Recruitment

How to find top charity executive recruitment agencies

Meeta Sahni 05 August 2026 11 min read

Recruitment

How to find top charity executive recruitment agencies

The job of an executive search firm is to find, contact, and evaluate candidates for top positions in charities, such as chief executive, director of fundraising, finance director, director of services, and interim supervisors, who are hired for a specific term. Since the firm you select determines which candidates your board will ever meet, this choice is worth more careful consideration than it typically receives.

The majority of boards appoint a chief executive every five or six years, and this frequency is insufficient to develop a sound instinct for making such appointments. The following section describes the work involved in conducting executive searches in the charity sector, the tasks a sector specialist will undertake that a generalist agency will not, and the questions that distinguish the two.

What a charity executive search is, and how it differs from ordinary recruitment

Executive search is an active method. The consultant maps the market for a role, identifies the people doing that job now or sitting one level below it, and approaches them directly. Contingency recruitment is reactive: the agency advertises, works its existing database and sends you the CVs of people who apply. You pay a contingency agency when someone starts. You pay a search firm in stages, whether or not an appointment happens.

In the case of a chief executive position with a charity, searches are generally the way to go since the most suitable candidates are already employed and therefore do not look at job boards. For a fundraising manager or an executive assistant, however, contingency arrangements usually suffice at a lower cost.

A small number of agencies apply a search method to roles that would normally go out on contingency terms. The Maine Group is one of them. Its consultants meet every client at their own workplace before a search begins, and the firm uses the same method, which it calls The Maine Method, across all five of its divisions, including Maine Charity. The practical effect is that a mid-level charity role gets mapped and approached rather than advertised and filtered.

Why sector specialism changes who reaches your shortlist

Pay is the best example of this. The ACEVO Pay and Equalities Survey 2025 gathered responses from 703 chief executives of charities and found the median CEO salary to be £59,850. Charity Finance’s 2025 survey of the 100 largest charities in the UK showed the median salary for a chief executive to be £192,000, up from £175,000 in 2023 and £155,000 in 2019. These figures refer to the same job title within the same sector. A recruitment agency that does not understand where your organisation falls between these two sets of figures will give poor guidance to candidates, leading them to reject the offer.

The same ACEVO survey found a gender pay gap of 10.6% among charity chief executives, with men earning a median of £64,067 and women £57,250. A search firm that tracks its own diversity data at the longlist, shortlist, and appointment stage can show your panel where candidates are dropping out. A firm that does not track it will present the shortlist as though it fell out of the sky.

Sector knowledge is also evident in smaller judgments. A consultant who has appointed fundraising directors can tell the difference between one person who has built up unrestricted income from scratch and another who has managed a single large statutory grant. A generalist, on the other hand, sees both situations as involving £4m raised funds.

The compliance work that sits behind a charity appointment

Since 1 August 2018, the rules concerning automatic disqualification have also been extended to senior charity managers as well as to trustees; these rules apply to the most senior manager who reports directly to the board, typically the chief executive, and to the most senior person who has control of money, usually the finance director. It is the role that determines this rather than the job title. The reasons for disqualification are convictions for dishonesty or deception that have not been spent, certain offences relating to terrorism, bribery, and money laundering, contempt of court, and being listed on the sex offenders register.

In practice, the charity has to obtain a signed declaration before it makes the appointment, not after; the Charity Commission provides model declarations for both trustees and senior managers, and a disqualified person can apply to the Commission for a waiver.

Inquire with an agency that has that step in its procedures. A search consultant familiar with the sector will say that they gather the declaration as part of the offer process and check the Individual Insolvency Register, the Companies House list of disqualified directors, and the Commission’s list of removed trustees. A less capable agency will merely state that it is your legal obligation, which is correct, and will leave it at that.

Two more points should be included in the same discussion. In cases where a posting involves work with children or adults at risk, the appointment must have the appropriate level of DBS check, and the organisation should know in advance which level is required rather than automatically choosing the basic one. Moreover, every agency carrying on business in the UK is subject to the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, which set out the rules concerning fees, candidate data and the terms of business. Being a member of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation is a reasonable indication that an agency takes these regulations seriously, although it by itself does not guarantee compliance.

Seven questions to ask before you sign

Apply this to each agency on your list, then compare the responses side by side.

How many chief executive or director positions have you filled in the past 2 years, and may I speak with 2 of those clients?
Who carries out this search day to day, and will that individual be present at the briefing, the longlist review, and the final panel?
What is the source of the longlist? If a firm states that it intends to map several organisations, it is searching for them. If a firm says it has an extensive network, it is conducting a database recall.
What is your procedure for the disqualification declaration, references, and the right to work?
What diversity data do you collect at each stage, and will you disclose it with our panel?
What are your fee stages, and what happens if the person appointed leaves within 6 months?
Who puts together the candidate pack, and may we have one that you prepared for a similar position?

The final question is more significant than it appears. The candidate pack is the document that convinces an existing chief executive to consider your organisation; if it sounds like just a job advertisement with a logo printed on it, the search will fail, no matter what the credentials deck had promised.

Fees, guarantees and what happens when it goes wrong

Retention search billing generally takes place in three stages: when the firm is engaged, when the shortlist is delivered, and when the candidate starts work. The fees are usually expressed as a percentage of the candidate’s first-year salary, ranging from 20% to 30%, although charity rates are generally lower than commercial rates. Contingency agencies charge only when a placement has been made,at a lower rate. rate

Get the failure terms in writing before you appoint anyone, because agencies use the word guarantee for three quite different things. A free replacement means the firm searches again at no fee, which is worth little if you have lost trust in the firm. A rebate returns part of the fee on a sliding scale, so a departure in week ten might return 30% of it. A refund returns the money.

The Maine Group provides a financial guarantee covering 100 days at 100 per cent, does not charge any fees in advance, and takes its fee only once a placement has been made. This practice goes beyond what is usual in the sector and therefore provides a fair standard by which to evaluate other agencies when comparing their terms.

Keep the board close to the process.

The Charity Governance Code includes board effectiveness and equality, diversity and inclusion as one of its principles, and a chief executive appointment provides a test of both. You should decide in advance who will be on the appointment panel, who will have the last say, and what action the chair will take if the panel is divided. Search consultants often notice that strong candidates vanish during the two or three weeks needed to assemble a panel that was not scheduled in advance.

Arrange the timetable at the briefing meeting and enter the panel dates into your diaries in the same week. It is realistic to take between six and twelve weeks from the time of the briefing to making an offer in the case of a search for a charity’s chief executive, allowing for the appointee’s notice period, which is often three months at that level. If a firm is promising to produce a shortlist much faster than this, it usually means they already have someone in mind, which is worth asking about directly.

Signs to walk away

CVs sent in within 48 hours of the first contact, before any member of the agency has met your team or has seen the place where they would be working; a consultant who refuses to state the name of the person carrying out the work; no charity client who is willing to take a reference call; the terms of business only appearing after your panel has interviewed the candidates; and a firm that responds to every request by suggesting an interim worker on a day rate.

A practical first step

Prepare a one-page summary that includes the salary range, reporting relationship, panel members, schedule, and the outcomes the person appointed is required to achieve during the first year. Send this summary to two or three agencies and request in writing from each of them details of their search procedure, their fee structure, and their criteria for failure. The quality of the written responses you receive will tell you more than anything in the way of credentials.

The Maine Group has worked with not-for-profit organisations for more than 25 years through its Maine Charity division, covering fundraising and philanthropy roles, executive assistants, HR and senior leadership positions. To talk through a current or forthcoming appointment, call 020 7734 7341 or visit the Maine Charity division page.

Frequently asked questions

What does a charity executive search entail?

Charity executive search is an active recruitment method for senior roles in the charity sector. The consultant maps the market, approaches candidates directly, and assesses them against a brief agreed with the board, rather than advertising the role and waiting for applications.

What do charity executive recruitment agencies charge?

Search fees, retained, are typically quoted at 20%-30% of the candidate’s first-year salary and billed in instalments. Charity rates are generally lower than commercial rates. Contingency agencies charge only when a placement is made. The Maine Group does not charge anything up front and takes its fee once the candidate begins.

What is the length of the search for a chief executive officer in a charity?

It is usual for the period between the briefing and the offer to last from six to twelve weeks, together with the appointee’s notice period, which at the level of chief executive is usually three months.

Do charity recruitment agencies deal with the recruitment of trustees as well as that of staff?

Yes, they have. Since trustee positions are generally unpaid and require a different method and a different pool of candidates, it is necessary to specifically enquire with the firm whether it has conducted trustee searches, rather than simply assuming it does so as part of its executive work.

Must the agency be based in London?

On the contrary, most searches are conducted by phone and video, and knowledge of the sector is more important than having an office address. Having a base in London is an advantage in cases where the position requires frequent face-to-face meetings or when the candidate pool in that speciality is concentrated in the capital.

About the Author

Meeta Sahni

Meeta brings 25 years of experience in talent consulting, with a focus on leadership, wellness, and empowering people. She speaks and coaches on mental health in the workplace, women in business, and authentic leadership.

Charity Recruitment Agency

How does charity CEO recruitment work?

Meeta Sahni 05 August 2026 12 min read

Charity Recruitment Agency

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

Internal promotion	A credible successor is already in post and the strategy is continuing	A closed process is hard to defend if the appointment later goes wrong
Open advertising	The role is well known in the sector and the salary is competitive	Reaches only candidates who are actively looking
Retained executive search	The strongest candidates are employed elsewhere, or the brief is unusual	Fees are payable in stages whether or not you appoint
Interim then permanent	The board needs stability first and clarity on the role second	An acting-up arrangement can quietly become the appointment

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.

can a trustee become CEO charity CEO recruitment charity CEO salary setting charity chief executive recruitment how does charity CEO recruitment work who appoints a charity chief executive

About the Author

Meeta Sahni