GAG Minutes – Governance Advisory Group – October 2020

Subject: 1 October GAG meeting summary Terry, I hope you are well. With apologies for the delay in getting this to you, by way of minutes for the most recent meeting of the governance advisory group, the following points were discussed: 1. Summary of board meeting - I reported back to the group on the 10 September board meeting, focussing particularly on feedback from the trustees on the governance issues and the confirmation of the appointment of RSM, which assists in relation to the ongoing development of the data protection policy. 2. Terms of reference - Chris had kindly circulated drafts of the TORs for the fundraising, research and governance advisory groups before the meeting and these were discussed. It was agreed that vice-chairs, where appropriate, would be appointed by the board, on advice from the chair of the committee. It was agreed that the GAG had too few members currently to merit a vice-chair. The group agreed that, from a governance perspective, care should be taken that the advisory groups do not take decisions that should properly be taken by the board, and acknowledged that the board had the power to terminate an advisory group if it was felt that it was no longer required. The group discussed the benefits of having minutes/reports from each advisory group meeting circulated to the trustees, and Mike agreed to raise this, together with the frequency of board meetings, separately with you. Chris has subsequently recirculated final versions of the TORs, which I have attached and which Karina has kindly agreed to circulate. If you and Karina and the relevant groups are happy with these we can produce equivalent consistent TORs for the other advisory groups. 3. Register of interests for advisory groups - the final draft of this had been circulated prior to the meeting and was confirmed clear of comments, subject to removing the requirement for advisory group members to disclose donations to the charity. This is also attached and Karina has again kindly agreed to circulate this to all advisory group members for completion and signature. Ian notified the group that he had been reappointed to the membership committee of the MCC from 1 October. 4. Further draft policies - drafts of the ethical fundraising policy, data protection policy and ABC policy had been circulated shortly before the meeting and were discussed. It was agreed that the ethical fundraising policy (which had been drafted by the executive team) was very good, and, subject to updating the objects in part 2 of the introduction to reflect the new objects updated over the summer and adding a reference to religious groups in section 4, was ready to be approved by the fundraising advisory group and then the board. It was agreed that the data protection and ABC policies (once updated to reflect certain comments on the drafts) should be sent to Karina for review before being circulated more widely. In particular, the group felt that data protection was a specialist area which needed further input as to how day to day operations were managed to ensure that it is realistic and workable (eg, who should the person responsible for ongoing compliance with data protection be and what register of systems is currently maintained and by whom?). I explained that I had been in touch with Ines (at RSF) and Sheila (from RSM) to discuss this aspect and am awaiting confirmation from RSM that they could provide the relevant advice, particularly as they will need to cover the adequacy of our policy and systems as part of their audit. (I have subsequently discussed with Karina the ICO registration process, which we are looking into). For the ABC policy, it was agreed that the language around hospitality should be tightened up to tie in more specifically with how the charity operates and suggested that Phil Glyn-Smith as treasurer should be the person responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of the policy.