Running a charity board meeting well comes down to three windows: before, during, and after. Before, you confirm the date, send the agenda and papers, and check you'll have quorum (the minimum number of trustees who must be present for decisions to count). During, you open by confirming quorum and conflicts, deal with decisions while everyone's fresh, and close by reading actions back with an owner and a date. After, you get draft minutes out within 48 hours and chase the actions before the next meeting. Most guides say what to do; the run-sheet below adds when.
What actually applies to you
Start with your own governing document — your charity's constitution, articles, or trust deed. The Charity Commission's guidance on meetings, CC48, is blunt about this: "You must do these things exactly as your governing document says. If you do not, any decisions you make could be invalid." Everything below is what applies when your governing document is silent or you want to check your practice against good-practice guidance — it doesn't override your own rules.
Who can call a meeting is usually set out in the governing document too — normally the chair, or a set number of trustees acting together. Quorum — the minimum number of trustees who must be present before you can validly make decisions — should also be in your governing document. If it isn't, CC48's fallback is one-third of your trustees plus one (so a board of 12 needs 5). Decisions made without quorum "are not valid and could be challenged," and only trustees count towards that number — staff, co-optees, and observers don't.
The chair does not automatically get a casting vote. CC48 says the chair "may have a second, casting vote... where the vote is evenly split" — but only if the governing document grants it. If yours doesn't mention one, a tied vote simply doesn't carry, and you should say so rather than assume the chair breaks it. If your governing document has no chair provision at all, the trustees present appoint someone to chair that particular meeting.
The run-sheet: before, during, after
This is the sequence. Copy it into your own checklist and work through it meeting by meeting.
Before the meeting
21 days before: Confirm the date, time, and venue (or video link) with all trustees, and do a rough headcount against quorum. If you can already see you won't have enough trustees able to attend, move the date now rather than finding out on the day.
7 days before: Send the agenda and every paper trustees need — the finance report, any proposal being decided, last meeting's draft minutes — in one email. Sending everything together, a week ahead, is common practice that makes for a better-prepared board; it isn't a Charity Commission rule, and CC48 doesn't set a notice period for routine trustee meetings. (Separately, charitable companies have a 14-day statutory minimum notice for general meetings of members, and CC48's own three-week fallback is also for general meetings, not routine trustee board meetings — don't confuse the two.)
The day before: Chase anyone who hasn't confirmed. If you're meeting virtually or hybrid, test the video link and check the room booking. CC48 says virtual and hybrid meetings are fine, but recommends your governing document explicitly allows them — if yours is silent, that's worth fixing at a future meeting, not on the morning of this one.
During the meeting
The first five minutes: Welcome everyone, confirm quorum out loud and note the figure in the minutes ("6 of 9 trustees present, quorum of 4 met"), take apologies, and ask whether anyone has a conflict of interest on anything today's agenda covers. Do this every time, even when nobody expects a conflict — a standing question costs ten seconds and closes off a real risk.
Through the agenda: Put decisions near the top while people are still fresh, not squeezed in after an hour of updates. When the board reaches a decision, say the wording out loud before moving on — "so we're agreeing to proceed with the roof repair at a cost of up to £4,000" — and have someone write down that exact sentence. A decision nobody said aloud is a decision nobody can accurately minute later.
If you lose quorum mid-meeting — someone has to leave early and the numbers drop below your threshold — CC48 treats that as a trigger to adjourn. Don't carry on and hope nobody notices; agree a date to reconvene and finish the remaining items then.
The last five minutes: Read every action back aloud — what it is, who owns it, and the date it's due — so the person taking it on hears their name attached to a deadline in the room, not in an email afterwards. Confirm the date of the next meeting before people leave.
After the meeting
Within 48 hours: Get the draft minutes and a separate action list out to every trustee while the discussion is still fresh. CC48 recommends circulating the draft "as soon as possible" — 48 hours is this guide's own benchmark for what that means in practice for a small board.
Between meetings: Chase open actions rather than waiting for the next meeting to discover they've slipped. If a deadline moves, record the new date — don't quietly let it drift.
At the next meeting: The board reviews the draft minutes, agrees any corrections, and approves them as an accurate record. The chair then signs and dates the approved copy by convention, though signing itself isn't a legal requirement for most charities. If you're a charitable company, minutes must be kept for at least 10 years under section 248 of the Companies Act 2006 — that's a legal duty, and failing to keep them is an offence. CIOs must keep minutes at least 6 years; everyone else should, as good practice.
Mistakes to avoid
Papers arriving the morning of the meeting. A trustee who's had ten minutes with the finance report can't properly scrutinise it, and a rushed approval is worse than a delayed one. Papers a week ahead, in one email, fixes this in one step.
Skipping the quorum check because "we're always fine." Boards lose quorum most often on the meetings nobody thought to check — someone's called away at the last minute, two people are on holiday the same week. The habit of saying the number out loud costs nothing and catches the one time it matters.
Letting Any Other Business swallow the meeting. AOB is a standing item on most agendas, but it should be for genuinely minor points, not a side door for a decision that needed proper notice and papers. If something substantial comes up under AOB, note it and put it on next time's agenda with papers, rather than deciding it there and then.
Deciding something without ever saying the decision out loud. We see boards agree something in discussion, move on, and then argue about what was actually decided when the minutes come round — because the wording only ever existed in people's heads. Saying it plainly before moving to the next item removes the argument.
No read-back of actions at the end. An action agreed in the flow of discussion and never repeated back gets forgotten by the time everyone's back at their desks. The last five minutes of the meeting is cheap insurance against the next meeting starting with "did anyone actually do that?"
If you want the short, warm version of this without the day-counts and citations, see how to run a good charity board meeting — this guide is the fuller, cited one for when you're the person actually responsible for getting it right.
Do this once, then let it run itself. Trustee Meetings is a simple board-meetings tool built for small UK charities. It runs this cycle for you — the agenda goes out with the papers, trustees are nudged automatically, and the minutes and actions live in one place. Free until your first board meeting is done — no card, no clock running. Then £180 a year (or £15 a month), every trustee included. Try it with your board
Frequently asked questions
Can we make decisions by email between meetings? Only if your governing document allows business that way — some do, by phone, email, or messaging apps. Anything that legally needs a meeting still needs one, so check your governing document before relying on email decisions.
What if the chair is absent? The trustees present appoint one of themselves to chair that meeting, unless your governing document says otherwise. The Charity Commission also recommends having a deputy chair items where the usual chair has a conflict of interest.
How long should a board meeting last? There's no set length in law or guidance. This guide's own advice is to time-box the agenda and deal with decisions early — most small charity boards run 90 minutes to two hours.
Do we have to meet in person? No. Virtual and hybrid meetings are fine, but the Charity Commission says your governing document should explicitly allow it — a refresh to its guidance in July 2024 made this clearer for the Zoom era.
Does the chair get a casting vote on a tie? Only if your governing document specifically grants one. Never assume the chair has a casting vote by default — many governing documents don't include it.
What happens if we're not quorate? Not quorate means too few trustees present to make valid decisions. Any decisions made wouldn't be valid and could be challenged later, so adjourn rather than push through. If your governing document is silent on the number, the Charity Commission's fallback is one-third of trustees plus one.
This guide covers England and Wales. Scottish charities should use OSCR's own guidance and resources, though OSCR takes the same governing-document-first approach and points to CC48 for detail. Charities in Northern Ireland are regulated separately by the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (CCNI) — check its guidance rather than assuming these rules apply in full.
Want the papers ready to go with the agenda? Use the trustee meeting agenda template and the charity meeting minutes template, or check what should charity minutes include and quorum for charity trustee meetings before your next one. See also the charity board pack guide. Or browse the full guides library and try it with your board.