Women make up 71.4% of the workforce at Spain’s accredited non-profit organisations, yet only 46.7% of those organisations are chaired by a woman, according to Fundación Lealtad’s 2026 study on female presence in the Third Sector.
The gap widens further in resources: NGOs led by women manage an average budget of €5.7 million, against €8.9 million for those led by men, a 36% difference.
At the same time, Spain’s schools are entering a period of sustained contraction, with primary and secondary enrolment projected to fall
by more than 600,000 students between 2025 and 2035, according to a joint study by the Fundación Ramón Areces and Fundación Sociedad y Educación. A sector with a well-documented leadership pipeline problem is about to be asked to manage consolidation at
scale.
A pipeline that works at entry level and narrows at the top
The pattern in Spain’s non-profit sector is specific enough to be worth naming precisely. Fundación Lealtad’s research found that 61.2% of accredited organisations now have a woman in the General Director role, up 12 percentage points over five years. That role is usually reached through internal promotion, which is why the figure broadly tracks
the workforce’s gender composition.
The Board Presidency is a different story: only 46.7% are chaired by a woman, and that role is typically filled
through external appointment, a process where, according to Fundación Lealtad’s own analysis, structural bias
has more room to operate. The larger the organisation, the less likely it is to be led by a woman at either level.
This has produced a role that most boards have not formally named yet: a General Director increasingly expected to carry board-level governance responsibilities that, until recently, sat exclusively with the Presidency. Compensation structures and job
descriptions have not caught up with what the role now actually requires.
A new role born from the enrolment decline
Spain’s primary education stage is projected to lose close to 400,000 students between 2025 and 2035, with secondary education (ESO) losing a cumulative 376,000 over the same period, an effect that will intensify after 2030, according to the Ramón Areces and Sociedad y Educación study. This has created demand for a role that barely existed five years ago in the Spanish education sector:
a Head of Network Consolidation, responsible for deciding which schools merge, downsize, or close as enrolment contracts. It is not a role with an obvious internal candidate pool.
Boards are increasingly looking outside education entirely, toward executives with restructuring experience in retail or healthcare, because the skill being hired for is managing decline in an orderly way, not running a school.
“We get asked for a director who can ‘manage decline gracefully,’ which is a strange thing to have to search for, but it is exactly what boards need right now. It is a genuinely different skill set from growing an organisation, and very few candidates have had to prove it yet, because until recently nobody needed to,” says Lorenzo Zavala, Partner at Zavala Civitas.
| Roles and how they’re changing | ||
| Role | What it used to require | What it requires now |
| General Director (non-profit) | Programme delivery and internal operations | Board-level governance fluency, previously reserved for the Presidency |
| Board President (non-profit) | Reputational figurehead, external representation | Active fundraising and strategic accountability, especially at larger organisations |
| Head of Network Consolidation (education) | Did not exist as a defined role | Enrolment forecasting, asset rationalisation, closure and merger planning |
| Rural Education Strategist | Not a distinct function | Dedicated focus on the earliest and sharpest enrolment declines, concentrated in rural municipalities |
Why the budget gap is a sourcing signal, not just an equity statistic
Most search processes treat the gender budget disparity as background context for a diversity conversation, separate from the
technical brief of the search itself. In Zavala Civitas’s experience, this data point is directly useful for sourcing: a meaningful number of highly capable women currently run smaller non-profit organisations at a scale below what their capability would justify, largely because larger board presidencies have not yet been offered to them. For a client seeking a General Director or President for a larger organisation, this is an underused candidate pool, not a side issue.
If you want to know more about our executive search services in this sector click here.
Frequently Asked Questions: Executive Search in Spain for Education and Non-Profit
Why is there a gap between female representation in Spain’s non-profit workforce and its leadership?
Women make up 71.4% of the workforce but only 46.7% of board presidencies, according to Fundación Lealtad’s 2026 study, largely because presidencies are filled through external
appointment networks rather than the internal progression that drives General Director promotion.
What is a Head of Network Consolidation, and why is this role new?
It is a role focused on deciding which schools merge, downsize, or close as enrolment falls, a function that barely existed in Spanish education five years ago and is now being filled largely by executives from outside the sector.
How significant is the projected decline in Spanish school enrolment?
Primary and secondary enrolment combined is projected to fall by more than 600,000 students between 2025 and 2035, with the sharpest effects concentrated in rural areas after 2030.
Should executive search for larger non-profit boards specifically target women currently leading smaller organisations?
This is a sourcing approach Zavala Civitas has found effective, given that budget and organisation size have historically constrained where capable female leaders have
had the opportunity to lead.
Why are General Director roles increasingly requiring governance skills once reserved for the Presidency?
Boards are informally expanding the General Director’s remit to include governance responsibilities, without yet formalising the
change in job descriptions or compensation, creating a role gap most organisations haven’t named.
What does the executive search process involve at Zavala Civitas?
Mandate definition, market mapping across internal and external candidate pools, structured assessment of governance and consolidation experience, and a validation stage before presentation, supported by a 92% closing rate across completed searches.
