A voluntary organisation’s finances and data should be representative of its desired values and ethos, a charity founder has said.
Steve Chalke, who founded the Oasis Charitable Trust, told delegates at the Charity Law Association’s conference in London that the most important part of a charity is its ethos and values team.
Oasis Charitable Trust is a Christian community charity that runs 58 schools and academies across five regions in England. It also carries out work in the youth justice, homelessness and in the prevention of human trafficking sectors.
Chalke said: “If you talk to our finance team and you look at our spreadsheets and budgets, our budgets should show what our values and ethos team say in numbers.
“You should read our accounts and think ‘that’s what they really believe’, and what we really believe is what this team is doing.
“In terms of our schools, we produce endless resources for lessons because we’re building character into what we’re doing, not just maths, technical ability or English language.
“So the values and ethos team is constantly working away.”
Chalke said charity boards should not assume every trustee understands the mission and it should be constantly reinforced.
“If you’re not talking about it, you find there’s a giant mission drift,” Chalke said.
“What we’ve tried to do in our board meetings is take something in the news that’s relevant to that particular board’s work, education for instance, and discuss that in the light of our ethos and values.
“That’s an important thing for me personally, constantly immersing yourself on the front line.
“Someone in my position can spend all day in meetings, but we need to immerse ourselves in order to rediscover what we’re about.”