Dan is the co-treasurer of a large church in Guildford and he has been the treasurer of another national charity. This article brings together his thoughts on the skills you need to be a charity treasurer.
Skills of a charity treasurer
It’s worth saying that not everyone will bring all of these skills – I certainly don’t! I have also included references and resources throughout the article, including from the Charity Commission in England and Wales.
Some of the content won’t apply to smaller charities. In larger charities, some of the tasks will be delegated.
Charity trustee
Typically, the treasurer (sometimes called Honorary Treasurer) is a trustee of the charity. It’s important to remember that as treasurer, you’re not there just to lead on the financial discussions. You have other trustee duties to discharge, too.
Similarly, your lawyer/HR expert/safeguarding officer/secretary colleagues on your trustee team have just as much legal responsibility for the organisation’s finances as you do. All trustees are jointly and severally liable for the charity.
Guardian
Charity treasurers often have the following responsibilities:
- signatories on bank accounts
- to make (or lead on) decisions about where the charity’s funds might be invested (including interest-bearing bank accounts)
- and in some small charities, they might manage the Petty Cash tin.
Trustees have a duty to safeguard their charity’s assets. Treasurers take a key role in this regarding the security of financial assets.
Technical expert
Especially in a smaller charity, the treasurer may be the only person on the board of trustees and operational team (which may be paid staff or volunteers) with any financial knowledge or experience.
For example, this should include experience of fund accounting, knowledge of the SORP, and awareness of the Gift Aid scheme.
It’s important to know where to get help if you don’t have this expertise on your team. This can come from a variety of sources:
- your Independent Examiner
- peers (for example on a user forum, or by joining the Honorary Treasurers Forum)
- charity finance consultants, or
- your Diocese/federation (if you have that support available).
Team leader (and maybe Committee Chair)
Conversely, you might have lots of financial expertise and enthusiasm in your organisation. You may even have a finance team or finance committee. In this case, the treasurer may be the ex-officio Chair of this committee (or de facto leader of this group). Check out the Association of Chairs who have guidance on chairing, including chairing of committees.
Translator
One of the hardest aspects of being a charity treasurer is presenting financial information to other stakeholders. This includes trustees, leaders, members and donors or funders. These people might have less technical understanding and spend less time ‘in the detail’ of the finances. Don’t use jargon where it can be avoided. For example, do most people know what a ‘creditor’ is, or would ‘money we owe’ be a more sensible phrase?
You may need or want to provide some training in charity finance to new trustees. You could run an induction into how this works for your organisation, what your business model is, and any relevant history in terms of financial decisions and events.
Spotlight operator
Similarly, when presenting information to colleagues, are you highlighting the important metrics to focus the conversation on the right topics? Are you giving too much information on small details and not drawing enough attention to larger strategic issues of higher value? Remember that more data isn’t usually more information.
You’ll need to help your colleagues identify the key areas of risk and concern, highlighting the wood and not the trees! Consider giving less data and more information by presenting some graphs or text alongside (or instead of) a sheet of numbers.
If you use a cloud-based accounting package like ExpensePlus, you can give your trustees self-service access to your finance reports to dig into further detail outside of the meeting – or during it, if they’re using an appropriate device.
Systems architect
You will likely have one or more financial systems in your organisation – even if this is a filing cabinet and/or Excel spreadsheet. In smaller organisations, the charity’s treasurer will be responsible for choosing, using and maintaining these systems.
Ensure that you are equipped to do so. You can ask yourself:
- Does the system work for you?
- Do you have the training necessary to use it in your context?
- Is your organisation getting the best value for money for the systems it’s paying for?
If a charity finance package requires lots of complex, technical training to use it, you may not have the best one.
You can consider consolidating an expenses system, bookkeeping/accounting system, and donations/Gift Aid system into a single package like ExpensePlus.
Optimist
Trustee colleagues will often turn to the charity’s treasurer for their opinion on financial decisions, despite the fact that the treasurer’s opinion doesn’t have more legal or formal weight than any other trustee. If you’re overly negative, others will follow. Especially if you’re on a strategy day or similar, resist the urge to respond to every suggestion with ‘we can’t afford it’.
Realist / conservatist
This is clearly in tension with the above (optimist) point. But it needs to be held in balance. Your charity trustee colleagues will look to you for guidance on what’s possible, with healthy amounts of optimism. Don’t hide the bad news and be honest about the risks. Your fellow trustees hold equal responsibility for the charity, but they can only discharge this responsibility with adequate financial information. Though remember, good information doesn’t mean lots of data.
Pragmatist
In addition to presenting the financial information, offer thoughts on a plan to deal with any issues. If you alone hold the financial expertise, you may need to kick off conversations with a suggested plan of action. Some would say you shouldn’t present a problem without a proposed solution. Whether this is always helpful depends on your context and the size and expertise of your trustee board.
Be a champion for your charity
This is arguably the most important point. Believe in your charity and its mission! Align yourself with its values and ethos. It’s hard to be an effective charity treasurer if you aren’t behind the charitable cause.
In all your decisions, you must act in the charity’s best interests. This is one of the basic requirements of any trustee by the Charity Commission. In my experience, this doesn’t mean saying ‘yes’ to every expenditure request, but holding the balance between risk and caution, or you might say of ‘head’ and ‘heart’.
