Involving Beneficiaries and People with Lived Experience
People who use an organisation’s services or have direct experience of the issues it addresses can bring valuable knowledge to its governance. Their involvement can expose assumptions, identify risks and help the board make decisions that reflect people’s actual circumstances. It should involve more than gathering stories or asking for comments after a decision has effectively been made.
What meaningful governance involvement means
Meaningful involvement gives people a clear and supported route into decisions about purpose, strategy, priorities, service quality and evaluation. The appropriate route will depend on the organisation. Some people may want to become trustees; others may prefer an advisory or scrutiny role without taking on the legal duties of trusteeship. Boards should explain what influence each arrangement carries, what remains the board’s responsibility and how participants will learn what happened to their advice.
Routes into decision making
- Recruit trustees with relevant lived experience through open and accessible processes, making clear that previous board experience is not essential.
- Create a beneficiary or lived-experience advisory group with an agreed remit, regular access to the board and a formal response to its recommendations.
- Invite people to time-limited strategy, recruitment, service-review or funding panels where their knowledge is directly relevant.
- Reserve board agenda time for participant reports, or appoint supported observers who can contribute to discussion without carrying trustee responsibilities.
- Use membership structures, elections and annual meetings to give beneficiaries a continuing voice in who leads the organisation and what it prioritises.
A young people’s charity, for example, might support an advisory panel elected from the young people that use its service, to propose annual priorities and send two representatives to relevant board discussions. A disability organisation might recruit several trustees with lived experience while retaining a wider access panel to test whether board proposals work in practice.
Making participation work
- Define the purpose. Be clear whether people are advising, recommending, voting or making a decision, and identify anything that cannot be changed.
- Remove barriers. Offer accessible papers, interpreters or communication support, hybrid attendance, preparation time, expenses and practical assistance where needed.
- Prepare and support people. Provide induction, a named contact, mentoring and explanations of finance, risk and trustee duties in plain language. Existing trustees may also need training in inclusive meetings and sharing power.
- Reach beyond the usual voices. One person cannot represent every beneficiary. Use several routes and review who is absent because of poverty, disability, language, geography, discrimination or digital exclusion.
- Create psychological safety. People must be able to disagree without fearing an effect on the service they receive. Agree confidentiality, safeguarding and consent, particularly where personal experience may be discussed or recorded.
- Close the loop. Record recommendations, the board’s response and resulting actions. Explain what changed, what did not and why.
Points for boards to consider
The board should agree how lived experience will inform governance, provide the necessary time and resources, and monitor whether the arrangement is working. It should receive regular evidence about who has participated, which recommendations were made and what changed. Responsibility should sit with the whole board rather than one trustee or staff member. Periodic review with participants can show whether influence is genuine and whether a different route into decision making is needed.
Avoid appointing a single lived-experience trustee and expecting them to “speak for everyone”. Do not rely on personal disclosure: people should decide what they share and how it is used. Meetings dominated by jargon, long papers or established professional voices can create participation in name only. Boards should also guard against repeatedly drawing on the same contributors without support or recognition.
Trustees with lived experience have the same duties as other trustees. They must act in the interests of the charity as a whole rather than as delegates for a particular group. Conflicts of interest should be identified and managed, but lived experience should not itself be treated as a conflict. Expenses should be reimbursed promptly. Payment for separate advisory work may be appropriate, but payment or benefit to a charity trustee must comply with the governing document and Scottish charity law.
Board quick check
- Where can beneficiaries currently influence strategy and board decisions?
- Does their contribution happen early enough to change the outcome?
- Are the routes accessible, safe and supported?
- Does the organisation have a good conflicts of interest policy to overcome any issues with involvement?
- Is the board hearing a range of experiences rather than relying on one person?
- Can participants easily find out what the board did with their advice?
Further resources
Scottish Governance Code for the Third Sector — principles for effective, accountable and diverse governance
SCVO - The benefits of having trustees with lived experience on boards
NCVO – “Where power lies”, a discussion of lived experience, power and voluntary-sector governance