Charity leaders’ body ACEVO is warning of a “worrying trend” of chief executives quitting the role or moving away from the sector altogether.

Burnout, “the challenges of leadership in the current climate” as well as “frustration with difficult governance relationships” are being cited as the main causes for CEOs deciding to quit.

The warning has been made in ACEVO’s annual report for the year ending March 2025, which details an increase in enquiries from charity leaders to its crisis support service, as well as a decline in membership.

Over the year 94 charity leaders sought help through ACEVO’s ‘CEO in Crisis’ service, an increase of 17.5% on the previous year.

“The case load for that service continues the trend of recent years not only in numbers of members seeking support but in the complexity of intertwining issues and the length of time for cases to be resolved,” states its annual report.

“As a result of this increasing case load we have invested in expanding our highly skilled support team with the recruitment of additional associates.”

ACEVO says that during its 2025/26 financial year it is also investing time and resources into “some long planned preventative work, to try to help more members before they get to a crisis point”.

Its annual report says that towards the end of the financial year ACEVO saw “our first recorded drops in membership of several years”, ending the period with 1,750 members, 12 fewer than the previous year.

Elsewhere, the annual report says that ACEVO “delivered a smaller deficit” of £116,000 than the £150,000 it had “originally budgeted for”

Of the members lost during the year most were “in the smallest fee bands”, which “reflects the ongoing severe financial pressures being felt at that end of the sector”, says ACEVO's annual report.

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