Sir Stuart Etherington

Chief executive, National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) from 1 February 1994

Sir Stuart Etherington has been chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) since 1994. He was knighted in the 2010 Queen's Birthday honours.

Under his reign, NCVO has undergone a substantial rise in public profile and has seen its membership rise eight-fold to 7,000 organisations - though at least 2,000 of these are tiny charities that can join for free.

Sir Stuart has a BSc in Politics, two MAs - one in social service planning and the other in international relations and diplomacy - and an MBA from London Business School.

His background is in social work and he came to the charity sector because of a project run by Mind, then the National Association for Mental Health. In his three years as director of good practice in mental health, Sir Stuart turned it from a small project into a successful charity in its own right.

In 1987 he joined the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (now RNID) as director of public affairs and four years later, aged 35, he became its chief executive. Three years later in 1994 he was headhunted to lead the NCVO.
Sir Stuart has also sat on various governmental bodies such as the Economic and Social Research Council which funds research and training, and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit which aims to help government deliver on key policies on subjects such as education, health, crime and transport. He is Pro-Chancellor of Greenwich University and a Council Member of the Institute of Employment Studies. He has been a trustee of CAF, Business in the Community, GuideStar UK, the Chair of the BBC Appeals Advisory Committee, and a member of the Community and Social Affairs Committee of Barclays Bank.

In 2005, Sir Stuart won the outstanding achievement award at the Charity Awards.

In 2008 Civil Society ran a tongue-in-cheek online poll that asked whether the leader of the voluntary sector was Sir Stuart or his counterpart at Acevo, Stephen Bubb. Sir Stuart won hands down with 80 per cent of the vote.

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