeing. Each of them had their own reasons for considering our Board Shadowing Scheme, including wanting to learn more about governance processes and apply these in their own organisations and work lives, as well as wanting to use this opportunity as a way of determining in a lower stakes way if they could be part of charity governance systems and processes meaningfully.
Our learning report – key findings
John Ellerman Foundation is committed to accountability and learning, and we felt that it was important to review our Board Shadowing Scheme. This has resulted in a publicly available Learning Review, which can be read in full by clicking here. To compile our findings we reviewed in detail our written materials associated with the Board Shadowing Scheme, alongside written feedback from our Shadowing Trustees, Board Trustees, and our Director.
The positives
There is much for us to reflect on positively. Overall there was consensus that the three aims of the Board Shadowing Scheme (listed above) were very much met, with their being good experiences for all involved of being able to work with and alongside our Shadowing Trustees. Shadowing Trustees were able to fulfil their own hopes and goals for the Board Shadowing Scheme too, and they were unanimous in their view that they learned more about what it means to be a Trustee generally and specifically in the context of John Ellerman Foundation. One particularly striking comment received was that the Board Shadowing Scheme provided a level of understanding and experience that would not have been possible through a standard training on charity governance.
The structure of the Board Shadowing Scheme was commended. In brief it comprised an induction process, invitations to attend all Governance related meetings, group meetings to prepare for Board and Committee meetings, monthly one-to-one meetings between Shadowing Trustees and the Director to discuss their ambitions for the role, and how they are finding the experience, including reflecting on previous meetings and reviewing what is working well and what is not within the Board Shadowing Scheme, and a £500 training budget etc. The processes were appreciated for their simplicity, flexibility and for being trust-based. The training budget was also highly praised, but consideration needs to be given as to whether the amount of £500 should be increased and if it should be described as a ‘personal development budget’ instead.
Room for improvement
Future rounds of the Board Shadowing Scheme will prioritise improvements in the following five areas, whilst retaining the positives from our current approach:
1. Bringing the Board Shadowing Scheme to a close for each cohort: Given that this was our first round of the Board Shadowing scheme, we focussed a lot of our time on how to begin, but we do need to think more about how we bring the Board Shadowing Scheme to an end – in terms of staying in touch with our Shadowing Trustees, creating opportunities for them to connect with each other (and future Shadowing Trustees) as part of an alumni network and so on and so forth. Other ideas we are offering include providing references as requested and encouraging Shadowing Trustees to reach out to staff and Trustees as needed.
2. Trustees leading the work: The design and delivery of the Board Shadowing Scheme has been a joint initiative between Annika Small OBE, Trustee and Sufina Ahmad MBE, Director. The approach taken was very much inspired by information shared with us by The Smallwood Trust that has run its own Board Shadowing Scheme for several years with multiple cohorts. Future versions of the Board Shadowing Scheme may wish to consider replacing the one to ones between the Shadowing Trustees and the Director with one to ones with the Trustee lead, as well as ensuring there is a streamlining of the group and one to one meetings to avoid duplication and save time for all involved.
3. Building equitable connections: More attention needs to be given to how we can ensure the cohort of Shadowing Trustees connect with each other and with the organisation’s Trustees equitably. This means considering things like ensuring there is equivalency between the sharing of lived experience by Shadowing Trustees and Trustees. There was also a perception that Shadowing Trustees were not always actively engaged in discussions in meetings, with Shadowing Trustees feeling confident that they were, and a couple of Trustees raising concerns that they were not. Having now completed one round of the Board Shadowing Scheme, alongside this learning review, it also means that we can better prepare Trustees on what to expect in relation to working with Shadowing Trustees and vice versa.
4. Access and inclusion: Shadowing Trustees were able to connect with and process our Board and Committee papers very effectively, with positive feedback on the quality of the information received. However, it was noted that the approach is oriented to the written word and our papers tend to be quite lengthy! Consequently, we do need to consider different formats and ways of conveying information that will be more engaging for Shadowing Trustees that have less familiarity with large written packs of material. The timings of the meetings all taking place in daytime working hours could also act as a barrier to some individuals being able to fulfil the Shadowing Trustee role.
5. Terminology and numbers: One Trustee raised whether having three Shadowing Trustees in one cohort was too many and whether Shadowing Trustee was the right term. We designed the Board Shadowing Scheme to have up to three individuals join the Board, and for future rounds the numbers recruited to will need to be considered in terms of resource availability for the six month period and whether it is felt that having fewer Shadowing Trustees may support with some of the issues identified above (namely in terms of ‘Trustees leading the work’ and ‘Building equitable connections’.) As to the term Shadowing Trustee, this has been adopted from The Smallwood Trust who use the same term and no alternative has been proffered in the feedback received. It is something that we might have a clearer view on in the future, especially if other organisations delivering or supporting Board Shadowing Schemes come up with alternative terms.
Concluding thoughts
As an endowed charitable grantmaking organisation, we know all too well that there is a real lack of diversity within charity governance. We also know that this isn’t due to a lack of interest and expertise from diverse groups.
Running Board Shadowing Schemes present an opportunity for us to imagine charity governance differently. It provides a model that supports all Trustees to bring their whole selves, in terms of their experiences and their expertise, to their roles, should they wish. It enables more critical reflection too on what is working and what could be enhanced within governance processes.
There was much to be heartened by in our Learning Review, but there is still much to do in order to build governance structures here and in the wider sectors we operate in that are as transparent, effective and accountable as they can be. We look forward to continuing to share the progress we are making.