Third Sector

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Mark Russell, chief executive of The Children’s Society. Mark speaks openly about the challenges of leading a major charity through half a decade of polycrisis and the toll it has taken on his mental health. He stresses the need for chief executives to act as role models in maintaining boundaries between work and personal life, and the critical role of...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Stuart Pearson, head of innovation at Citizens Advice Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale and Trafford, and Zoe Amar, founder of the digital consultancy Zoe Amar Digital. Stuart explains how Citizens Advice developed Caddy, an internal-facing AI-powered chatbot that provides information to the charity’s advisers and eases demand on supervisors fielding high volu...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Emma Revie, co-chief executive of Trussell, and the strategy and change management specialist Martyn Drake. Emma explains why Trussell’s mission statement has been altered to place the provision of food aid second to its aim of eliminating the need for food banks.  She stresses the need to work with others to drive systems change and shares her bel...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Ruth Marvel, chief executive of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, to talk about the charity’s new impact measurement framework. Ruth describes the importance of a theory of change to guide DofE’s activities and inform the development of its measurement framework to test assumptions. She explains how using national open data sets for comparison purposes ha...

Lucinda Rouse visits the Dogs Trust’s head office to meet the charity’s chief executive, Owen Sharp. Owen talks about the recent restructure of Dogs Trust as part of a new strategy and shares some of the lessons he has learned from an ongoing redundancy process involving 300 staff. He gives his view on ways in which the voluntary sector could be responding differently to current instability,...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Toby Freeman, chief executive of the Robin Cancer Trust, and the charity finance and governance specialist Pesh Framjee. Toby shares his experiences of founding a charity to which he has a deep personal connection, and outlines the ways in which he is preparing the organisation for his departure. Pesh puts forward his view that founder’s syndrome is a r...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Nicole Sykes, director of policy, communications and research at the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales. They discuss some recent research by Lloyds Banking Group that found charities are the second-most trusted source of financial advice after family members. They consider how charities can best respond to the finding, and why it should be a c...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Natasha Friend and Robin Morgan-Chu, the director and chair respectively of the grantmaker Camden Giving, to discuss the merits and challenges of participatory grantmaking. Natasha describes how grantmaking decisions at Camden Giving have been devolved to panels of people with first-hand experience of the challenges the funding is seeking to address. Ro...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle summarise the contents of the recently-launched Civil Society Covenant between the government and civil society. They reflect on comments made by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, and consider what’s next for the charity-state relationship. Read our analysis : What will the Civil Society Covenant mean for charities? Tell us what you th...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by are joined by Dan Lawes, co-chief executive of the youth democracy charity My Life My Say, to consider how charities working in all cause areas can interact effectively with younger people. Dan explains how My Life My Say engaged with brands including Tinder, Lime and Snapchat to promote its 'Give an X' campaign to encourage young people to vote in the 2...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts  are joined by Nihara Krause, chief executive of the youth mental health charity Stem4, to talk about the organisation’s quest for long-term sustainability in the face of falling grant income. Nihara describes the challenges faced by Stem4 in developing partnership and merger prospects, as the charity has sought to stay afloat since the Covid-19 pandemic. She o...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Gary Laybourne, chief executive of the sports coaching apprenticeship charity Coach Core. Gary outlines some of the voluntary sector roles that are compatible with existing apprenticeship schemes and explains the practicalities of taking on an apprentice. He describes ways in which charities can offset the cost and commitments associated with taking on...

Lucinda Rouse hears from some of the speakers at Third Sector: The Conference 2025, which was held at the Barbican Centre in London this week (18 and 19 June). They are: Sarah Hughes, chief executive of Mind; Duncan Bootland and Ian Howick, medical director and executive director of corporate services at the Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex; Nadia Alomar, chief executive of Clore Social Le...

This episode contains a reference to suicide in the first two minutes. In November 2022, the transgender youth support charity Mermaids was in crisis. Caught up in a media storm over its chest binder service, compounded by internal governance and culture failings, a statutory inquiry was launched. In the third and final episode of When Charity Goes Wrong, Lucinda Rouse hears from Lauren Stoner, ch...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Victoria Askew, senior marketing campaign manager at Pancreatic Cancer UK, to hear about the organisation’s experience as the charity of the year at the 2025 TCS London Marathon. Vicky provides insight into PCUK’s winning bid and the 18-month preparation process that preceded the event in April. She outlines the charity’s approach to the stewardship of...

In April 2020, 99-year-old war veteran Captain Tom Moore became an unexpected national hero after raising £38.9m in less than four weeks by walking 100 laps of his garden. But his legacy quickly turned sour, leading to a very public fall for his family and the charity created in his name. In episode two of When Charity Goes Wrong, Lucinda Rouse hears from Hannah Ingram-Moore, daughter of Captain S...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Janet Thorne, chief executive of Reach Volunteering, and Nathan Miller, director at the East London Waterworks Park. Janet provides context to Reach’s finding that volunteering is thriving, with notable growth among volunteer-led organisations with no paid staff. She stresses the importance of articulating a clear purpose to attract volunteers. Nathan e...

In August 2015, one of the country’s most prominent children’s charities, Kids Company, was declared insolvent. Its collapse has been followed by almost a decade of legal wrangling as the charity’s trustees pushed back against regulatory findings of mismanagement. In episode one of When Charity Goes Wrong, Third Sector journalist Lucinda Rouse hears from Andy Gough, a former Kids Company centre ma...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Saskia Konynenburg, executive director of voice and impact at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and the volunteering strategist Gethyn Williams. Saskia describes the struggles reported by charities in recruiting and retaining volunteers, in the face of a growing preference for more informal roles with less rigid commitments. She suggests...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Russell Winnard, chief executive of the care leaver support charity the Drive Forward Foundation, to discuss the introduction of a new model to guide the organisation's corporate partnerships. Russell explains how a combination of insufficient partnership income and the need for more joined-up pathways to employment opportunities for the charity’s servi...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Lynne Guyton, chief executive of John Lyon’s Charity, and Sacha Rose-Smith, chief funding director at the City Bridge Foundation. Lynne describes the realities for a grantmaker that has gone from being a nice-to-have to an essential funding pot. She explains why John Lyon’s Charity did not consider it responsible to pause funding and outlines the alterna...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Dan Tickle, chief executive of the National Migraine Centre, and Peter Holbrook, chief executive of Social Enterprise UK. Dan recounts how the National Migraine Centre adopted a social enterprise model to deliver its services in the face of declining voluntary income and expanded its patient offering in the process. Peter echoes Dan’s assertion that on...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Ben Williamson, director of recruitment at the incubator organisation Charity Entrepreneurship. Ben outlines the different ways of modelling, tracking and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of direct delivery and systems change programmes. He explains why it can pay off to apply the risk appetite of a start-up entrepreneur to voluntary sector initiatives...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Iain Heaton, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer at the Blue Cross, and Tiggy McCool, partner at the management consultancy Nine Feet Tall. Iain describes how the Blue Cross implemented major changes to its animal rehoming services, starting with the closure of four rehoming centres in response to Covid-19-related financial pressure...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Claire Goodwin-Fee, chief executive of the psychological support organisation Frontline19, to consider the mental health challenges facing charity leaders. They discuss recent research by Fair Collective, in which 85 per cent of participating small charity leaders said their mental health had been negatively affected by their work. Claire describes her o...