Chair of the board: recruitment challenges

According to a new research project run by Bayes Business School’s Centre for Charity Effectiveness, charities are facing recruitment challenges and need to better understand motivations of potential Chairpersons.

The research project, titled ‘The Future Charity Chair: A research project’, took place between July 2023 and February 2024 and involved Bayes Business School interviewing 61 charity Chairs together with 23 representatives of organisations that support them. It focused around three main questions, and a selection of the key messages in response to these questions are detailed below:

1. How do charity Chairs see the future?
   1. Charity Chairs saw the future as increasingly volatile, complex and uncertain, with their focus being predominantly on the present and the near future, and on challenges rather than opportunities.
   2. Small and medium-sized charities tended to have a more pessimistic outlook.
   3. The impact of some of the more recent drivers of change and trends, such as the rise of social movements and networks and the use of artificial intelligence, was seen as largely unknown.
      
2. What will the role of charity Chair look like?
   1. Role – the role could be positioned as aspirational and as an exciting opportunity that people can work towards, as lending itself to a range of models of leadership that emphasise sharing power, inclusion and collaboration. These changes are achievable through more flexible ways of governing that are less landed on the shoulders of one person.
   2. Skills and experience – with charity Chairs finding themselves at the center of an increasingly complex web of relationships, relationship management and collaboration skills have become more vital than ever. It is essential charity Chairs are willing to learn.
   3. Attributes and behaviours – there is a long list of ideal attributes and behaviours of the future Chair, such as a steadfast commitment to the cause of the charity, but one person cannot embody all of them.
      
3. How will charity Chairs be recruited and supported?
   1. Pipeline of Chairs
      
      • Understanding motivations of potential Chairs, particularly younger generations, is crucial for recruitment and creating a ‘pipeline’ of future Chairs.
      
      • Barriers to engagement such as time pressures, level of responsibility (particularly concerns about liability) and lack of diversity on boards also need to be understood and addressed.
      
      • The ways forward identified are: prioritising equity, diversity and inclusion; promoting the role of Chair as aspirational and fulfilling and being clear about expectations; and preparing succession planning at an early stage.
      
   2. Support needs for Chairs
      
      • As well as board and practical skills, and leadership and governance knowledge, participants showed an appetite for more equity, diversity, and inclusion training.
      
      • Networking opportunities, peer learning, coaching, and mentoring.

The research’s Steering Group made a list of recommendations which charities may wish to review when considering the role of its current and future Chair.