NCVO chief executive Stuart Etherington is a huge character and exerts enormous influence in the sector. Ian Allsop spoke to him.

Stuart Etherington is best known for his hugely influential role in the voluntary sector over the past decade and the commitment, shrewdness and eloquence with which he has discharged this. However, he also achieved a great deal prior to that when it was a very different place in which to work.

His background is in social work, and he didn't come to the sector because he wanted to work for a charity but because of an interest in the work of one organisation around mental health policy.

Good Practices in Mental Health started as a project of Mind and, in his three years as director up to 1987, it became established as a charity in its own right. It was only when he was doing it, he says, that he realised he was a voluntary sector manager.

“I thought, this is quite interesting, I think I like this. I liked the flexibility, innovation, and risk-taking aspects and thought I would stick with it.”

He then went to RNID as policy director which he says was a completely different experience but an inspiring place to be. In 1991 he became chief executive, which at the age of 35 was, and still would be, considered very young to be in charge of a major charity.

Three years later, he moved on to become chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, where he has overseen an impressive eight-fold rise in membership. The changes the organisation has gone through reflect the great changes in the role of the sector generally over the last ten years, many of which NCVO has played a key part in securing.

He sees his greatest achievement at NCVO as being prepared for the incoming Labour government in 1997 and staying the course in pursuit of the policy agenda. He identifies the major challenge now as how to marry together the public service delivery with the civil society and renewal agendas.

Etherington has sat on numerous influential government and sector committees and is a trustee of CAF, Business in the Community, Civicus and GuideStar UK amongst others. Somehow along the way, he also found time to acquire three masters degrees including an MBA - and not one of them from the internet!

He says that management in the sector is better than people claim. But he sees special challenges in managing staff and volunteers driven by a cause while at the same time maintaining a professional approach.

For meeting these challenges so successfully throughout his career, as well as his undoubted role in increasing the prominence and political impact of the voluntary sector, he is the winner of the outstanding achievement award in 2005.