Larger charities should provide more support to other sector organisations, the chief executive of Age UK has suggested. 

Speaking as part of a panel discussion about charity leadership, organised by the law firm Stone King in London last night, Paul Farmer said generosity was important for sector leaders during these challenging times. 

“Generosity has many layers attached to it but I think for organisations, especially perhaps the larger organisations, there’s a real need for generosity of spirit, generosity of focus, generosity of finance and activity,” he said. 

“If we are really going to support the ecosystem of the charity sector, then large organisations like ours have a big role to play in supporting smaller organisations.”

Farmer said trustees should not ask their chief executives to tell them how much they had promoted their own brand but to ask them “what collaboration work they’ve done this month, this quarter, this year”. 

Also speaking on the panel, Sarah Elliott, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, had earlier said a charity leader she spoke to recently had told her: “In 40 years in the sector I cannot think of a more challenging time to lead.” 

In the question and answer session, Elliott went on to warn that she was concerned about long-term leadership in the voluntary sector because people were stepping away due to the demands being put on them. 

“Something that worries me at the moment is that we have leaders leaving the sector because they are burnt out,” she said. 

“We also have teams that sit under the chief exec that don’t want the top job because they’ve seen it and it’s not something they want to do.”

Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of the think tank the New Economics Foundation, said he was in his 17th year as a charity leader. 

“It feels certainly the most uncertain and challenging time to be an organisational leader in our sector,” he said. 

Farmer said it was a time for leaders to dig deep “but we’ve been good at doing that for quite a long time now”. 

He said: “It doesn’t matter which particular era we started leading, we’ve all had to dig deep to face the social challenges of whatever period we’ve operated in. 

“We have learned how to be resilient and I think we are pretty damn good at that. 

“What we have to do is work out how we channel that resilience not into a counsel of despair but into a counsel of hope.”