There's not much demand for hedge fund managers in rural Uganda. This may not come as a surprise but it is, in some ways, a bit of a pity: VSO, the international development charity, is short of volunteers, but the UK seems to be long on redundant financiers.

VSO has seen a significant crunch-related increase in the number of people from business backgrounds who want to sign up to its programmes. In November, 2007, 22 per cent of applications came from managers and business people, but 12 months later this had increased to 37 per cent.

However, former City workers looking for an alternative to job-hunting in the UK do not always have what it takes to help fight poverty and disadvantage in developing countries, Marg Mayne, the charity's new chief executive, says.

“We can't place everybody. Ultimately our purpose is to be a development NGO, so our job is to find the skills that are needed overseas, not to find the placements that are wanted by volunteers here.”

While marketing and business experience can be useful, one of the critical factors in assessing suitability is motivation. “If you are simply wanting to escape, well, this is quite a tough challenge. It is not a soft option.”

Unfortunately, the recession also means that the people who VSO particularly needs are mostly staying put. “Where people still have secure jobs they don't want to give them up, and as a result we are under-subscribed in health and education,” she says.

The downturn - and Ms Mayne's arrival in November after seven years as the finance director of the British Council and a brief interim stint at Volunteering England - is also bringing about internal changes to VSO.

“My goal is transformation,” she says. “This recession will be tough and this is the moment for the organisation to look very hard at how it does what it does and to reinvent itself.”

While the charity's central purpose, international development using volunteers, will remain, its business model may need to change. “We need a fundamental review of how we do what we do because organisations that survive recessions are not the ones that salami slice and keep cutting back a little bit, then suddenly find they're at the bone and there's nowhere else to go. They are the ones that transform themselves.”

Having said that, she is at pains to make clear that she is not coming in with a ready-made plan to reshape the organisation; this would be arrogant, she says. “The way that you shape an organisation has to come after you decide what you want to achieve. You decide what your vision is, what your strategy is, and then how best you organise yourself to deliver against it.”

She doesn't want to second-guess the results of the strategic review that is designed to do just that, but she expects the future shape to become clear within six to nine months. “It could be radically different, but it won't be change for change's sake. If we find what we have and what we are doing is sound and robust we will keep doing it, but I am sure there will be lots where we say 'look, there's a different way of doing this now'.”

One of the big questions underpinning the new vision is how the charity can increase its influence. Ms Mayne wants it to double the impact that it has on poverty, as hard times are hardest for the very poor. Doing that means working out a way to measure the slightly nebulous concept of “impact”. On top of this, one of the immediate challenges for the charity is the relative value of the dollar and the pound.

Most of VSO's overseas work is in dollar-linked currencies, so the charity has effectively lost between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of its budget. That has not reduced its ambitions, however; Ms Mayne is simply investing in fundraising to increase its income by 25 per cent. “We are also continuing our efficiency programme, which we started last year, to make sure that we are as streamlined as possible.

There will be some job reductions. That's inevitable. At this point, not on a mass scale, but you certainly can't rule it out.”

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