Charities, Not-for-Profits & Foundations

Stone Executive is a specialist headhunting practice appointing chief executives and senior leadership teams across the UK charity and not-for-profit sector. We partner with national and regional charities, endowed foundations and grant-making trusts, international NGOs, trade and membership bodies, and the social enterprises alongside them. Every engagement is retained and led personally by a senior consultant.

Rising demand set against constrained income has changed what boards ask of a chief executive, who is now expected to advance a cause and fund it, hold the confidence of trustees and regulators, and carry an organisation through change. Leaders who can do all three are rarely on the market, and reaching them is the purpose of a specialist charity executive search practice.

The charity leaders we appoint

The charity leaders we appoint are the chief executives, executive directors, and trustees who carry formal accountability for a charitable organisation. We concentrate on the small group of appointments where the calibre of one individual decides whether an organisation grows its income, deepens its impact, or simply holds its ground.

• Chief Executive, Chief Executive Officer, and Secretary General appointments at charities, foundations, NGOs, and membership bodies, supported by our CEO recruitment practice.
• Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer appointments, where operating discipline determines what a charity can deliver.
• Director of Fundraising, Director of Income Generation, and Director of Development, leading the income that sustains the organisation.
• Director of Finance and Finance Director appointments, where stewardship of charitable funds meets commercial planning.
• Director of Services, Director of Programmes, and Director of Impact, owning delivery of the mission.
• Director of Policy, Communications, and Public Affairs, leading influence, campaigning, and reputation.
• Director of People and Director of Digital, building the workforce and technology capability charities depend on.
• Chair, Vice-Chair, Honorary Treasurer, Trustee, and Non-Executive appointments to charity boards, supported by our board-level practice.

Appointing a charity Chief Executive: what boards get wrong

Boards get charity chief executive appointments wrong when they specify the leader they wish they needed rather than the one the organisation actually requires. Most disappointing appointments at this level trace back to the brief rather than to the interview, and the same errors recur across the sector with unhelpful regularity.

The most common is a mismatch between the stated priority and the real one. A board facing a flat income line specifies a fundraiser when the difficulty is an operating model that costs more than the cause can support, or a turnaround operator when the actual constraint is a narrow income base. A well-run charity chief executive search tests that diagnosis before a single name is discussed.

Two further errors are almost as frequent. Boards benchmark the package against the wrong comparator set, usually charities chosen by cause rather than by income and complexity, then find the field thinner than expected. And they mistake commitment to the cause for the capability to lead it.

Underweighted most often is the relationship between chief executive and chair. Where that pairing works it absorbs difficulty quietly; where it does not it consumes the first year and frequently ends the tenure. We treat it as part of the assessment, not as something discovered afterwards.

Charity CEO pay: setting the right package

Charity chief executive pay is set by the board of trustees, and it is the one element of charity chief executive appointments that will be read publicly, questioned by donors, and published in the annual accounts. Setting it well means balancing careful stewardship of donated funds against the cost of securing a leader capable of protecting them.

That scrutiny is legitimate, and trustees are right to treat the decision as a stewardship question rather than a market one. The difficulty is that it also pushes some boards towards a figure they can comfortably defend rather than one that attracts the field the role deserves, and a search that produces no appointable shortlist is a cost to beneficiaries too.

Our counsel is to build the package from a defensible comparator set rather than from last year’s figure adjusted for inflation: organisations of similar income, operating complexity, and span of executive responsibility, whatever their cause, tested against the commercial and public sector roles the likely candidates could otherwise take.

Structure matters as much as the headline figure. Charities rarely compete on equity or bonus, so a package makes its case through the scale of the remit, the quality of the board, and the seriousness of the mission. Where a board’s figure will not reach the leader it has described, we say so at the briefing stage.

Charity sub-sectors we cover

The charity sub-sectors we cover span the breadth of the UK not-for-profit economy, because the sector is not a single market and a leader who excels in one type of organisation is rarely the obvious appointment in another. Our consultants assess candidates within their specific funding, regulatory, and mission environment.

• UK charities - national household-name charities, regional and community organisations, and registered charities delivering frontline services.
• Foundations and grant-making trusts - endowed foundations, family trusts, and the grant-makers that fund the wider sector.
• International NGOs - development, humanitarian, and advocacy organisations operating across borders.
• Trade and membership organisations - professional bodies, trade associations, and membership charities representing their members.
• Social enterprises and mission-led organisations - organisations that blend commercial models with social purpose.
• Consultancies and institutions - the advisory firms, think tanks, and institutions that support and shape the not-for-profit sector.

Sub-sector experience is the variable that most often determines the quality of a shortlist, and our briefs build that distinction in from the first conversation. The practice sits within our wider public sector and not-for-profit practice.

What is reshaping charity leadership hiring

Charity leadership hiring is being reshaped by sustained income pressure, a rising governance bar, and the increasingly commercial demands placed on mission-led organisations. The brief for a chief executive in 2026 looks meaningfully different from the brief in 2020, and most senior charity appointments now touch several of the forces below.

Income pressure comes first. Donations and grant funding are squeezed while demand for services rises, placing a premium on leaders who can diversify income rather than defend a single stream. Governance and public trust have followed, with the Charity Commission and the public holding boards to a higher standard than a decade ago. Digital and data capability now underpins fundraising and supporter engagement.

Commercial diversification follows. As charities develop earned income and social enterprise models, boards want a chief executive with commercial discipline who will not dilute the mission in applying it, and that combination is scarce. Diversity of leadership has reshaped both the brief and the composition of charity boards. Together these shifts have turned chief executive recruitment in the sector into a research exercise rather than an advertising one.

Why specialist charity search matters

Specialist charity search matters because a leader who reads well on paper can still be the wrong appointment for a mission-led organisation. The funding model, the duty to beneficiaries, the relationship with trustees, and the scrutiny attached to charitable income all change what good leadership looks like, and a generalist process rarely tests for any of them.

A generalist consultant reads a career history. Specialist charity headhunters read it in context: whether income growth on a candidate’s record was won or inherited, whether a restructure protected services or merely reduced them, and how the candidate is regarded by the trustees and funders who watched it happen. That difference decides which names reach the board, and it is the argument for a specialist approach to charity leadership appointments.

Our consultants have spent years inside the senior not-for-profit community across the UK. We know why a leader who has thrived in a large national charity may struggle in a grant-making foundation, and why an outstanding fundraiser is not automatically an outstanding chief executive. A charity executive search with us brings honest counsel on the brief itself. Our research-led approach to executive headhunting is built for these appointments.

Our charity chief executive search process

Our charity chief executive search process is a retained, research-led sequence, scaled to the seniority of the appointment and to the way the organisation is governed. A named consultant leads each engagement from the first conversation with the board to the new chief executive’s arrival, supported by our in-house research team.

Understanding the role. We begin with the chair and the nominations committee, and take time to understand the funding picture, the governance arrangements, and the culture a new chief executive will join. That produces a view of the experience, values, and temperament the role genuinely calls for.

Mapping the market. Drawing on our network of senior charity leaders and structured public-domain research, we map the people who could do the role, frequently reaching into the public sector, commercial organisations, and adjacent cause areas.

Approaching candidates. Leaders worth appointing are settled in demanding roles, so a first approach must earn a confidential conversation rather than invite an application. Our standing in the not-for-profit community opens discussions an advertised campaign never reaches.

Shortlist to appointment. Each shortlisted candidate is supported by a written profile covering career history, leadership record, motivation, fit with the chair and board, and our independent assessment. We then run the interview rounds and see due diligence through to offer and arrival. The methodology is set out on our executive search page.

If you are planning a chief executive appointment, refreshing your board, or would value a confidential view of the market before committing to a search, speak to our team.

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