The Kids Company case - Impact on charity governance

Alex is a Director and senior academic at Cass Business School, City, University of London and leads their Centre for Charity Effectiveness (Cass CCE). She has combined a senior career in financial services with periods of postgraduate study and over a decade of working solely within the nonprofit sector – as an educator, adviser, charity board chair and trustee. Her teaching and PhD research focuses on mergers within the charity sector, exploring the resultant social value created and the nonfinancial components that contribute to this.

Alex is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce. She is a Freeman of the City of London and sits on the finance and audit committee of the Seckford Foundation.

Shirley has worked with charities, community and voluntary organisations for 40 years, the last 20 with the Third Sector in Scotland. This work includes assisting service providers, self-help groups, feminist organisations, collectives and housing associations; and might be in the form of (i) training, in and out-house, governance topics, (ii) facilitation of strategic planning sessions or (iii) facilitating action learning sets. Shirley has a particular interest in the dynamics within boards and between board members and their paid and volunteer staff.

Shirley has a doctorate in organisational psychology from the University of London, based on the study of the roles of chairs of boards and senior staff. She is the author of academic and practical publications on governance in the third sector and was a member of the workgroup that devised the Governance Code for the Third Sector in Scotland.

Professor Gareth Morgan is Senior Partner of charity consultants The Kubernesis Partnership LLP (now based in East Lothian, Scotland) and Emeritus Professor of Charity Studies at Sheffield Hallam University.

For over 25 years he has been involved in policy work regarding charity legislation and accounting across the jurisdictions of the UK. He has led university research projects in this field and is the au-thor of two charity books and a wide range of articles and research papers on issues of charity regulation and accounting. He has provided oral evidence on charity regulation to Parliament. In 2018/2019 he was appointed by the four charity regulators of the UK and Ireland as Independent Chair of the ‘Charities SORP Governance Review’.

Shivaji is a charity lawyer.He advises on the creation of charities, their dissolution, and most of the issues they encounter in between. He works with a wide variety of local, national and international charities. Independent sources describe him as ‘very knowledgeable’; ‘expert’; and ‘very enthusiastic’ - and he writes and regularly speaks on charity governance issues. Shivaji has a particular specialism in advising faith charities on complex governance issues, including internal disputes and charity proceedings.

Away from his desk, Shivaji is a serial charity trustee and an occasional transport campaigner, currently promoting ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods’ to provide people-friendly streets and safer routes to school in Birmingham.