Trustee recruitment: finding, checking and appointing trustees

The rule: follow the governing document, and never appoint a disqualified person

The Charity Commission's Finding and appointing new trustees (CC30), updated in May 2025, is plain about who owns trustee recruitment: "You can delegate some aspects of trustee recruitment to your staff and others. But, as trustees, you are responsible for setting an effective process." Every charity must follow the "relevant rules in your charity's governing document", the "legal rules about who is allowed to be a trustee", and "your trustee recruitment policy if your charity has one".

The governing document matters because an appointment made outside it is not an appointment. The essential trustee (CC3) warns: "If trustee appointments breach these rules they are not valid. The validity of actions and decisions they were involved in could be called into question."

The legal rules are in section 178 of the Charities Act 2011, which lists the cases in which a person "is disqualified from being a charity trustee or trustee for a charity". Since 1 August 2018 they reach senior staff too: under section 178(3), a disqualified person "is also disqualified from holding an office or employment in the charity with senior management functions". The Commission's automatic disqualification guidance for charities names these as "Chief Executive (or equivalent) positions and Chief Finance Officer (or equivalent) positions", and "it is the function (and not the title) of the position that matters". Recruiting a chief executive or finance director needs the same disqualification declaration and register checks.

Section 183 makes acting while disqualified an offence, with a narrow exception for companies and CIOs where the only reason is bankruptcy, a debt relief order or a company director disqualification. Under section 184 the person's acts "are not invalid merely because of that disqualification", but the Commission may order repayment of any remuneration, expenses or benefits received while disqualified.

What trustee recruitment covers, stage by stage

CC30 is written as a sequence, and it works as a checklist for any charity trustee recruitment:

1. Check the governing document. It may set the number of trustees, term lengths, who appoints (the board, the members or an outside body such as a local authority) and who is eligible. CC30 adds: "Always have enough trustees to form your quorum for trustee meetings."
2. Work out what the trustee board needs: a skills audit, and separately a look at its mix of backgrounds.
3. Remove barriers that narrow the pool, such as meeting times, uncertainty about claiming expenses and an unnecessary demand for previous board experience.
4. Write a trustee role description.
5. Advertise the vacancy and assess candidates against the role description.
6. Make the required checks: age, mental capacity, disqualification, the official registers, DBS where the role is eligible, and conflicts of interest.
7. Appoint as the governing document requires, then update the Commission's register and, for a company, Companies House.
8. Brief the new trustee on their legal responsibilities, the charity's purposes and its governing document.
9. Welcome, include and develop the new trustee through an induction.

The Charity Governance Code, refreshed in 2025 and voluntary, sets the good-practice standard alongside it. It expects "open processes for board recruitment and/or election" and "a formal and transparent approach to recruit new trustees, which includes advertising vacancies", with appointments made "on merit against objective criteria". Our guide to the Charity Governance Code 2025 covers the rest, including its equity, diversity and inclusion principle.

Finding candidates: skills audit, open recruitment and the role description

CC30 does not ask a board to wait for a vacancy. A regular "skills audit" helps you "identify the skills, experience and knowledge that you already have" and "identify any gaps that you need to recruit for". What to look for includes skills "in finance, governance, safeguarding, digital or risk", knowledge of the communities the charity serves, and first-hand experience of the cause, "sometimes called 'lived experience'". The aim is not an expert on everything but "a skilled and balanced group of people who, together, can run your charity effectively", and for smaller charities the audit "can be quite simple".

Diversity is a separate exercise. A diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives can help a board "avoid 'groupthink' when you make decisions". The governing document may restrict who can serve, and CC30 reminds boards to "request and handle personal information sensitively".

CC30 suggests the trustee role description covers:

• the legal responsibilities that trustees have, and what being a trustee of your charity involves
• any specific duties, for example chair or treasurer
• the skills and experience the board needs, and why: "Only include the experience that you need"
• the behaviours and qualities expected of trustees
• the time commitment, including "the time commitment needed beyond formal meetings"
• term limits

CC30 points to a role description template you can "use or adapt", and NCVO members can use its trustee recruitment pack for small organisations. NCVO suggests starting from the other side: "Imagine being a candidate. What will help someone decide to join your board?" On where to look, CC30 warns against relying only on "informal or word of mouth ways of finding new trustees" or "personal connections". It suggests the charity's website and newsletter, local and specialist press, students, employers, professional networks and the charity's own volunteers and members, and names the Reach Volunteering search platform and the online trustee finders some local Councils for Voluntary Service run. Charities can also pay for specialist agency help to find trustees. NCVO's Recruiting and inducting trustees adds the Young Trustees Movement, Women on Boards, Do It (which advertises volunteer vacancies free, including trusteeships) and local trustee matching services, and points to Action for Trustee Racial Diversity's guide to recruiting Black and Asian trustees.

Before shortlisting, CC30 suggests the board considers how it will assess prospective trustees against the role description, whether it will interview, who is involved, and how to make the process "fair, inclusive and positive". NCVO describes formal processes like staff recruitment and informal ones where candidates observe a board meeting. Either way, write the criteria down first: they show the choice was made on merit.

Trustee eligibility checks before the appointment

CC30 is direct: "You must not appoint a person who is not allowed by law to be a trustee."

1. Age. Trustees must be "18 years or over if your charity is unincorporated" and "16 years or over if your charity is incorporated", such as a company or CIO, unless the governing document sets a higher age. CC30 adds that trustees "must be people who are considered capable of managing their own affairs": a person cannot be appointed who is subject to a lasting power of attorney, or whom a court has said is no longer capable of managing their own affairs.
2. A signed declaration. "You must ask potential trustees to make a written declaration that they are not disqualified. Do this before you appoint them." CC30 calls it "the minimum action you should take". The Commission's sample declaration form, linked from its automatic disqualification guidance, reads: "I am not disqualified from acting as a trustee; and I will inform the trustees promptly if, after the date of this declaration, one or more of the disqualification reasons applies to me." It can be taken "after a preferred candidate has been identified"; "The important point is to get the declaration before a relevant appointment is made". It is used alongside the separate declaration of eligibility and responsibility, which a new charity sends "when you apply to register your charity"; the disqualification declaration stays with the charity.
3. The official registers. CC30 says you "should also check" the insolvency register, the disqualified directors register and the register of removed trustees, which the Commission describes as covering people removed "either by the commission or by an Order of the High Court since 1 February 1993".
4. DBS, where the role is eligible. If the charity works with children or adults at risk, CC30 says to "always get a DBS standard, enhanced, or enhanced with barred list check when the role is eligible for one", and a basic check if the role is not eligible and your risk assessment says you should.
5. References and further checks. "You should usually collect and check references." A board that also checks public social media should set a trustee recruitment policy saying why.
6. Conflicts of interest. "Discuss potential conflicts of interest with candidates." A conflict is not a bar, but the board weighs how serious it is and whether enough unconflicted trustees would remain to form a quorum. Our guide to a conflict of interest policy covers managing it afterwards.

Be precise about DBS eligibility. DBS warns that an organisation applying for a check a role is not eligible for "will potentially be viewing information they have no legal right to see". Being a trustee does not in itself make a role eligible. DBS's guidance, published on 1 September 2026, lists two trustee positions as eligible for an Enhanced check without a barred list check: in the children's workforce, "charity trustees where the charity workers regularly carry out regulated activities with children for the charity and the charity's main purpose is to carry out regulated activity with children" (DBS's charity-sector leaflet words the test more broadly, so use its eligibility tool if in doubt); and in the adult workforce, a "charity trustee of a charity whose workers regularly carry out activities with adults that are specifically defined as work with adults". CC3 tells a trustee of a charity providing "regulated activity" to expect an enhanced check, which "where it is satisfied that the role is eligible, this will include a check against the relevant barred list". DBS's leaflet on working with children in the charity sector is explicit: "For the trustee role, there is no eligibility for a Children's Barred List check." A barred list check can come only from another role the trustee holds, and DBS says organisations "should assess any other responsibilities against the eligibility criteria" before the appointment. Our guide to DBS record keeping covers what to keep from a check.

A disqualified candidate can be appointed only after the Commission grants a waiver. The candidate applies, and the application asks for the trustees' views, including "details of the recruitment process that led to the applicant's appointment or proposed appointment". It cannot waive a disqualification imposed by the governing document itself.

Appointing, telling the regulators, and the records to keep

Appoint exactly as the governing document says, whether by the trustees, the members or a body with the right to appoint; CC30 warns that getting it wrong may "mean that your decisions are not valid". Minute the decision: CC3 tells trustees to "keep proper records of decisions made and the reasons for those decisions" and to "record the conflict of interest (or loyalty) and how it was dealt with". Our guide to minute taking covers the wording.

As soon as possible afterwards, CC30 says you "must update your charity's register page using My Charity Commission Account" and "must tell Companies House about trustee appointments if you are a company. Follow the time-limits for this". GOV.UK's guide to making changes to your limited company sets the limit: "You must tell Companies House within 14 days" of changes to "your directors". Since November 2025 Companies House's Appoint a director (AP01) page also says "All directors must verify their identity to prove who they are", and the filing asks for the director's Companies House personal code. A CIO is not a company and files nothing at Companies House: it updates the Commission's register, and the CIO (General) Regulations 2012 require it to enter the change in its own register of charity trustees "within 28 days of the date on which the event necessitating the alteration occurs".

Keep an appointment file for each new trustee:

• the signed declaration, which the Commission's form says to pass "to the trustees for the charity's records" and which "should not be sent to the Charity Commission"
• a dated note of the register searches
• DBS evidence where the role is eligible, kept as your DBS policy allows
• references, and notes of any further checks your policy provides for
• the conflict of interest declaration made on appointment, entered on the register of interests
• the minute or resolution of appointment and the term it runs for
• confirmation that the Commission's register was updated, and Companies House for a company or the CIO's own register of charity trustees for a CIO

The form says it must be handled "in accordance with duties under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)" and sets no period for keeping it, so set one in your retention schedule. One declaration does not last the whole appointment either: the Commission expects systems to catch trustees "who become disqualified after they have been appointed", such as "a fresh declaration (at reasonable intervals)".

Then induction. CC30 lists what a new trustee should receive, including the governing document, the latest annual report and accounts, "minutes of recent trustee meetings" and key policies, and suggests visits to the charity's services and regular conversations in the first year with the chair, another trustee or a mentor. Our guide to charity trustee responsibilities summarises the duties the pack should explain.

The sounding-out that happened in messages

The formal record is made at the end. The judgement that chose the trustee was formed earlier, and mostly not in a meeting. The chair messages a possible candidate to ask if they might be interested. Two trustees compare views on the shortlist in a WhatsApp group. A referee replies to a text. Someone mentions that the candidate's partner works for a supplier. The board agrees in a thread to co-opt the preferred candidate until the annual general meeting, and the minute records only the result.

Those messages are part of the recruitment record. If the appointment is challenged, by a disappointed candidate, by members who say the governing document was not followed, or if a waiver application needs "details of the recruitment process", they are what shows whether the choice was made on merit against the criteria the board agreed. They also hold candidates' personal data on phones the charity does not own, and when a trustee leaves, their copy goes too. A conflict mentioned to the chair by message appears nowhere the board can later point to.

ComplyChat provides channels for board conversations, on the record from the first message, with every trustee told so and free to object or leave. A mobile number verified by SMS is the identity, so volunteer trustees with no account on the charity's systems can take part, and messages are recorded on the server as they are sent, so what was said about a shortlist does not depend on whose phone kept it. On paid plans, once the charity's Microsoft 365 tenant is connected, the lasting record files there under its own retention rules. It is not a recruitment platform or a board portal: it does not advertise vacancies, run checks or make an appointment valid. ComplyChat Free is personal messaging with one private group, direct messages, up to 25 staff members and three calendar months of recent history, with no Microsoft 365 archive, so it is not a place to keep governance records.

A question for the next board meeting: for the last trustee we appointed, could we show how the candidate was found, what was said about them and by whom, and where the signed declaration is filed?

Official guidance and your next step

The Charity Commission's Finding and appointing new trustees (CC30) is the primary guide, with The essential trustee (CC3) for the duties behind it. On eligibility, read the automatic disqualification guidance for charities, Why some individuals can't act as charity trustees, the charity trustee declaration of eligibility and responsibility and sections 178 to 184 of the Charities Act 2011. Quotations are from the documents as published on 26 September 2026.

This guide is a summary for charities in England and Wales, not legal advice. Scottish charities should follow OSCR's guidance and Northern Ireland charities the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland's. Where the governing document is unclear, or a candidate may be disqualified, take advice before the appointment, not after.

Then do one thing: before the next vacancy, check that every current trustee has a signed disqualification declaration on file, and agree how often the board will ask for a fresh one.