Winifred Tumim

Winifred Letitia Tumim, Lady Tumim ( Borthwick; 3 June 19365 November 2009) was an English charity administrator and reform campaigner. As chairperson of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) from 1985 to 1992, she led a reform of its management to create clear duties for all the staff. Tumim worked with the Charity Commission for England and Wales and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) to research attitude and performance in the charity world's wider managerial sector. She was chairperson of the NCVO between 1996 and 2001, writing a report advocating for the reform of charity law, which led the Blair ministry to pass the Charities Act 2006. After Tumim's death. the NCVO created an award in her name to reward an improvement in charity governance.

Biography Family background Tumim's father, Algernon Malcolm Borthwick, was chairperson of the family-owned global meat-importing business, served in the Gordon Highlanders as a lieutenant-colonel in the Second World War, and was unsuccessful in getting elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative Party MP in the 1945 United Kingdom general election. He was married to Edith Wylde (née Addison) and was a descendant of Scottish landowners from Midlothian; Tumim's great-grandfather Thomas Borthwick was appointed a peer but died before the issuing of letters patent in 1915. In 1955, Tumim enrolled at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to read philosophy, politics and economics. in an era where there were controversies over how deaf persons should be educated. In 1974, she became a governor at Mary Hare Grammar School for the Deaf in Newbury and was a member of the Warnock inquiry on the education of handicapped children four years later. Tumim reorganised the management of the RNID to create a clear distinction of responsibilities of her job, the committee and its paid and volunteer staff. Having been attracted by this approach, the Charity Commission for England and Wales and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) invited her to lead a working party to look into the wider managerial sector in the charity world in 1992. Tumim focused mainly on trustees' attitude and performance and learnt two-thirds of interviewees did not know their legal and professional obligations.

In December 2001, she was made chair of the Foyer Federation, a charity providing accommodation and support to homeless young persons. Tumim hosted the Sunday luncheons at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in the Warden's Lodge, In 2010, the NCVO established the Winifred Tumim Memorial Prize for best practice in charity governance,