Outstanding Achievement Award

Andrew Hind 

Andrew Hind qualified as a chartered accountant in 1979. He worked in practice in Kenya and became interested in the voluntary sector while working on development issues. “Having seen at first hand that aid agencies really do convert donations to activity on the ground and make a difference,” he says, “I wanted to be part of that.”

Attitudes to careers in charities were very different then and recruitment professionals questioned why he wanted to throw away his career. Undaunted, Hind became deputy chief executive at ActionAid in 1986, and says that the single biggest change since then is that no-one would now hold such an opinion.
 
From 1992, he spent three years as director of finance and corporate services at Barnardo’s before becoming chief operating officer of the World Service. While at the BBC he continued his links with the voluntary sector as a trustee for Voluntary Service Overseas and honorary treasurer for both Unicef UK and the Diana Fund. 

Hind co-founded the Charity Finance Directors’ Group in 1987 and was its second chair from 1992-94. In 1995 he published The Governance and Management of Charities which has undoubtedly made a major contribution to good practice in the sector.

In 2004 he became the first chief executive of the Charity Commission and has led the organisation through a significant period of change. He says he is most proud of helping to create a regulator which is considered by charities, and increasingly the public, as fit for purpose in the 21st century.

But this is just one of the many invaluable contributions he has made demonstrating, that far from throwing away his career, he has used it to help improve the effectiveness of UK charities. It is for this that the outstanding achievement award 2008 goes to Andrew Hind.

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