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 Leadership; Amar Abbas, chief executive of Youth Action; Catherine Johnstone, chief executive of the R...
Jun 20, 2025•11 min
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, chief executive of Mermaids, about the impact of the 23-month inquiry into the charity. Mermaids servi...
Jun 17, 2025•29 min
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 its runners’ fundraising efforts and the most effective forms of communication. She describes how t...
Jun 13, 2025•24 min
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 Sir Tom Moore and former interim chief executive of the Captain Tom Foundation. Her successor at the ...
Jun 10, 2025•33 min
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 explains how the ELWP structures its volunteer activities around thematic circles, allowing flexibili...
Jun 06, 2025•29 min
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 manager, about the realities of working for the charity’s charismatic leader, the late Camila Batmangh...
Jun 03, 2025•29 min
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 ways charities can attract new volunteers by showcasing their values on social media, and stresses t...
May 30, 2025•30 min
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 service users prompted it to rethink its approach to working with businesses. He stresses the importance ...
May 23, 2025•31 min
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 alternative ways it has navigated the surge in demand. Sacha explains how the measures taken by the City Br...
May 16, 2025•31 min
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 one of the biggest changes needed for a charity moving to a social enterprise model is a cultural one....
May 09, 2025•32 min
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, and potential ways of communicating failure to donors. Tell us what you think of the Third Sector ...
May 02, 2025•21 min
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 pressures. He recounts the charity’s subsequent adoption of a new pet foster model, which has reduced the overall...
Apr 25, 2025•26 min
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 own experiences of burnout in Frontline19’s early days and shares some of the approaches she took to ...
Apr 17, 2025•29 min
Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Philip Goodwin, chief executive of Unicef UK, to discuss the realities facing international development and humanitarian charities following announced reductions in overseas development assistance by the US, UK and other European governments. Philip stresses the need to communicate with the public on the sector’s achievements and explain the importance of foreign aid as an investment in domestic security, as well as advocating the government. He explai...
Apr 11, 2025•30 min
Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Louise Harris, chief operating officer of the homelessness charity Crisis, to learn about successful and meaningful approaches to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the voluntary sector. Louise outlines the importance for organisations working in the social justice space to treat DEI as a strategic issue as well as a people one, with accountability mechanisms included in monitoring frameworks to keep track of progress. She stresses the need f...
Apr 04, 2025•22 min
Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Claire Gauci, public safety campaigns and programme manager at the Canal and River Trust, and Emily Rayner, senior consultant at the behaviour change and communications agency Claremont. Claire describes how a video intended to educate teenagers about water safety fell flat, prompting the charity to adopt a co-design approach involving a youth group in Wigan. She explains how the process led to a realisation that social media was not an effective way ...
Mar 28, 2025•30 min
Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Okela Douglas-Norgrove, chief executive of Sister System, which supports young women and girls who have been affected by the care system. Okela outlines how Sister System has grown since its formation in 2018 in partnership with 17 care leavers. She describes some of the challenges of co-creating the charity’s strategy with its service users, including additional time and resource demands. She provides insight into navigating the often-complicated po...
Mar 21, 2025•30 min
Acting editor Andy Ricketts and senior reporter Emily Harle are joined by Emma Guise, director of marketing and communications at Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. Emma talks through the reasons behind the charity’s first rebrand since 2017, what it was hoping to achieve and how it will measure its success. She discusses how the charity worked to update its brand for a new digital era and reveals her top tips for charities of all sizes about to embark on a rebrand of their own. Do you have s...
Mar 14, 2025•31 min
Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Keith Wilson, director of income and engagement at the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance. Keith explains how depressed fundraising revenues during the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a major restructure that saw corporate, community and individual fundraising roles merged into supporter engagement officers. He describes how removing income targets and scaling back one-off, transactional donations, such as merchandise sales and the charity’s lottery...
Mar 07, 2025•32 min
Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Mark Greer, managing director at the Charities Aid Foundation, and Charlotte Prothero, external affairs manager at Pro Bono Economics. Mark outlines the growing importance of major donor revenue to the voluntary sector and sets out the cause areas favoured by high-net-worth individuals. He stresses the need for charities to develop long-term relationships with major donors and to treat them as individuals, rather than a homogenous income subset. Charlo...
Feb 28, 2025•28 min
Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Sohail Hanif, chief executive of the National Zakat Foundation, and Taqwa Sadiq, presenter and producer of the BBC audio series Sacred Money . Taqwa explains how an individual’s choice of destination for their annual zakat donation can be influenced by the emotions surrounding their sense of belonging and home. Sohail describes the role of the National Zakat Foundation in collecting and distributing zakat among communities in the UK, with donations ri...
Feb 21, 2025•33 min
Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Elliot Trevithick, principal consultant for charities evaluation and learning at the think tank NPC, and Annie Hinton, senior programme design manager at the youth support charity Right to Succeed. Elliot explains how being one step removed from a charity’s service users can present difficulties when it comes to evaluating programmes that work to change the systems surrounding social problems, rather than directly addressing their symptoms. He stresses...
Feb 14, 2025•31 min
Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK, to discuss the charity’s function as a membership platform for a particularly financially strained section of the voluntary sector. Toby explains how a reset in member relationships has led to hospices alerting Hospice UK to financial and staffing challenges at an earlier stage than previously, enabling his organisation to co-ordinate helpful media coverage at opportune moments. He identifies workforce chal...
Feb 07, 2025•30 min
Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of the New Economics Foundation, to discuss his views on the need for charities to understand the economic context of the issues they work to address. Danny explains why a failure to engage with economic issues has contributed to charities often being treated as an afterthought in government-led discussions about economic growth. The former Oxfam chief also shares his thoughts about the role of more formalised char...
Jan 31, 2025•38 min
Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Tamsyn Hanrahan, director of partnerships and philanthropy at Save the Children UK, and Beth Knight, social sustainability director at Lloyds Banking Group and chair of Save the Children UK’s corporate advisory board. Tamsyn explains why Save the Children UK decided a corporate advisory board would be of benefit to the charity, and how it went about forming one a year ago, including a rigorous recruitment process for senior executives. She describes t...
Jan 24, 2025•28 min
Andy Ricketts and Dami Adewale are joined by Kate Lee, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society. Kate provides insight into the brand work recently undertaken by the charity, with a focus on raising awareness of dementia as well as the charity’s own profile. She explains how taking a more controversial approach to public messaging, including the charity’s recent ‘Long Goodbye’ advertising campaign, has brought attention to the organisation and coincided with increased donations. She also talks...
Jan 17, 2025•34 min
Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, and Wanda Wyporska, chief executive of Safe Passage International, to discuss some of the issues facing the voluntary sector in 2025. These include ways of engaging with local and national government, addressing the chief executive churn, and effectively balancing learned and lived experience to deliver on charitable purposes. They share their views on the need for less division within the sector, which is acc...
Jan 10, 2025•34 min
Lucinda Rouse, Andy Ricketts and Emily Harle dissect the leading stories from the voluntary sector in 2024. Lucinda delivers a speedy round-up of the year’s charity news before the three discuss their selected top stories. These include the closure of the British Youth Council and the National Citizen Service , the finding that charities are subsidising government service contracts by £2.4bn a year, and the implications of a new government for the sector. They share their nominations for the yea...
Dec 18, 2024•27 min
Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, to discuss the charity’s approach to fundraising, supporter engagement and advocacy. Michelle provides insight into the charity’s ongoing data and digital transformation programme: a major investment that aims to personalise supporter engagement and raise the systems surrounding it to the same level as the world-leading research funded by CRUK. She stresses the importance of promoting innovati...
Dec 13, 2024•31 min
Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Kirsty MacDonald, deputy principal for advancement at the Royal Academy of Music, to discuss the charity’s ongoing campaign to raise £100m. Kirsty describes how the academy saw annual fundraising revenues grow from £1.5m to £18m in less than a decade, after investing in necessary systems and infrastructure including research, data and due diligence functions. She stresses the importance of fostering long-term relationships with major donors, bringing ...
Dec 06, 2024•29 min
