Charity leaders need better training

CEO's from across the charity sector currently have a few options for their training: focusing on components of learning and prioritising how they spend their minimal training budgets each year to top up their skills or embarking on an expensive Masters. Bizarrely, to learn the full complement of all the skills needed to be a charity CEO, the cost ratchets up to a whopping average of about ￡10,000 to develop the expertise needed. This sadly explains why, for many, they are learning on the job because the cost is so deeply prohibitive. It also explains why, as a charity sector, we face inherent problems that seem to repeat themselves, year after year. Board disputes. Governance failures. Grievances poorly managed. Funding often always in a fragile state. Chief Executives so engulfed in work they are running on a countdown to their next burnout. The sector can and must do better.

As chief executives, we do not have Chartered Status (unlike fundraising, which is well on its way to having chartered status), professional recognition, or professional qualifications. There is no professional development pathway past Masters degree, despite most chief executives feeling that actually their Masters has not prepared them for what the job entails. Some qualifications prepare you generically, for example, a Masters in Civil Society Management, but lack the key professional occupational development of skills, and rather focus on the academic research underpinning charities (of which, a very small number of academics seem to dominate the literature with little challenge or broader thinking). If we want to understand inclusion in the charity sector, it probably would also help if we had more researchers in the sector who are not male, stale and middle-aged. When we ponder the debate of charity inclusion in the sector, eloquently spelt out by Charity So White, we have to look at some of the infrastructure bodies for examples, naming on names, but all the senior directors in those charities, at least at the top ranks, are all white.

Developing professional pathways of training and development, rather than just pitch meetings where trainers pseudo disguise training for an advanced pitch to serve charities, is very much needed, and a very much ignored path of support for the leadership of the third sector. We must remember that as a sector, we are responsible The voluntary sector contributed ￡18.2bn to the economy in 2017/18. Would it not be a more effective use of resources if chief executives, the key decision-makers in the sector became a more informed and trained body of professionals?

I founded the beginnings of a solution to this in developing a new chief executive membership charity, that combines professional development, with coaching, transformational leadership training, and a peer support network, geared affordably towards smaller charities. Our company Centre for Social Change has begun launching CEO Hacks, a first in the sector- a genuinely inclusive leadership development programme, combined with all aspects of training required to be an effective and transformational chief executive. We brought together conventional lecturers with world-class leadership experts, for a fraction of the cost of conventional leadership programmes. Our goal was to create a course that does not have cost as a barrier, yet does include leadership development otherwise found in the most expensive leadership development programmes across the world. We are busy democratising access to leadership so that our future generations can be led by community leaders, who are not only capable, but extraordinary at their jobs. If we are going to get to the root cause of our social issues across the UK, it is going to take our community leaders and social CEO's stepping up their game. It is clear that billions each year could be more effectively spent to solve social issues, but this can only begin when those in control of that spending feel like they are capable of truly unpacking the problems, galvanizing communities to find solutions, and are authentic, incredible leaders.

COVID 19 has shown us communities sit at the heart of the responses to the grave crisis the UK has faced, but it has also shown how we are as communities, able to mobilise responses much quicker than organisations assigning themselves to leading in those communities. Whilst some great charities were part of the rapid response from day one, others prevaricated about their response. However, what the whole situation has taught us is that our communities are still deeply rooted in solving the problems we face, without the long arm of government intervention. It's a powerful opportunity for social change. But ￡18bn worth of spending could be better mobilised into these communities if we were and are better leaders.

Anna Day is the Founder of the Centre for Social Change, a consultancy and think tank providing advice to third sector organisations, and is a movement builder. She founded www.ceohacks.com to address CEO training in the third sector and is an avid, charity management geek. The Centre for Social Change runs weekly action learning sets completely FREE for charity chief executives. To book on the series- please contact [email protected]