How small charities and trustees can plan for leadership change

I’ve been a trustee for the charity Arty Folks since January 2023, after several years of supporting them from a digital mentoring capacity. It’s been such a powerful experience in terms of personal fulfilment and developing skills that I wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to obtain in my day role at Lloyds Banking Group.

This year, the board of trustees were informed by our current CEO of her intention to step down from her leadership role to focus on what she loves doing most with the charity – service delivery – before retiring in the next three to four years. In this blog, I want to share some of the learnings from this experience which can hopefully be helpful for other small charities and trustees going through a leadership change.

Plan for change and reach out to others

The first piece of advice I would give to small charities is to plan for change. Don’t wait for it to happen. Losing a CEO, Director, or trustee can have a huge impact on small charities and it is somewhat inevitable that it will happen at some stage. Get a plan in place as early as possible and start planning for what you would do in these situations. This will ensure that your organisation has the necessary protocols in place, ensuring a smoother process.

Start to develop your network so that you have support when you need it. As a board of trustees, we sought advice from other charities who have gone through a huge change like this to see how they went about it, what worked well and any challenges they faced. The networking we had done with other charities meant that we already had these relationships in place and it has been extremely beneficial for us to be able to turn to our network for support during this time.

Involve the CEO in succession planning with sensitivity

With such a small team, succession planning can be very difficult. The biggest challenge we faced is the fact that our current CEO is the founder of the charity and has been at the heart of the charity for almost 30 years. It is extremely difficult to find someone with the same level of passion for the charity, and her in-depth knowledge of the organisation and the people it supports cannot be replicated.

It may or may not be appropriate for you to involve the current CEO in succession planning, but it is likely – as in our case – that they hold significant knowledge and expertise about the role which can be utilised throughout the process.

The first step was to speak to our current CEO about her intentions and what she would like to focus on when she steps down from the CEO role. We also discussed a succession planning strategy to ensure as smooth a transition as possible and looked at how we could utilise our current CEO’s passion, knowledge and experience moving forward.

We met regularly as a board of trustees to devise a job specification for a new CEO and included the current CEO in this process to help shape the role. However, on reflection, we realised that some aspects of this process are sensitive and difficult for the current CEO to be involved in, such as decisions around pay.

Our current CEO carries out a lot of service delivery, which is common in a small charity. However, as we look to grow as a charity, we have made adjustments to the new CEO role which will no longer involve delivery but more strategy and partnership-building aspects. This led to a salary being introduced to the role that was higher than what the current CEO is paid, which did lead to some disappointment and a feeling of not been valued by the current CEO. As Treasurer I took the lead in chatting to our CEO, explaining that the nature of the role is changing and thus the salary would reflect this. However, as a board we agreed that the gap between the two salaries wasn’t right, so we agreed a salary increase for the current CEO which she was delighted with.

Review processes

Succession planning gave us the opportunity to review and streamline our recruitment processes and as well as reviewing the job roles and specs for our current employees. The first advertising phase for the CEO recruitment wasn’t attracting the right candidates so we reviewed the advert, pay and where we advertised the role. After making these changes, the candidates have been much stronger and more aligned to our values and the direction we want to take as a charity.

The succession process has been a learning process for both the charity and myself. Having a succession plan in the first instance gave us the ability to react to our need to change on the front foot. Overall, it has been a hugely positive experience for us and we have been very lucky to have our existing CEO involved and for the succession to be on her terms. We are really looking forward to the next stage in our journey as a charity.

Lloyds Banking Group employees can find out more the Foundation's trustee programme and other opportunities to volunteer with charities by emailing volunteering@lloydsbankfoundation.org.uk. 

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