Foundation boards suffer from being pale, male and stale

Boards of the UK’s charity foundations are predominantly white with men outnumbering women by two to one and where 60% of board members are over 65 years old.

A report by the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) shows foundations lag well behind the rest of the third sector when it comes to equality of their board members.

It also found “trustees within grant-making foundations are more narrowly drawn from society than their counterparts in the charitable sector as a whole” and the sector faces a big challenge in addressing the prevailing culture.

Some 99% of foundation trustees are white, compared to 92% in the wider charity sector. Male trustees outnumber women by 2:1 and 58% of trustees are over 64, 10% higher than the rest of the sector. Only 3% are under 45.

Keiran Goddard, ACF’s director of external affairs, said: “There is little doubt that the sector has some distance to travel, and that the journey will require self-examination, collaboration and a willingness to look both critically at our practice and creatively toward meaningful solutions.

“Given the legal and governance role played by trustees, and the fact that the majority of foundations have few or no paid staff, how such issues play out at board level is clearly of crucial importance to the conversation.”

The report calls on the Charity Commission, the Office for Civil Society, the Association of Charitable Foundations and others to improve their advice.