Meetings and Activities

The Supervisory Board meets regularly throughout the year to review the performance of War Child against set objectives outlined in our Annual Plan, our 2025 strategy and within the organisation’s articles of association. In 2018 the Board held four regular meetings and three audit committee meetings, all attended by management.

One key topic of supervision over the course of the year concerned the composition and activities of War Child’s Integrity Working Group - formed in response to reports of incidents of abuse and sexual misconduct in the NGO sector. The working group’s efforts to review and update internal reporting systems such as our Code of Conduct, Integrity Policy and Child Safeguarding policy were closely monitored.

The board also monitored the organisation’s financial performance as measured against the annual budget for 2018. The organisation’s efforts to strengthen both its grant management mechanisms and internal audit controls were welcomed by the Supervisory Board. The audit committee of the Supervisory Board welcomed War Child’s internal auditor at two of its meetings to discuss risk management, audit follow-up and fraud incidents.

Operational funding reached record levels in 2018 - representing nine per cent growth year-on-year - yet still fell short of our proposed ambitious budget for 2018. A focus on large-scale campaigns over more diffuse individual campaigns was considered to help address this shortfall.

Other operational issues taken into consideration over the course of the year included the efficacy and impact of our research and development activities; staff welfare based on the findings of our Great Place to Work survey; and the progress and obstacles encountered in War Child Global - the initiative to foster closer collaboration between the three major War Child implementing organisations.

In its first meeting of the year the Supervisory Board approved our annual report outlining our activities over the course of 2017. In its last meeting of the year the board approved both the Annual Plan and Annual Budget for 2019.

The Board in December 2018 also held its regular annual meeting to evaluate its function and performance across 2018 as a whole. The Board evaluated that it had ‘met expectations’ when measured against the key criteria contained in its operational guidelines.