Attracting great talent into the sector with Paul Smith and Jane Huntington

Attracting Exceptional Talent into the Charity Sector

Welcome back to Season 2 of Virtue & Virtuosity. For those new subscribers, this is a newsletter that comes out fortnightly, and runs alongside the podcast Virtue & Virtuosity. The newsletter has highlights from the podcast episode, alongside news updates from the world of charity and technology.

This week’s episode features:

Jane Huntington - Head of Application Development and Support, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association .

Paul Smith MBA MBCS CITP CIO at Amnesty International UK

In this first episode of Season 2, Stuart talks with Jane and Paul about how they are attracting talent into their organisations, and how they are getting technology including AI to work for them. Check below for links to listen to the podcast.

Award Season

In the world of Charity and NFP Tech, September is awards season, with multiple awards ceremonies for individuals and teams. There are too many too mention (ie – please don’t be upset if you achieved something brilliant, and I haven’t mentioned it.. but feel free to put in a request for a mention in a future episode).

However, there are a couple of worthy mentions. Firstly, in the annual Foundry CIO100 awards, there were six award winners from the sector – Alex Butler (Citizens Advice), Liz Cochin (English Heritage), Jon Townsend (National Trust), Lara Burns (Scouts Association), Roxanne Heaton (Macmillan Cancer Support) - congrats to all of you, and well done for helping the sector punch above it’s weight.

The sixth award winner, featuring in the highest place at #15, was Paul Smith from Amnesty International who … coincidentally is this week’s special guest! Also worth a mention, and huge congrats is Jason Oliver in the #1 slot, who is in the parallel higher ed sector. He has spent many years achieving brilliant things for the sector, including working in a couple of arts/museum organisations, as well as being a trustee of Charity IT Leaders earlier in his career. Well done Jason!

Not that we’re counting, but I make that the second time in four years that the UK’s top CIO comes from a charity sector background. Something really to be celebrated!

The other big mention from awards season that I want to get in here is Marie Curie UK who won best Non-Profit Project at Computing’s 2024 awards. This project, working with NFP specialist, esynergy , got them to a single view of their supporters – the exciting bit here was that they managed this in only six weeks. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing several great case-studies on charities organising their data better to demonstrate impact – look out for an episode focused on this later in the series.

Other Charity and Tech News

Traditionally September is back-to-school month when teams get their heads-down and start new projects, dust off their digital campaigns ready for Christmas, and just for added challenge try and squeeze in some networking at the occasional conference.

This year is no different – but I am sensing a little bit of hesitancy as the world waits for the outcome of the US election, and the UK waits on the October 30th budget. There already seems to be lots of buzz about interaction between the UK charity sector and the new government – it will be interesting to see whether that buzz turns into new initiatives. The relevance to technology here is that big new programmes always create opportunities particularly around Digital, AI and often for Service Delivery charities. Watch this space.

Season 2 Episode 1: Attracting great talent into the sector with Paul Smith and Jane Huntington

In this week’s episode we talk about the changes the sector has seen in how it recruits talent - whether this is volunteers, expert consultants, university graduates, or award-winning leaders.

We also talk a bit about born digital organisations and how larger charities can learn from their experiences (more on this in the next episode as well). And as ever - lots of interesting examples on how AI is being used - particularly as a digital assistant.

Stay Tuned for more insights in future episodes

If you haven’t listened to Season 1 yet – have a look back at some great previous episodes, with a particular focus on AI Adoption. Coming up in Season 2, we have guests from across the NFP/Charity sector, as well as outside challenging voices, and some guests from international organisations. We also will have an episode recorded live with a panel at this year’s Charity IT Leaders conference. Virtue & Virtuosity comes out fortnightly. If you’re keen for me to feature something going on in your charity, please get in touch - and do comment on anything in here, or in the podcast that you like.

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About our host and guests

Stuart McSkimming, Podcast Host

Stuart is an independent consultant and founder of the sector-specific Technology consultancy, Virtue Chain . He is an award-winning leader with over twenty years’ experience in NFP/Charity leadership roles, predominantly in the technology/digital and transformation space. He is an expert in getting the most from teams and focusing organisations on strategic goals to get the most from Technology & Digital. He is passionate about organisations focusing on inclusion and finding ways to attract a diverse mix of top talent into their teams. He has worked as a CIO for two organisations – Shelter and Royal British Legion, and also a variety of roles for VSO – including a short stint as an Interim International Development Country Director in VSO Nepal. Stuart is extensively networked in the not-for-profit sector both in the UK, and internationally, and is the Vice Chair of the top membership organisation, Charity IT Leaders. Stuart enjoys regular public speaking, and also has been known to do stand-up comedy gigs occasionally.

In case its not obvious, views expressed are Stuart’s own view, and don’t represent those of any organisations he is working with or mentions.

Jane Huntington, Head of Application Development and Support, Guide Dogs

Jane has enjoyed over 25 years of working in the non-profit sector. From database marketing in fundraising teams to her current role leading technology teams Jane is passionate about connecting people technology and data to drive delivery of impactful, user-centric solutions that achieve a social impact as well as organisational success. Jane has previously been recognized as Data Professional of the Year by DQM Group and enjoys speaking about the work her teams do at industry events. Jane also volunteers for Guide Dogs and for Charity IT Leaders; married to husband James they have three sons.

Paul Smith, CIO, Amnesty International

A multi global award-winning, transformative Digital Leader. Experienced in Leadership, Digital, Data and Technology as a result of an international career spanning over 20 years in senior roles delivering sustainable strategic outcomes. Operating globally for organisations with up to 3,000 employees, 40,000 volunteers 10 million supporters and with revenue up to $1B. This experience cuts across numerous and varied sectors, technical domains, cultures and geographical regions, worldwide - including Defence, Construction & Engineering, Government Services, Expeditionary Infrastructure, Aviation Solutions, IT & Communications, Dispersed Contingency Operations, Equipment and Systems, Worldwide Power Generation, Global Disaster Relief, Global Logistics, Direct Marketing (multi-vertical), Not-for-Profit Maritime Search and Rescue, Human Rights, Cyber and Automotive. Paul has been recognised for his work, with the following awards

• Global CIO100 – HotTopics

• World CIO200 - Global CIO Forum

• UK CIO100 - CIO.com/ Foundry/ IDC

• Lifetime Award (Legend) - Global CIO Forum