I wonder what training SG had. There are huge challenges in:
a) growing from a small kitchen table charity to a National one.
b) moving from volunteer/trustee in a small organisation to being CEO
c) switching from being a volunteer motivated by personal experience and passion, to a more level headed dispassionate approach.
I am not sure many can do it, harder if you don't recognise the problem and get the appropriate training and mentoring.
I think the Trustee turnover is significant. These are the people who should have been guiding SG and mentoring/protecting her. I recently joined a volunteer Committee. My skills seemed like a good fit and I was sufficiently motivated to help drive forward an interesting project. However one meeting and a phone conversation with the new Chair convinced me that I would not get sufficient reward from my time. I quietly resigned. I can imagine that this happened to Trustees. They joined with good intentions, realised quickly that it was the Susie Green show, so stepped back quietly. I wonder whether the shared documents reflected a misunderstood request to keep Trustees better informed. However Trustees should help with the external stuff. Policy direction compliance and so on. Not the internal day to day business.
The Lottery Fund will have looked at the capacity of the organisation to manage £500,000. The grant was delayed following the Sunday Times article, for more checks. This does not appear to be a well-governed organisation. They should have spotted this and added appropriate conditions.