A recent study – Examining the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in charity board governance – led by a team of University of Bath researchers, supported by the Charity Excellence Framework, set out to examine how charity Trustees make decisions and what motivates them to serve. The project aimed to test whether intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation relate to mission alignment, decision quality, engagement and risk appetite, and whether the voluntary nature of Trusteeship shapes these behaviours. This article reflects on that study and considers where we can, and cannot, draw reliable conclusions from its findings.
There is real value in anyone attempting to understand what drives Trustee behaviour. Boards rely on volunteers who bring widely varying levels of time, skill, confidence and accountability. Any attempt to explore why Trustees show up as they do has potential to offer practical insight. The study surfaces several themes that align with everyday governance practice: the workload pressures on younger Trustees, the difficulty of holding volunteers to account, and the familiar frustration with Trustees who turn up for status or CV building rather than service. Those elements feel recognisable and worth paying attention to.
I also want to give full credit to the Charity Excellence Framework and Ian McLintock, who works tirelessly to help charities with resources and supporting this kind of research.
But, having read the research, I’m concerned about some of the conclusions that people are drawing about its findings – particularly on the topic of paying Trustees.
Below, I outline both the useful contributions and the areas where the conclusions reach beyond what the data can meaningfully support.
Useful findings worth acknowledging
The study captures several real and recurring governance challenges.
- Trustees with young families and full-time work do experience heavier time pressure.
- Chairs often feel conflicted when trying to hold volunteers to account.
- Boards do struggle with Trustees who join for the wrong reasons.
- Older Trustees often feel less burdened by the voluntary nature of the role.
- The quality and timeliness of board papers strongly influence confidence in decision-making.
These findings match sector experience. They help explain why engagement varies across age groups, why some Trustees disengage between meetings, and why board dynamics can become strained.
Major claims of the research
Before turning to the limitations, it is worth setting out the core claims the study makes (although to flag – I am going to disagree that the research actually achieves these). In summary, the research suggests that:
- intrinsic motivation is linked to better mission alignment and more effective decision-making
- extrinsic motivation is associated with weaker mission alignment and lower decision confidence
- younger Trustees experience a heavier voluntary burden, which reduces engagement
- the voluntary nature of Trusteeship shapes how confident people feel in holding each other to account
- risk appetite does not vary by professional sector and charity size
- Trustee recruitment should prioritise intrinsic motivation over skills or experience
- paying Trustees may risk reducing intrinsic motives and altering behaviour
I am not convinced by all of these claims, having read the research and considered the methodology. These are some of the concerns I have.
Challenges with the research
Problem 1: The dataset appears to consist entirely of voluntary Trustees
1.6% of UK charities reportedly pay Trustees in some way or another. Despite discussing remuneration and the potential impact of extrinsic rewards, the study appears to include no paid Trustees at all, although this isn’t clear as remuneration status was not asked, captured or analysed. Every conclusion therefore appears to be drawn from, and about, voluntary Trustees.
This introduces bias. When your entire sample is drawn from people who have chosen to serve in unpaid roles and who are embedded in voluntary governance networks, it is hardly surprising that intrinsic motivation appears to correlate with good governance and extrinsic motivation appears to correlate with poorer alignment. That is the worldview of the respondents, not an objective truth about Trusteeship.
We can’t ignore the already limited group that serve as UK charity Trustees (people who, by definition, are able to work without any financial recompense) and basing these conclusions around insiders perspective in this way results in misleading conclusions.
Any conclusions about the risks of paying Trustees, or about the supposed superiority of intrinsic motives, cannot be generalised beyond this group. A better conclusion would be along the lines of “involved, active and currently unpaid voluntary Trustees believe that they make better decisions being unpaid”.
Problem 2: A highly narrow and self-selecting sample
The survey was distributed through the Charity Excellence Framework, LinkedIn and sector networks. These channels typically reach Trustees who are already highly engaged, confident and governance-literate. This population does not represent the majority of Trustees, who don’t use LinkedIn, sector networks or support frameworks for charity governance purposes.
The dataset therefore reflects only the most conscientious slice of Trusteeship. This limits what can be extrapolated about Trustee populations as a whole.
Problem 3: External literature does not offset the sampling weakness
The study states that it mitigated the lack of sample diversity by relying on external research. I don’t find this a convincing mitigation strategy. Almost all governance research draws from similarly narrow populations: older, professional, white, networked, confident Trustees. The wider literature shares the same inadequacies.
You cannot fix representativeness by citing more studies with the same limitations.
Problem 4: Pilot testing was conducted with friends and family
The questionnaire was tested on friends and family of the research team. This does not resemble proper pilot testing and introduces validity risk.
This raises questions about whether the measures used for intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, decision quality and voluntary burden actually map onto the constructs the study claims to measure.
Problem 5: Reliance on self-reported motivation and self-reported decision quality
Both the independent variables and the outcomes are self-reported. Trustees rate their own motives and their own effectiveness. This risks capturing personality traits rather than real governance behaviours. Trustees who see themselves as principled and mission-driven will naturally rate their decision-making more highly. Trustees who feel ambivalent or self-critical may rate themselves lower, even if their contributions are more rigorous.
Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas discusses an important concept about decision-making: that groups that easily reach consensus make worse decisions but are more confident in the qulaity of their decision, while groups that struggle to reach a decision will make a better decision but – you guessed it- will feel less confident about the quality of that decision. Asking Trustees about how effective they are will inevitably fall into this same problem.
My experience doing external governance reviews with dozens of UK boards has revealed this on more times that I can count, and has also brought me into contact with many internal reviews that have been done by the Boards themselves. My experience is that they have little to no correlation with the actual reality of the Board’s performance: in short, Trustees are not good at assessing either their own effectiveness or the quality of their own decisions.
The correlations therefore tell us about self-perception than performance, which rather than being correlated directly, may in fact tell us quite the opposite about Board effectiveness.
Problem 6: Treating intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as cleanly separate
In practice, people have blended motives. Trustees may care deeply about the mission while also valuing recognition, financial compensation, professional development or networks. I myself am paid for (most) of my work in the sector, but am highly intrinsically motivated. I couldn’t do my work if someone didn’t pay me for it, but the payment does not mean I am not intrinsically motivated. Without the pay, no amount of intrinsic motivation would enable me to do what I do, because I have bills to pay and children to feed.
The study appears to treat intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as neatly separable categories and then builds a moral hierarchy around them.
This framing creates two problems
(1) It assumes that extrinsic motives are suspect, even though networking, career capital and identity are normal parts of any leadership role.
(2) It obscures the real issue, which is not motive purity but how the board creates conditions for thoughtful, accountable decision-making.
Treating IM and EM as opposites oversimplifies Trustee behaviour and risks encouraging boards to prioritise ideological purity over skill, challenge, lived experience and cognitive diversity. This feels deeply uncomfortable when reflecting on the current demographics of the sector, which remain older, white, male and middle class dominated. There is a privilege in ideological purity that the research doesn’t explicitly discuss, and this leaves some of its conclusions problematic for me.
Problem 7: Strong claims about Trustee remuneration without any relevant data
The report implies that paying Trustees could undermine intrinsic motivation or attract risk-averse or stability-driven people. But the study includes no paid Trustees and no comparative analysis. The research didn’t interview those who are excluded from the sector because of the lack of pay, despite high intrinsic motivation into the cause.
These claims are therefore theoretical only and, in the context of the lack of diversity amongst Trustees, is a dangerous and unhelpful leap to conclude.
In practice, payment can widen access, strengthen accountability, and address the barriers faced by younger, working or marginalised Trustees. Without data, the report’s conclusions on remuneration rest on assumption and insider confidence rather than evidence.
What the study can legitimately tell us
- Among voluntary Trustees already engaged in governance networks, those who self-identify as intrinsically motivated also self-rate more highly on mission alignment and decision confidence.
- Younger voluntary Trustees report more time pressure.
- Information quality and preparation continue to be central to effective decision-making.
- Voluntary burden remains a structural limit on engagement.
These are reasonable insights when interpreted within the boundaries of the dataset and caution should be taken to extrapolate further.
What the study cannot tell us
- Whether intrinsic motivation actually leads to better governance outcomes.
- Whether extrinsic motives harm decision quality.
- Whether paying Trustees changes motivation patterns.
- Whether these findings apply to boards outside the governance-engaged population.
- Whether self-reported effectiveness translates into real governance performance.
These are larger, more complex questions that cannot be answered by this dataset.
What the sector needs next
If the aim is to understand what really drives governance quality, the next phase of research needs to broaden the lens.
- Sampling must include disengaged Trustees, marginalised Trustees, lived experience Trustees and Trustees serving in organisational crisis. It must also include those who aren’t Trustees but who would like to be, if they could overcome whatever barriers they face.
- Studies must include boards with paid models to compare motivation, engagement and accountability with actual data rather than theory.
- Observational methods are needed alongside surveys. Decision quality cannot be meaningfully measured through self-assessment alone.
- Motivation needs to be explored as a spectrum, not a binary.
This study offers a helpful prompt and some recognisable themes. But its conclusions need careful qualification. If we want a clearer understanding of Trustee behaviour, we need research that reflects the complexity of real boards, and which bases conclusions on very firm, robust grounds.
Edit: An earlier version cited the Charity Finance Group as having supported the research – in fact the CFG promoted and reported on the research but were not involved with funding it, so this sentence was removed.
Felicia Willow is a governance and strategy consultant, who delivers governance reviews, training, crisis support and advice and workshop facilitation. She is also Director of Interims for Impact, a community of experienced interim leaders and specialists who can step in and provide hands-on leadership and consultancy support during a challenge, gap or crisis. See more at interimsforimpact.co.uk and willowcharityconsulting.co.uk