Help centre / Risks, policies & compliance / Declare and manage conflicts of interest
Declare and manage conflicts of interest
Record each interest in the conflicts register: who, the nature of the conflict, and how it's managed. When that person attends a meeting, the platform prompts a declaration, and they can recuse themselves from the vote. Everything is recorded.
Having a conflict of interest isn't wrong. Almost every board has them. What matters is declaring the conflict and managing it openly, and that's what the register is for.
Declare a conflict
- Go to Governance, then Conflicts of interest.
- Choose Declare conflict.
- Pick the Person it concerns.
- Choose the Type: interest (they could benefit), loyalty (a duty pulls them another way, for example a role at another charity), or financial (money is involved).
- Describe the Nature of the conflict in plain words. For Meadowbank Community Trust: "trustee is paid to run the mentoring programme".
- Say How it's managed, for example "steps out of decisions about that programme".
- Set the Declared on date and choose Declare conflict.
How this links to meetings and voting
The register does its real work at meetings. When someone with a standing conflict is in the room, the meeting page prompts a declaration, so it's raised at the start rather than remembered too late. Interests declared against a motion are shown with it, and when the vote comes, a conflicted trustee can choose Recuse (conflict) instead of voting. The tally records who stepped out, which is exactly what good minutes need to show. See motions and voting.
Common questions
What if a conflict ends? Edit it and set the status to lapsed. It stays in the register as part of the record, which is the point: the history shows your board handled things properly.
Should the board review the register? Yes, once a year is a good habit. You can raise any entry as a formal decision for the trustees to review.
Does declaring a conflict look bad? The opposite. A well-kept register is one of the clearest signs of a healthy board. An empty one is what raises eyebrows.
The governance behind this: our free guide on charitycontrol.org explains the why in plain English.