Over the past year, a research team from the University has been working with practitioners from the charity sector to develop a very interesting and potentially highly impactful research project around the motives of trustees on charity boards, and the effects on charity mission and performance. The research team consisted of 6 final year students in the School of Management, supervised by Dr Richard Fairchild, senior lecturer in finance in the School of Management, and Dr Neal Hinvest, of the Department of Psychology. Furthermore, these students and academics worked closely with the project sponsors, Nigel Kippax of Charity Leaders/Charity Finance Group, and Ian McLintock, of Charity Excellence: they helped to define and shape the project, which followed a behavioural economics/psychology approach.
The team focussed on the following research questions:
What are the balance of intrinsic (heart-) and extrinsic (head-) motives of trustees on charity boards when it comes to their decision-making at charity board meetings? Here (following the research in behavioural economics and psychology), intrinsic motivation refers to a trustee’s genuine heart/social and ethical conscience for focussing on the charity’s social mission, while extrinsic motivation refers to the trustee’s head- reasons for considering social mission, such as personal reputation, looking good, adhering to prescribed codes of conduct and the law, and so forth.
How does this balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motives affect charity performance and alignment with social mission (when there are often conflicts to be faced by a charity between financial performance/sustainability, and the charity’s mission)?
The research team developed a questionnaire around these questions, and the questionnaire was distributed, through Ian McLintock’s Charity Excellence Group, to a large sample of trustees across the UK. From the 242 responses, the team were able to ascertain the following extremely interesting results.
First, they found a wide range of combinations of extrinsic and intrinsic motives across the trustees, from those who were highly motivated on both dimensions (intrinsic and extrinsic) through various combinations of high intrinsic/low extrinsic; low intrinsic/high extrinsic, down to those trustees who seem to be low on both types of motivation!
Second, the team found that trustees’ intrinsic motivation was positively related to charities’ performance and social mission: the genuine heart motives really matter! Conversely (and results that could have great impact across the charity sector), trustees’ extrinsic motivation was negatively related to performance and social mission! A Trustee’s focus on personal reputation-building, personal glory, governance and the law can actually be counter-productive.
This represents the first stage of the project. The next stage (as note in the Charity Finance Group link below) is to consider how charities should recruit trustees and construct charity boards: is there an optimum balance of skills and motivations? Richard Fairchild, the team’s academic supervisor in the School of Management commented: “This was such an interesting, exciting, rigorous and innovative research project. The students did an excellent job! Their findings should prove to be very impactful, and should resonate across the charity sector, as they consider board recruitment, and the optimal combination of trustees on charity boards!”
The project sponsor, Nigel Kippax, of Charity Leaders/Charity Finance Group, commented:
This is a really exciting and important area of research that addresses an issue that it often alluded to (the impact of the volunteering nature of boards), but to my knowledge has not before been the subject of meaningful analysis. The insights provide a valuable contribution to the effectiveness of charity boards and therefore, the impact these charities have within our society. We are really looking forward to the next phase of this work.
This research has been seen as so important and impactful for the charity sector, that a news item appears on the Charity Finance Group about it! You can also read the research team’s final report which is linked from the article.
Charity Finance Group | Knowledge Hub