Covid-19 appears to had led to a period of retrenchment amongst finance directors at the UK’s largest charities, with fewer taking up their role in the past year than previously, according to data collected by Charity Finance.
The Finance Directors Survey 2022, published today by Civil Society Media's Charity Finance magazine, gathers data on the those running the finance teams at the organisations that make up the Charity Finance 100 Index. This ranks the 100 largest charities in the UK based on three-year average income.
The data shows that just 7% took up their role within the past year. This compares with 13% in the previous survey, which was carried out 18 months ago.
This is arguably due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the huge difficulties it caused for charities.
Experience
However, the experience of finance directors is likely to have stood them in good stead. The survey shows that the average time for a finance director to have been in their current role is five and a half years and that the average finance director has been working in the charity sector for exactly a decade.
The lack of newcomers also means the professional backgrounds of those surveyed remains broadly similar to the 2020 survey, with just under half having moved into their current job from another charity, while a third left a corporate job to work for their charity and around one in five came from public sector roles at councils, the civil service and universities.
Gender equality
Despite the low number of job changes, there still has been some continued progress on gender equality, with 42% women holding the top finance role in these charities, up from 40% in the last survey. In 2018, around one in three were women.
The full data and survey findings are published in the March edition of Charity Finance.
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