‘Chief Everything Officer’: for leaders of small charities

For leaders of small charities, the CEO role can feel like you’re ‘Chief Everything Officer’ – managing it all.

This half-day workshop is designed for leaders of smaller organisations seeking to enhance understanding of their leadership role and how this interplays with their own wellbeing, network with peers, and develop themselves as high-impact leaders capable of calmly navigating the complexity of the small charity sector.

The workshop will cover:

• the fundamental building blocks of an effective and impactful smaller organisation
• the core leadership capabilities and organisational conditions required to drive strategy, culture, and sustainable impact in a small organisation context
• tools and practical approaches for appropriately balancing long-term strategic goals and vision alongside necessary daily tasks, whilst prioritising wellbeing and sustainable leadership 
• the importance of community and peer connection and the wider conditions needed to enable leaders to excel and thrive in the ‘Chief Everything Officer’ role.

The workshop is designed to be a safe space for you to explore your role. It will be highly interactive, blending traditional learning with creative facilitation and candid peer-to-peer reflection. The structure includes individual thinking and reflection time, whole-group discussions, targeted breakout rooms for smaller group in-depth sharing, and a facilitated session on strategic future planning and personal leadership growth.

We are keen to reduce barriers to attendance and are offering two full bursary places for this event – applications for bursaries have now closed. The bursary application deadline is 28th February 2026. We will let you know whether you have been awarded a bursary place by 12th March 2026.

Speaker

Vic Hancock Fell

Director & Small Charity Specialist

Vic Hancock Fell

Director & Small Charity Specialist

Vic helps small charity leaders feel more confident, better equipped, and able to make real impact, without drowning in chaos.

With 20 years’ experience living the small charity reality, she knows the pressure first-hand. The 3am panic about payroll. The £500 grant applications that take up an entire evening. Board members who look great on paper but ghost your emails, and the overwhelm and loneliness of being responsible for it all.

She’s been the person doing ten jobs because there was no one else to do them, and the leader quietly wondering whether the sector was broken, or whether she just wasn’t good enough.

This experience now shapes her work. She specialises in giving small charity leaders the knowledge, tools, support, and strategy they need to lead with confidence and care, while reconnecting with the joy of why they started. Her core message is simple and hopeful. Small charity leadership doesn’t have to be this hard. The overwhelm isn’t a character flaw, and it is possible to build sustainable organisations without sacrificing mental health, relationships, or belief in the work.

Her impact has been recognised across the sector, including being named in Charity Times’ 2023 list of Women Making a Difference in the Charity Sector.