How does charity CEO recruitment work?

How does charity CEO recruitment work?

There are four respects in which the process of recruiting a CEO for a charity differs from that involved in commercial hiring. The board of trustees is the employer and is responsible for making the appointment. The salary is made public. Certain candidates, such as those who are already trustees, require authority from the Charity Commission before they can be appointed. And the appointment is subject to statutory checks whereas commercial appointments are not.

All the other points can be deduced from those four. This article deals with who determines what, the steps that a board can follow, how the salary is determined, and who may be lawfully appointed. The stage-by-stage timeline is dealt with in our separate article on the nonprofit executive search process.

The board is the employer, not the outgoing chief executive

The trustees are responsible for appointing the chief executive and, if necessary, for dismissing him. This power rests with the board as a whole and cannot be transferred to the individual who is leaving. Although the outgoing chief executive knows more about the position than anyone else in the room and should therefore be consulted regarding the brief, they have no say in choosing their successor. Boards that fail to keep this distinction usually discover the problem later, typically when the appointment proves to be unsuccessful and no one can claim to have made the decision.

In reality the board assigns the task to a panel consisting of three or four trustees, the panel typically being chaired by the chair, and this panel then submits a recommendation to the entire board. The minutes should include the delegation as well as the decision rule in the case where the panel is unable to reach an agreement. The Charity Governance Code regards board effectiveness as a principle by itself, and a chief executive appointment is the situation in which this principle is put to the test.

It is useful to have staff involved, but this should have some limits. When the senior management team hold sessions with the panel they provide information that couldn’t be obtained through an interview, though they make it clear in advance that these sessions are advisory in nature. If they aren’t, the charity would have by mistake set up a second body with the power to make decisions, and a strong candidate might be rejected by a group that had no decision-making authority.

The four routes to an appointment

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When it comes to deciding which option to take, most boards base their choice on cost, but asking about cost should not be the first consideration. The correct question to ask is where the person you want to appoint is currently employed. In the case where the person you need is already running a similar charity and has no intention of changing jobs, an advertisement will not get to them but a search will. If the sector is already familiar with your organisation and the salary offered is competitive, then advertising can generate a strong pool of candidates at only a small fraction of the cost of a retained search.

The interim route merits more care than is generally given to it. It is a reasonable thing to appoint an interim chief executive while the board is working out its remit. It is not acceptable, however, to let a senior manager act in that capacity for nine months without making a decision, since by the ninth month the appointment will have been effectively finalized and no external candidate will have a fair chance. A deadline should be fixed for any acting arrangement on the day that it begins.

How the salary is set, and why it becomes public

The manner in which charity pay is presented is different from that in which commercial pay is. According to the Charities SORP, when preparing accruals accounts a charity is required to state how many employees have remuneration falling into each band from £60,000 upwards in £10,000 increments, specifying that the figure is nil if there are no such employees, and also to give the total amount of employee benefits enjoyed by key management personnel. Furthermore, trustees are expected to explain in the annual report the basis on which they determine the pay of key management personnel, including the benchmarks that they have used. The Charity Commission publishes the higher pay data obtained from the annual returns.

As a result of this, when it comes to recruiting the salary decision must be a governance decision made before the recruitment process starts and it has to be justifiable to the public a year later. Record the salary band and the reasons for selecting it, together with the benchmarks. The most common reason why a search for a charity’s CEO fails at the offer stage is that a salary band drawn from last year’s payroll is chosen without any reference to the current market.

The ACEVO Pay and Equalities Survey 2025, when it came to setting benchmarks, used data from 703 charity chief executives and found the median CEO salary to be £59,850. Charity Finance’s 2025 survey of the largest hundred charities in the UK showed CEO pay at £192,000, which is an increase from the £175,000 recorded in its 2023 survey. Your salary falls somewhere between these two amounts, the exact figure depending on income, the number of staff, geographical location and the complexity of the funding model rather than on the level of ambition.

Who can and cannot be appointed

The number of rules is reduced by two, and the boards only realize both of these rules late.

The first option is automatic disqualification; since 1 August 2018 the rules have extended to cover senior charity managers as well as trustees, so that the most senior manager to report directly to the board and the most senior person who has control over money—regardless of their job title—are included. The declaration has to be signed before the appointment is made and the Charity Commission publishes sample declarations as well as being able to waive a disqualification upon application.

The second one tends to take on boards more frequently since it appears to be a solution rather than a problem. In the case of a founder-led or small charity, a trustee or someone who has recently been a trustee is often the most obvious person to appoint from within. Generally, in order to employ a trustee prior approval from the Charity Commission is required unless the charity’s governing document specifically allows it. You should read that document carefully because wording which permits a trustee to be paid for their services does not always mean that it covers the situation of employing them as a member of staff. The Commission updated its guidance on paying trustees and connected persons, CC11, in 2025, and the change reflected a more cautious approach.

The fact that the resignation occurs first does not solve the problem; the rule matters whether the trustee resigned before or after assuming the position, and a trustee who has been paid without proper authority may be required to repay the charity. The only narrow exception is when the charity can prove that the individual did not get the post because of their status as a trustee and that no further conflict of interest exists, and it is much easier for the charity to meet this criterion if the person had resigned before the role was defined and had not taken any part in its design.

If a potential trustee seems plausible, the authority issue should be settled before the search begins rather than after the panel has selected them; this is equally true in the case of a candidate who is connected to a trustee, since payments to connected persons are treated as payments to the trustee under the same guidance.

What it costs and who pays

With retained search services, the fees are billed in stages—typically when the appointment is made, when the shortlist is delivered and when the start date arrives—and the fee must be paid even if you do not go on to appoint. For contingency recruitment, payment is only made upon placement. Advertising is the cheapest in terms of fees but the most expensive in terms of staff time because a member of the charity has to go through the applications and look after the candidates.

The Maine Group does not charge any fee at the beginning of the process; rather, it takes its fee when the appointment is made and provides a financial guarantee covering the amount for a period of 100 days at 100 per cent. Regardless of the path the board chooses, it is necessary to plan for the cost before the search starts and to agree in advance who will sign the engagement agreement, since a recruitment cost that appears in the accounts without first having been decided upon in a minutes entry will lead to an audit discussion that no one wants.

After the appointment, the board is still the employer

The appointment does not conclude the board’s responsibilities; on the contrary, it brings them into effect. It is necessary to agree on the criteria to be used for the first year of the appointee’s appointment before the start date, while both the board and the appointee still remember what was said during the interview, and the date of the first appraisal should be set at that time. Since charity chief executives generally give three months’ notice, there is usually enough time to carry out this procedure properly.

Find out who the chief executive’s direct supervisor is, this being most commonly the chair, and consider what occurs if that relationship breaks down. According to Charity Finance’s Chief Executive Survey 2025, seven of the top one hundred UK charities had no chief executive acting in the role at the time of the survey, and 30% of the leaders for whom data could be obtained had been in the position for a year or less. Part of this staff turnover is normal. Some of it is due to boards having made good appointments but then failing to manage the person they had hired.

Getting help with the appointment

For more than 25 years the Maine Group has provided staffing services to not-for-profit organisations via its Maine Charity division, carrying out recruitment in the areas of fundraising and philanthropy, executive assistance, human resources and senior leadership positions. It has been carrying out recruitment for companies in London since 1987 and uses what it refers to as The Maine Method in every job rather than limiting it to board-level appointments.

When there is to be a appointment of a chief executive, the first useful thing to do is to discuss the salary range, the panel involved, the timetable and whether or not any internal or trustee candidate is being considered, since that final point has an effect on the process. You can reach me on 020 7734 7341.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the person who appoints the chief executive of a charity?

The board of trustees generally assigns the task to a panel consisting of three or four of its members, who then suggest a candidate to the entire board. Although the retiring chief executive can provide input on the matter, the decision is not his to make.

Is it possible for a trustee to be the chief executive of the same charity?

Not always, but sometimes. If a trustee is to be employed, prior approval from the Charity Commission is generally required unless the governing document specifically allows for it, and this rule continues to apply even if the trustee resigns first. The issue of authority should be dealt with before the recruitment process begins.

Is it necessary for a charity to promote the position of its chief executive?

It is not legally necessary to carry out advertising, since open recruitment enables the trustees to demonstrate that they have acted in the best interests of the charity, something that is most important when an internal candidate or a trustee is in question or when the appointment is later challenged.

How do the pay terms of the charity’s CEO get decided?

The band is determined by the board before recruitment begins, with reference being made to sector benchmarks and to the charity’s income, size and complexity. In accordance with the Charities SORP, higher pay must be stated in the financial accounts and trustees are expected to explain how they arrive at the pay of key management personnel, so reason for the decision should be recorded at that time.

It was written by the Maine Charity team at The Maine Group, Consultants in Recruitment. Since 1987 the Maine Group has provided recruitment services for London employers in the areas of office support, HR, charity, and sales and marketing from offices in the West End and in the City of London.