Board of trustees’ functions and accountability as drivers of performance in charities: does reputation matter? / Rebecca Yew and Ummu Kolsome

The board of trustees is an internal mechanism tasked with managing a charity. Irrespective of
how the trustees are chosen or designated, they have formal duty for their institutions and should
act to its greatest advantage. As voluntary organization, charities’ success is defined by their
achievement of goals and missions. Hence, the purpose of this research is twofold: to study the relationship between both the boards of trustees’ functions and boards of trustees’ accountability, with the performance of charities; and whether the reputation of charities, mediates the said relationships. Using data from a survey of 73 charities, established to care for disabled people, the aforesaid relationships were empirically studied. The findings provided that the respondents to the survey, who were responsible for managing the charities, perceived significant positive associations, between boards of trustees’ accountability with the charities’ performance. However, the relationship between board of trustees’ function and charities’ performance was positive but not significant. It was interesting to note that they also perceived that the charities’ reputation mediated the said relationships and thus lead to a significant relationships between both the independent variables and the dependent variable. The research is limited by the fact that it is cross-sectional, and focused on charities with a common purpose. Nevertheless, the findings contributed to the body of knowledge in the area of charities’ performance, by testing the research model, in the context of charities in Malaysia; and by incorporating reputation of charities, as a mediator, into the said research model.