Initially, Chairmen of the NMRDG served for short periods. David Whiffen “kindly agreed to be chairman” for the first NMRDG meeting in 1964, at which Norman Sheppard was elected as the first Group Chairman, with David Whiffen as the Vice-Chairman. Norman was followed by Rex Richards (Oxford University) as Chairman a year later. It was subsequently decided that the Chairman should serve for three years and John Elvidge (Battersea Polytechnic) was elected to take over from Rex Richards in 1966, with Eric Mooney and Ernie Cummins remaining as Hon. Secretary and Hon. Treasurer respectively. It appears that the only Vice-Chairman of the Group has been David Whiffen.

Chairmen are approved by the committee and affirmed by the membership, with the outgoing chairman having the custom of making the nomination. They served for three years until 1981, at which time the International Conference changed from being held every three years to every two years (as a result of the spectacular expansion of NMR and because they started to alternate with the European Experimental Conference (EENC) meetings). The Chairman’s tenure was changed to 2 years in consequence. Committee members still serve for 3 years and are elected at the Christmas meeting.

Secretaries and Treasurers have served for as long as it was possible to persuade them to continue! The first Hon. Secretary was Eric Mooney (then at the Northern Polytechnic, London) who organised the first meeting of the Group. Notices went out in his name until 1971 when they were sent out by the Hon. Treasurer, Ernie Cummins (Perkin-Elmer). It was announced at the 21st Meeting in East Anglia on 6 April 1972 that Eric Mooney would resign as Hon. Secretary at the 2nd International Conference, held at the University of Surrey in 1972 when Les Sutcliffe's term as Chairman also ended. Ernie Cummins became Hon. Secretary in 1972. Derek Shaw was Hon. Secretary from 1975 to 1980.  Irwin Jones also acted as Secretary to the group from 1980, overlapping with Derek, with Derek taking responsibility of working towards the forthcoming International Conference and Irwin responsible for the short meetings.  Irwin was officially the Hon. Secretary from 1981, his nomination being confirmed at the Christmas 1981 meeting.  Remarkably, he held this post until 2008 and for this he received an RSC long-service presentation at the 2008 Christmas NMRDG meeting. In 2008, Stephen Byard from Sanofi-Aventis took over this office.

Peter Beynon (who, at various times was at Kodak and JEOL) also has been a very valued member of the Group, being Hon. Treasurer from 1972 until 1994 and he was Hon. Treasurer when many of the early financial problems had to be resolved. He was followed by Peter Regan (initially at Shell Research) who served from 1994 until 1999. Harry Parkes (Institute of Child Health, UCL, London) served until 2010, when he was replaced by John Parkinson (Strathclyde University).