Charity governance: what UK and US trust data are really telling us
- Helen Vaterlaws
- Aug 7, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 2
UK–US evidence from 2025, translated into proportionate, board-ready practice.
Trustees often work out of sight, giving time, judgement and expertise so charities can deliver. I’ve lived the highs and lows on both sides of the table. The late nights juggling family commitments with a stack of board papers to approve. And the days spent keeping services afloat while explaining trade-offs with limited time and imperfect data.
As boards start to use AI for faster briefs, minutes and risk summaries, the basics of nonprofit governance matter more, not less. Anything unclear today is likely to be amplified, not fixed, by automation.
That’s where the 2025 trust metrics come in. They show real strengths and some familiar gaps. None of this questions effort or intent. It points to a need for practical, human-centred governance that fits how decisions really happen. Without that calibration, AI is just as likely to miss blind spots as to close them.
Why recent trust data matter for charity and nonprofit governance
In 2025, both the UK Charity Commission and the US Independent Sector released major trust-and-governance studies. The questions and contexts differ, but the patterns line up enough to take seriously.
In the UK, around 57% of people report high trust in charities, with about 10% reporting low trust. Charities remain among the most trusted institutions.
In the US, 57% of respondents report high trust in nonprofits, ahead of any other sector, while trust in wealthy philanthropists is lower.
Scepticism grows when giving appears entangled with politics or opaque funding. Confidence rises when organisations show, in plain language, how money flows, how decisions are made, and how accountability works.
UK trustees report very high overall confidence (99%), with slightly lower confidence in areas like finance and safeguarding. Only around half recognise the board’s joint duty to file accurate regulatory information, even though they trust the regulator to spot and deal with wrongdoing.
The brief for boards is clear:
✅ make decisions legible
✅ show how money moves to mission
✅ align nonprofit/charity governance to real-world constraints, not ideal conditions.
Note: UK and US figures are directionally comparable but come from different questions and sampling methods.
The next shift: AI-native charity governance
The next evolution is AI-native governance:
continuous decision tracking
gentle prompts to review policies
and regularly updated public snapshots of funding and key decisions.
Most of the building blocks are already in tools boards use every day. The work now is to embed them systematically, proportionately, and with human ease in mind. Practical starting moves:
Concise decision logs – capture the decision, rationale, key risks, recusals and when it will be reviewed.
Scheduled policy reviews – small, visible prompts for safeguarding, finance, conflicts and reserves, with named owners.
Funding snapshots – short, aggregate views of income sources and use of funds, published with a time lag.
Guardrails: publish aggregates only, avoid personal or special‑category data, apply a publishing lag, name a data owner, AI drafts with human oversight.
Even with clean systems, governance falters if only a few voices shape the room.
Why This Matters Now
Demand is intensifying. As traditional income stalls, boards must rapidly redesign delivery while safeguarding continuity of care.
Decisions are accelerating. Governance based on memory or goodwill alone can’t handle today’s complexity and pace.
Trust is steady yet fragile. Sector scandals quickly cross geographic and digital borders, amplifying scrutiny.
Boards are already adapting. Recent UK research shows many organisations have changed operations, anticipate further change, and are seeking new funding. Expectations are rising for governance that is swift, accurate, and visible.
Social glue without clique risk
Informal bonds help boards move quickly and speak candidly. The same bonds can harden into in-groups that silence dissent and narrow options.
These dynamics rarely appear in minutes; they show up in who speaks first, who frames the choice, and which topics never reach the agenda.
Nearly half of UK trustees spend time together socially. That can be great for candour and retention, but it carries a risk of exclusivity unless voice is actively designed for.
How to spot it: decisions pre‑cooked offline, repeated deference to the same few voices, sensitive items always ‘out of time.’
Practical moves
Rotate chairing of agenda items.
Use round‑robin first responses; schedule a 5‑minute challenge round per major decision.
Quarterly, scan who is influencing which calls and who is consistently silent.
Healthy social glue still needs clear rules; the next risk is assuming guidance will live in people’s heads.
Turning guidance into workflow
Regulators already provide clear expectations for charity governance. Boards that rely on institutional memory alone will drift: policies age, conflicts go unrecorded, and risks multiply.
You don’t need more training days; you need better plumbing.
Practical moves:
Translate long guidance into one-page triggers – simple go / no-go checklists for common calls (campaigning, reserves, conflicts, serious incidents).
Schedule policy reviews visibly, with named owners and “what changed” notes.
Keep a concise decision log for significant choices and make it easy for new trustees to see the trail from paper to outcome.
Clear rules become more important as you decide when and how to speak in public.
Is campaigning mission-critical or a distraction?
Fewer than a quarter of UK charities campaign, often because it feels risky or unrelated to purpose. Yet if your mission tackles the systemic causes beneath frontline issues, advocacy can be core, not peripheral.
Practical moves:
Map how your work connects: services → systems → outcomes. Where advocacy clearly advances your charitable purpose, treat it as part of the mission, not an add-on.
Agree pre-approved language that links campaigning to outcomes and beneficiary impact.
Follow local regulations (e.g. Charity Commission guidance, US 501(c)(3) rules), especially in election periods.
Even with roles and public voice clear, one risk keeps cropping up in the background: operational friction.
Operational friction: the hidden governance risk
These aren’t just admin headaches. When they go wrong, they quickly become board-level risks. Routine actions (banking updates, contract approvals, onboarding) feel too small for board agendas until they go wrong. Then you’re suddenly looking at delayed payroll, frozen payments, or stalled service delivery.
Two in five UK trustees report banking issues; updating signatories is the top concern. Boards don’t run day-to-day operations, but charity governance still has to ensure resilience under pressure.
Practical moves:
List critical operational processes (bank signatories, payroll, beneficiary payments, incident escalation, data access).
Monitor them quarterly and log exceptions, not every transaction.
Assign a trustee sponsor to each critical process to help unblock issues.
Keep short, monitored SOPs for key processes like signatory changes so they don’t live in one person’s head.
None of this needs heavy tooling, just consistent, human-centred routines.
If this feels familiar, you might also like our post on information overload and strategic clarity.
For sector leaders and advisors
Most of this is an architecture problem rather than a training one. AI and new tools help only when they sit on top of governance that already reflects how boards actually work. Aim for charity governance that is:
humane – realistic about time, capacity and emotion
high-fidelity – transparent where it counts, with clear decision trails
adaptive – able to respond quickly without losing grip on risk
honest about blind spots – regularly asking “who and what are we missing?”
Quick self-check for boards
Use these questions as a light governance self-assessment at your next away-day or board review.
Which decisions in the last year would be hard for a new trustee to trace from paper to outcome?
When did you last review conflicts of interest, and how are recusals actually recorded?
How many routine actions rely on one person’s memory?
Where is campaigning mission-critical to your purpose, and where does it distract?
Which operational processes would stall if one person left tomorrow?
Who never speaks first in meetings – and why?
Which pieces of guidance have you embedded into workflow, not just filed away?
If that list raised a few “we should really…” moments, you’re not alone. The goal isn’t to do more. It’s to make what you already do visible, valued, and sustainable.
Q&A for team: charity boards and operations
Q1. What does the latest trust data mean for charity governance?
Recent UK and US data shows that charities and nonprofits are still among the most trusted institutions, but that trust is fragile. For boards, the message is simple: make decisions easy to follow, show clearly how money flows to mission, and be honest about trade offs. When trust is high, good governance protects it. When trust is shaken, clear nonprofit governance is how you rebuild it.
Q2. What is “AI-native governance” and do we really need to think about it now?
AI-native governance just means your basic governance processes are set up so AI can support them rather than quietly undermining them. If you have clear decision logs, regular policy reviews and simple data ownership, AI can help with drafting, summarising and spotting patterns. If those pieces are missing, AI mostly amplifies gaps and blind spots. So the work now is to get the basics tidy and human centred, not to chase tools.
Q3. How can we stop a small group dominating our board discussions?
Social glue is helpful, cliques are not. Design for voice on purpose: use round robin first responses, rotate who leads agenda items and build in a short challenge round for major decisions. Once a quarter, look at who is influencing which calls and who is consistently quiet. Good governance is not only about who is on the board, it is about whose voice actually shapes decisions.
Q4. What operational risks should trustees be paying closer attention to?
The risks that cause the biggest headaches are often very ordinary things that sit under the radar: banking updates, signatories, payroll, beneficiary payments, data access. As a board, you do not need to run these, but you do need to know they are robust. List your critical processes, check how they are monitored and make sure more than one person understands each one. When operations are smooth, governance feels invisible, but it is still doing its job.
Change doesn’t start with a workshop; it starts with one honest conversation.
Note: Examples are for illustrative purposes only; no official affiliation with the organisations or tools mentioned is claimed. AI systems can be unpredictable, so always keep personal or sensitive data out of third-party tools and ensure your implementation follows your own organisation’s data protection policies.
