Who’s Moving — May 2026 A monthly look at leadership transitions across the charity sector.

This month’s movements carry a pattern worth paying attention to. Several long-serving leaders are stepping down — not in crisis, but at the natural end of formative chapters. The organisations they leave behind will spend the next twelve months finding out whether the foundations they built were deep enough to survive the transition.

That is always the real test of a leader. Not what they achieved while they were there. What held after they left.

The departures

Mark Rowland leaves the Mental Health Foundation after eight years. Angela Hind steps down from the Medical Research Foundation after twenty — having joined as its first employee and overseen its transformation into an independent funder. Sarah Kline departs UnitedGMH after eight years co-founding and leading the organisation through work that included suicide decriminalisation efforts across three countries.

Eight years. Eight years. Twenty years.

These are not routine handovers. They are the end of eras. The organisations involved are, in different ways, starting again — with all the risk and possibility that carries.

The interim question

Tinnitus UK has appointed a three-month interim CEO while permanent recruitment continues. The Refugee Council’s incoming permanent chief executive Katie Ghose takes over from an interim. The TCPA appointed Katy Lock permanently having already been serving in the role on an interim basis.

The TCPA outcome is the most interesting of the three. Interim-to-permanent is sometimes a decision of convenience — filling a gap rather than making a choice. But it can also be the right outcome of a process rigorous enough to confirm what was already in front of the board.

The difference between those two things matters more than it might appear.

Fundraising leadership

Mencap has appointed Mohini Raichura Brown as executive director of fundraising, joining from the British Asian Trust. Pennies has brought in a new CFO and chief transformation and technology officer ahead of a co-founder’s planned retirement.

Both appointments signal something worth noting. Fundraising leadership is increasingly being treated as a strategic hire rather than a functional one. The organisations making these moves are thinking ahead — about what income needs to look like in three years, not just who can manage the team they currently have.

That shift in thinking, when it happens, usually produces better appointments.

The board appointments

Clarke Carlisle becomes chair of Mind. His appointment is unusual in the best sense — someone whose public profile and personal experience of mental health carries genuine credibility with the communities Mind exists to serve, not just with funders and government.

Nicola Hodkinson steps up to chair Mates in Mind after five years as a trustee. That progression — from trustee to chair with institutional knowledge already in place — is often undervalued. Boards that appoint chairs from outside without that grounding can spend two years in catch-up.

Cecilia Fenerty takes the chair at Glaucoma UK, bringing more than 25 years as a consultant ophthalmologist. Her comment on the role is worth reading: patient experience sitting alongside clinical evidence in shaping services. That framing — not one or the other — is exactly the kind of thinking that distinguishes good charity governance from the rest.

What this month suggests

Leadership transitions are clustering. Some of that is planned succession. Some is the cumulative weight of the last few years reaching individuals who have carried a great deal for a long time.

For boards, the question is not just whether a transition is managed well. It is whether the organisation has been built to survive one.