Chair

Established in 1975, Comhlámh is the Irish association of international development workers and volunteers. As a membership organization, we build and mobilise community around global justice issues. Comhlámh nurtures and supports work for change, locally and globally, and advocates for a world beyond injustice.

We believe the right person to Chair the board of Comhlamh has a strong vision for ODA and experience and credibility with Irish Aid and other potential funders. Some knowledge of Comhlamh is welcome but not required. 

We have a strong board in many regards (Finance, HR, Risk, Governance) but we lack the right person to Chair. We have had full clean audited accounts for the past 3 years and as a mature organisation (50 years last year!), governance and policies are strong. We have funding challenges but are concluding a restructure process that 'right sizes' our organisation for our budget for 2026. We also have reasonably healthy reserves for a small organisation (3+ months running costs).

The skills we seek to maintain across the board are below. Those in bold are desirable skills for the chair. For items not in bold these skills are welcome but we have already met these requirements through other board members.

1 Mission & Sector 
1.1 International Development & Volunteering 
1.2 Development Education & Global Citizenship Education (GCE) 
1.3 Global South Partnerships & Collaboration 
1.4 Civil Society & Community Development 
1.5 Research, Higher Education, Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning 
1.6 Ecological Sustainability & Environmental Justice 
1.7 Funding Landscape & Donor Ecosystem 
1.8 Irish Aid & Official Development Assistance (ODA) 

2 Organisational Leadership, Governance & Sustainability 
2.1 Strategic Leadership & Organisational Development 
2.2 People, HR & Safeguarding 
2.3 Governance, Accountability, Legal & Compliance 
2.4 Finance & Risk Management 
2.5 Fundraising & Income Generation 

3 Influence & Engagement 
3.1 Communications, Media & Public Engagement 
3.2 Digital, Data & Technology 
3.3 Funder Relations & Strategic Partnerships 
3.4 Irish Aid & Government Relations 
3.5 Senior-Level Influence, Relationships & Sector Profile 
3.6 Advocacy, Campaigning & Public Policy 
3.7 Partnerships, Networking & Stakeholder Engagement 
3.8 Trade Union & Industrial Relations

Our Strategy 2023-2028 for reference is at: https://comhlamh.org/our-strategy/
Through the delivery of this strategy, we aim to nurture and support the work for justice locally and globally. We strive to provide the spaces for transformative thinking, practice, and action, and we believe this is key to establishing the conditions for innovation and change.