Not skilled but opinionated

What makes a good trustee? Trustees come in all forms and with all sorts of motivations and experiences. Some have high powered board experience and some have their arm twisted to help or to make up numbers.

We’ve written before about trustees, often retired, who are on Investment Committees so they can stay up to date with the market, express opinions on current geo-political events, and those that are interested in the relationship between the behaviour of their investment portfolio and the current needs of the charity. We often make a distinction between trustees who are there for entertainment or there for information.

Manager presentations don’t help; too often a manager discusses their investment performance inside a tiny investment bubble where all that matters is what is covered in the financial press. Non investment trustees will be interested, even pleased if they’ve followed it to the end but a bit bewildered about why this is relevant to them, other than to conduct ‘regular reviews’ as expected by the Charity Commission.

One trustee put this well the other day, "If we’re not going to change anything, what’s the point of these meetings?" 

It was such a good question because the point of these meetings is to ensure the needs of the charity and services of the manager are aligned. Think of a private client relationship: a skilled manager will know well what their client’s current needs and worries are; are they thinking of buying a new car, passing on some money and so forth. Some investment firms turn up in front of their charity clients for their review meetings without asking for any such briefing in advance, nor inviting such a discussion during the meeting or even asking to whom they are actually presenting.

Both sides need to be better at this, and this requires more confidence from charities (especially their more knowledgeable advisers and trustees) and from the charity investment industry. Expecting entertainment and not serious engagement tends towards grandstanding and timewasting. Turning up armed with only a slightly stale pack and some market speculation about the future is not skilled but opinionated.