Our Charity is in the process of writing a succession plan to recruit a new Chair of Trustees. We anticipate our current Chair will step down in the next 1-2 years. This will be our first change of Chair for our Board and we are discussing the potential to introduce a co-Chair/vice-Chair role if this proved to be beneficial and useful (depending on how recruitment goes, for e.g. to make provision for the situation where two people might be interested in being Chair and willing to share the role together).

Our constitution doesn't outline any specific process for recruiting or choosing a Chair, and neither does it reference the option to use a co/vice Chair structure. We want to understand this co/vice Chair structure better.

1: Can anyone share their experience of changing the structure of the Board from a single Chair to a co/vice Chair? We have read online about the pros and cons of having a co/vice Chair in general, but are wondering if anyone can share any resources to find out how many charities have this structure and how successful that has been for them?

2: Are there other Charity Board structures we should consider and what do these look like?

3: We would be grateful for any wisdom to be shared by anyone who has gone through the process of recruiting a new Chair (either from within the existing Board or externally) and/or anyone who has made changes to their constitution in regards to Trustee/Chair recruitment and has any advice to share.

Thank you very much