About World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)
WSPA is a well-respected global animal welfare charity with a reputation for delivering results at the forefront of animal protection. With offices in 15 countries, an operating budget of over $70 million and an unparalleled network of more than 1,000 organisations in 156 different countries WSPA makes a powerful, global impact.
WSPA
runs global campaigns on disaster management, stopping the illegal trade in
wild animals and humane and sustainable agriculture to end the suffering of
billions of animals in intensive farming. The
organisation started as a membership organisation in the UK and USA 30 years
ago, but it is now a truly global organisation with a new governance structure.
Its new
strategy is to make animal welfare part of the global wellbeing debate and
bring it more into the public consciousness, much like environmental and
humanitarian charities have done over the past decade.
The
charity is mid-way through implementing a five year strategy and focusing on
delivering real and lasting change not only for the animals, but for the people
who depend on them, which means it needs to engage at the top tables in both
governments and big businesses around the world.
To
achieve its new goals, WSPA wanted to strengthen its board and recruit several new trustees to its board from all around the world with
strong experience in promoting higher standards in animal welfare globally.
The challenge
Previously WSPA had recruited people
through its own networks, and mainly from animal charities, but this
recruitment and search process needed to be different and reflect the new organisational
structure and mission.
Whilst there were trustee boards in
place in several countries; the main International board based in the UK now
needed to reflect the global nature of its work. The charity needed a more
diverse group of international trustees from all walks of life not just animal
welfare organisations, to join the International board. The search began two
years ago and is on-going.
As Stephen Corri, director of
governance and legal services at WSPA commented: “We wanted to find trustees with
experience of working with large humanitarian or environmental charities that
could help us raise the profile of animal welfare, as these kinds of charities
have done in the past. We also needed people with strong commercial and
financial backgrounds that are able to make change happen from a business
perspective and help us build networks across the world.”
The
recruitment process
To recruit on such a global scale is a
challenge and to find an organisation flexible enough to be able to do this is
also a challenge.
WSPA met up with several large
recruitment firms, as well as Trustees Unlimited.
Even though Trustees Unlimited hadn’t
undertaken a big international search before they were passionate about the project
and flexible in their approach as they moved through the process, so they were
selected.
Stephen Corri commented: “We needed a
bespoke recruitment service; not an ‘off-the-shelf’ recruitment package that
many of the larger recruitment agencies were offering. This was a unique search
with a unique set of requirements. We also needed the service to be very
cost-effective.
“Trustees Unlimited offered exactly
what we needed, within our budget and working together we devised a very
successful recruitment programme that has already brought us several great
candidates.”
Olga
Johnson, Associate Director at Trustees Unlimited headed up the search. Olga is
well travelled and having been on the board of three international charities
has first-hand experience of what was needed.
After
taking a detailed briefing Olga set about the extensive global search to find potential
candidates outside the UK that could offer the experience the charity needed to
take it forward.
All
of the WSPA trustee roles require significant global strategic expertise. In
the last two years a skills audit of trustees identified a specific need for a
new trustee with strategic finance expertise from the commercial sector, and another
with humanitarian aid expertise.
An in-depth global search enabled WSPA to recruit three new trustees in 2012 and 2013 with the above experience. Another search was completed to identify a trustee with relevant global vetinary and animal welfare expertise, and for this role Olga focused on three sectors to identify candidates:
- International animal welfare
voluntary sector including contacts within WSPA
- Veterinary colleges and their
alumni outside the UK together with veterinary professional membership
societies
- Veterinary pharmaceutical
industry
Olga Johnson commented: “This is a
very unique and long term search for us, and during the recruitment process I
travelled via the web to China, Thailand, New Zealand, Malaysia, Australia, Nigeria,
Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya DRC and the US
making contact with organisations we felt could help us find candidates with
the right experience and background.
“By a fortunate coincidence I was able
to interview one of the candidates in Kenya, as I just happened to be on
holiday there at the time. It truly was a global search,” adds Ms Johnson.
The
new trustees
So far Trustees Unlimited has
recruited three trustees with a combination of humanitarian expertise and
commercial and financial expertise, two of which are overseas. Paul Baldwin,
managing director of HSBC Global Banking and Markets Division in London was
recruited first in 2012.
This was followed last year by Nesta
Hatendi, who is based in Kenya and is the regional representative for Africa
for Help Age International. Another is Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly who is based in
Thailand and is a senior advisor for Save the Children UK in the Asia region.
The search for trustees is on-going and, having successfully completed a global search for a veterinary trustee, Trustees Unlimited has put forward three more candidates for interview.
Olga
Johnson comments: “This search has so far found three extraordinary new
trustees for WSPA who are already in place; and in the next few weeks
interviews will be taking place for the veterinary trustee role.It has been a
pleasure working with WSPA and I very much look forward to continuing to look
for trustees and completing their international board.”
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