What We’re Looking For
The successful candidate will:
- Be a gifted leader and experienced chair, combining personal presence, humility and an open, accessible style.
- Demonstrate the highest personal standards with regard to honesty, integrity, reliability and commitment to the role, in keeping with the seven Nolan principles.
- Be a strategic thinker, helping to imagine transformative change with the ability to navigate and drive change productively.
- Be incisive and decisive, ensuring the board is focussing on the right issues at the right time, steering them to make the right decisions based on the best information while enabling all voices to be heard.
- Have senior management and/ or governance experience in a complex, medium-large business or organisation in the private, public, or voluntary sector, with the ability to inspire confidence within and outside the organisation, particularly within the major donor and corporate world.
- Possess a detailed understanding of the requirements of good governance in a charity, appreciating the opportunities and limits of a non-executive role, and how a high-performing board can work best with a high-performing executive team—holding the team to account, ensuring the organisation is continuously learning and reflecting, celebrating success and recognising contributions.
- Be an accomplished communicator and listener with excellent interpersonal skills and strong social intelligence, able to relate to a wide range of people and facilitate discussions on a variety of complex and sometimes difficult subjects.
- Have some experience in handling the media and an understanding of the complexities and challenges of fundraising.
- Be resilient, courageous, and calm in a crisis, providing visible leadership to reassure trustees, the wider organisation and stakeholders.
- Understand the unique role of the voluntary sector in confronting issues of social justice and fighting for systemic change.
- Demonstrate passion for the work of The Children’s Society and its ambitions, and a clear commitment to supporting children and young people.
- Understand the value of The Children’s Society’s partnership with the Church of England and how the lived faith of many church members inspires their generous contribution to The Children’s Society, whilst not necessarily being a person of faith themselves.
Whether it’s our role as an employer, our work with supporters or volunteers, or our service delivery, we’re committed to diversity and inclusion. We would welcome applications for this role from a range of backgrounds.