Charity Governance Awards: Tenth Anniversary

Celebrating Trusteeship and Rewarding Good Charity Governance

The Charity Governance Awards are an exciting not-for-profit initiative created to celebrate outstanding governance and trusteeship in charities across the UK, allowing large and small not-for-profit organisations to inspire and learn from one another. These are the only charity awards that are designed to celebrate trustees, free to enter (with a free awards ceremony), and do not generate profit for the sponsors or partners. Our mission is to celebrate and reward exceptional charity governance, while sharing exemplary work that inspires and informs boards and trustees across the country.

We all know that effective governance makes a difference. By sharing examples of brilliant boards and transformational trusteeship, we want to show how good governance and doing good go hand-in-hand. For the 10th anniversary of the awards, we focused on five categories intended to showcase the breadth and variety of work trustees do to help charities fulfil their missions. We’ve also increased the grand prize for winners to £6,000 (£1,500 for runners-up).

5 Winners Announced for 2025

For the tenth year of the Charity Governance Awards, 15 charities were recognised for oustanding governance and a five were chosen as the best and brightest stars in each category:

Board Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Happy Baby Community (Winner), Let’s Talk About Loss and Theatre Peckham (Runners up).
Challenge to Change: Candlelighters (Winner), Tender and The Yard (Runners up).
People in Governance: SNAPS Yorkshire (Winner), Alzheimer’s & Dementia Support Services and The For Baby’s Sake Trust (Runners up).
Improving Impact (0-3 Paid Staff): Nystagmus Network (Winner), Concrete Youth and GROW Mentoring (Runners up).
Improving Impact (4-30 Paid Staff): Herts Vision Loss (Winner), Sibs and Yorkshire’s Brain Tumour Charity (Runners up).

Read more about via ‘Shortlist & Winners’.

 

 

Prizes for Winners and Runners-up

The winner of each category received a trophy and a £6,000 cash prize (as an unrestricted grant) for its charity. Runners-up received grants of £1,500 each. All shortlisted charities were offered a one-year membership to the Association of Chairs for their chairs or vice-chairs, as well as a free place on a Cause4 Trustee Leadership Training Programme for a new trustee.

Over the past ten years of the Charity Governance Awards, a total of 178 charities have been recognised; £376,000 in prize money has been distributed; and nearly 80 charities have been given membership to the Association of Chairs and the opportunity to send a new trustee onto the Cause4 Trustee Leadership Programme. Jocelyn Stuart-Grumbar, Clerk to The Clothworkers’ Company, the organisers of the Awards, said, “Ten years of enjoyable and fruitful collaboration have raced by … We are so proud of our partnership with Prospectus, NPC and Reach Volunteering — whose commitment to supporting the third sector and deep understanding of best practice in governance made these awards possible year after year.”