How to serve on a third sector board | Susan Boster in conversation with Peter Dart

Peter Dart is the Founder and CEO of Dartahead and has spent much of his career working
across marketing, business and the arts. He began his career at Unilever, becoming
Marketing and Sales Director in the Philippines at 29, before co-founding Added Value,
which was later acquired by Tempus. He subsequently spent more than 20 years at WPP,
where his roles included leading the group’s relationship with Unilever and serving on the
board of Smollan.

Alongside his commercial career, Peter has extensive experience across the not-for-profit
sector, particularly in music and education. His board roles have included the VOCES8
Foundation, the Royal College of Music and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He
currently chairs the Royal Choral Society.

What boards, private and non-profit, do you currently sit on, and which have you sat on
in the past?

My first board was Unilever in the Philippines, where I was Marketing and Sales Director
from 1983 to 1987. I was appointed at 29 and was told I was the youngest person ever
appointed to a Unilever operational board. There was no internet, no email, and it could
take 24 hours to get a call through to London, so you just got on with it. It was a
completely formative and wonderful experience.

After Unilever, I co-founded Added Value, which grew to several hundred people before we
sold it to Tempus. That led to my first PLC board and another formative experience when
Havas bid for the company and WPP counter-bid. While at WPP, I also served on the board
of Smollan, a South African family business, helping it expand internationally over more
than ten years.

On the not-for-profit side, I was a trustee of the VOCES8 Foundation for 13 years, including
a year as Chair, and spent ten years on the Council of the Royal College of Music. I also
served on the main board of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, helping oversee the
change of Music Director from Neville Marriner to Joshua Bell.

Other boards have included the Westminster Grey Coat Foundation, the Prince’s
Foundation, now the King’s Foundation, and the Education and Employers Taskforce. Since
2017, I have chaired the Royal Choral Society, which is the only board I serve on at the
moment. Beyond those formal roles, I have helped more than 100 not-for-profits with
marketing, branding and communications.

You were an Organ Scholar at Oxford and a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music
before becoming a Marketing Director at Unilever. What prompted you to return to the
arts later in your career through board service? Was it a sense of “paying it back”, or
did you see a specific opportunity in the arts that you felt uniquely qualified to fix?

I have always loved music, ever since I was a child, although my parents were not musical.

I actually read physics [at Oxford] because I thought nuclear energy would be the answer
to the planet’s energy needs. Then Unilever chatted me up, and I went in a rather different
direction.

From then on, I pursued two parallel paths of marketing and music. I was almost always
playing the organ in churches, conducting choirs or doing something musical alongside my
professional life. I suppose my brain has always been a mixture of logic and magic.

Board service started to come when I was working at WPP. I saw a need that I was
qualified to address, particularly where branding and marketing could play an important
role. Good boards need a balance of skills — legal, accounting, educational and so on. I was
usually the “marketing person”.

That role has become even more relevant. For young musicians starting out, however good
they are, understanding social media, managing a website and knowing how to promote
themselves are increasingly important.

Arts organisations face a particular kind of board pressure, balancing artistic integrity
with financial survival. How does that tension compare to the commercial pressures
you have navigated on for-profit boards?

There are some things that all boards need. You have to steer the line between governance
and management, and turn healthy challenge into support. The quality of data and
information matters, especially in the emerging age of AI. You also need independence
and effective chairs.

For a commercial board, commercial success is arguably the single biggest objective. For
music or arts boards, it is a more fragile juggling act between protecting the mission — the
“why do we exist?” — and maintaining financial health.

Costs become a critical discussion, as does where the money comes from, especially in the
UK. Is it the Arts Council? They can change their mind. Is it donors and fundraising?
Legacies may become increasingly important, while there is less money coming from
corporates.

In for-profits, power is concentrated around performance and capital, and the CEO is the
focus. In not-for-profits, it is more nuanced, with influence spread across founders, donors,
artists and management.

All the time, you still need to focus on the output. Is our brand strong? Do we have a good
product? Are supporters and audiences coming to our concerts?

At what point, if ever, did serving on a non-profit board start feeling like a core part of
your professional identity?

That happened while I was working at WPP. My day job was leading our second-biggest
client, Unilever. WPP did a huge amount for them through more than 40 agencies, and my
job was connecting it all together to make the result more effective and efficient for the
client.

As much as I always loved Unilever, there had to be a bit more to life than soap and soup.
Beyond my family, which has always been the most important thing, I started to get onto
boards. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields was the first not-for-profit that really got
my juices going. It was almost broke and Neville Marriner was nearing the end of his
wonderful life. Was that a problem or an opportunity? That was the one that really drew
me in.

I also began helping organisations without necessarily serving on their boards. One great
experience was helping William, Kate and Harry when they were starting their Foundation.
I led the development of its branding and several initiatives, including the Invictus Games,
United for Wildlife and Heads Together.

How does the governance of a 150-year-old choir challenge your thinking differently
from the board of a business like Smollan? How do those experiences inform each
other?

They are two very different organisations, although it comes back to some of the same
things that make a successful board.

At Smollan, I learned the importance of understanding what your colleagues bring to the
party and trusting them. You need to gauge the balance between challenge and support,
and you cannot be afraid to speak up even when everyone else has a different point of
view.

The purpose of marketing is to help invent the future, and new ideas often challenge the
status quo. I also learned the value of having a good relationship with the Chair and taking
the time to socialise offline. And, frankly, being motivated by success matters.

The Royal Choral Society has taught me some different things. People give their time, so
they need to feel thanked and supported, and to see that their efforts make a positive
difference.

Keeping a 150-year-old institution healthy and progressive requires a careful balance
between “what we’ve always done” and doing new things. This year, for example, we sang
Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall on Good Friday for the 150th time. At the same
time, we need new music, concerts and venues that appeal to our singers and supporters.

Is there a type of board that you find the most challenging or most fulfilling to serve on
well, and why?

The world is at an extraordinary juncture. Young people are often disoriented, or worse, by
social media. Global role models for leadership are the least inspiring in my lifetime, while
caring for the planet, once a headline discussion at Davos, has become diluted.

Then there is AI. AI is going to have a profound effect on boards too. If AI can summarise
and scenario-test decisions better than humans, boards need to embrace and use it to
bring better judgement and more proactive thinking. It can record meetings, map an
organisation’s history and identify trends that might inform what comes next.

So the role of the board needs to shift towards discussing outcomes and become even
more human. People forget that the emotional life of boards is important too. Machines
will provide more of the logic and commercial analysis, so boards need to use their time
for other things.

When have you got it wrong, and what did you learn?

I have always been a very busy person. I have a lot of energy, I like helping people and I
find it hard to say no. Sometimes I have simply taken on too much and become too
stretched. If my family were listening to this, they would certainly complain that they did
not always get top priority.

Finally, what advice would you give to someone joining their first board, regardless of
the sector?

Understand as much as you can before opening your mouth. Get to really know your
colleagues as people, and understand the competences they bring.

Be sure what the time commitment is, and make sure you can actually deliver on it.

Susan Boster (interviewer) is the Founder and CEO of Boster Group Ltd., an award-winning independent consultancy specialising in the development of innovative partnerships between global corporations, cultural institutions and impactful foundations. Boster Group advises leading corporations on building and elevating their partnerships, connecting strategy and activation to clear, measurable business outcomes. Boster Group has overseen the transfer of more than $100 million to cultural and impact partners and delivered measurable results to its clients around the world. Current and former clients include Tishman Speyer, BNP Paribas, General Electric, J.P. Morgan, Moët Hennessy, EY, AMEX, Diageo, Goldman Sachs, Gap Inc., Meta, Bacardi, Montblanc and Disney.

Previously, as Marketing Director at Barnes & Noble and later CMO at News International, Susan oversaw the transitions of both companies to e-commerce and digital platforms, including the launch of barnesandnoble.com. Susan is Deputy Chair of the Design Museum and is an Advisor to The Representation Project. She previously served as a Trustee at the Donmar Warehouse and as Vice Chairman of the English National Ballet. Susan is regularly featured as a moderator and keynote speaker at conferences, such as for The Female Quotient during the World Economic Forum, at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, SXSW and the Mobile World Conference. She is a Consultant Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.