Cass Business School and NCVO have launched a new programme to get more voluntary sector women onto PLC boards. Lynne Berry explains why.
Lord Davies' recent report highlighted the slow rate of progress towards gender diversity in FTSE 100 and 250 boardrooms. He argued that boards could be strengthened by adding senior women from government, academia, professional and entrepreneurial backgrounds. He omitted the charitable sector.
Cass Business School, in the City of London, and NCVO have launched an initiative to demonstrate that the voluntary sector is a vital source of highly-skilled and talented women. It recognises their expertise may need to be enhanced: the workings of private sector corporate governance, corporate finance, shareholder value and market sentiment are not major factors in the voluntary sector. It also acknowledges that charity governance brings skills that are less developed in the corporate sector.
The programme hopes to encourage diversity, not just of gender, but also of skills and knowledge on the boards of British companies. The Dean of Cass, Richard Gillingwater, has said that senior women in the voluntary sector “typically bring a wide breadth of knowledge to the table – charities are leaders in accountability, demonstrating impact, building public trust, motivating staff, stakeholder engagement and the need to produce high quality results to a strict bottom line”.
The first programme has inevitably been highly selective in choosing the participants. We wanted to make sure that a comment put to me by a FTSE 100 chairman could not have validity. He dismissed the expertise of someone running a global voluntary organisation, dealing with emerging economies, negotiating with the World Bank, managing a workforce of tens of thousands, as “just a bit of charity work”. We wanted to take for granted that the women involved had a high degree of financial, governance, operational and stakeholder management experience and were confident in both executive and non-executive roles.
Together with the seven female chief executives from the voluntary sector, the programme includes some of Cass’s leading experts in corporate finance, corporate governance and commercial strategy; contributors from the FSTE 100 and headhunters who work in the corporate world. We are looking at what might make such women credible on corporate boards, and what these women need to know in order to make informed decisions about whether to put themselves forward.
We have only held one event so far and so it's too early to draw any conclusions. However, some interesting ideas are emerging, such as the use of language to describe experience. For example, translating the complexity of managing major, trusted brands in competitive markets, often in different jurisdictions, into something headhunters and their clients might recognise, is a challenge. As another FTSE 100 chairman put it to me, he saw leading a charity as being about doing good but having no interest in finance: “Does what it says on the tin, doesn't it? Not-for profit; not for me”.
The voluntary sector has a good record in embracing expertise from all sectors (indeed few people in the voluntary sector are likely to have only worked in it). It has a better record than business in promoting women as both executives and non-executives, though there is still much to be done. At the end of this programme, all or none of the women may want to seek roles as non-executives in the City. They may or may not be welcomed. Meanwhile NCVO and Cass will have developed a great deal of knowledge about the leadership challenges of crossing boundaries and where diversity can add value. I hope this will lead to greater mutual understanding and respect and indeed, new programmes. And I hope Lord Davies doesn't forget us in future!
Lynne Berry is deputy chair of the Canal and River Trust and a senior visiting Fellow at Cass Business School