Local nonprofits tackle selecting a new executive director

It is a time of significant transition for three of Sonoma Valley’s largest nonprofit organizations. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Sonoma Valley, Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance, and the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau are all selecting new executive directors. Hiring a new executive director is perhaps the most important decision that members of a nonprofit board of directors will ever make. So, it’s important for nonprofit leaders to plan for executive transitions and implement a sound action plan for selecting the right person.

As soon as the board receives notice that the executive director is leaving, the first step is to notify the organization’s stakeholders in a timely manner. Often this takes the form of a press release and an email blast to key constituents. Although it’s important to notify the public about this transition, it is important for nonprofits without an established succession plan to avoid establishing hard deadlines for when the position will be filled or hastily naming a permanent successor.

The next step is to form a search committee that will oversee the selection process. Mentoring Alliance board member Karen Rathman is leading that organization’s search committee. She said, “Our board has been busy defining the role of a new Executive Director at the Mentoring Alliance and establishing a committee to commence a search. Kathy Witkowicki (Founder and Executive Director) has built a truly first class mentoring organization, one with national stature, and we are approaching the task of finding her replacement thoughtfully in order to find the best possible person to lead this fantastic program.”

Boys & Girls Clubs Board Chair Larry Krieger said their search committee consists of six members, including five board members and the staff Human Resources Manager. Krieger stated, “We wanted people on our search committee who had different experiences in hiring and who had different lengths of service on our board.”

One of the first tasks a search committee usually conducts is to determine who will manage the day-to-day operations of the organization during the search process. In the case of the Mentoring Alliance, the current executive director plans to stay on the job until her replacement is found. Wendy Peterson, Executive Director of the Visitors Bureau, is giving her organization a full six months to find her replacement and get the new person oriented to the organization before she retires in July 2015. Since the Boys & Girls Clubs is part of an extensive national network, the leadership was fortunate enough to identify Alan Anspach, prior director of Organizational Development for Boys & Girls Clubs of America and formerly director of the Pacific Northwest Region, to serve as Interim Executive Director until the position is filled.

The next step is to determine if the organization will conduct its own search or if it will work with an executive search firm to find and screen candidates. The Boys & Girls Clubs is conducting its own search; the Mentoring Alliance has not yet decided if it will do its own search or outsource it, and the Visitors Bureau has decided to outsource its search. According to Peterson, “We are utilizing a professional executive search firm to adhere with our operations policies of following best business practices. We interviewed four firms to ensure we found the best match for the executive director search.”

The next step is to develop a comprehensive job description for the new position, consisting of three parts: salary and benefits; minimum criteria; and roles and responsibilities. Many local nonprofits use the annual Northern California Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits Survey results (http://www.nonprofitcomp.com/) to determine a competitive salary and benefits package in this geographic area. Krieger said that the Boys & Girls Clubs’ search committee asked both the board and staff to identify criteria and characteristics that they would like to see in their next executive director. He said the search committee reviewed both lists, identified the top qualities, and then created a job description based on these identified characteristics.

The next step is active recruiting and management of the resumes that may come flooding in. Krieger said, “We posted our job description on six online places, including Career Builder and Linked In. We then asked our Human Resources Manager to put together a chart listing our desired qualities across the top and for each resume we get, to list the candidate’s name down the side and check off the skills they have that match what we’re looking for.” He added that the Human Resources Manager then puts the resumes of the qualified candidates in a DropBox folder, a confidential cloud-based storage system, which only the search committee can access. He said, “To date, we’ve gotten 50 or 60 resumes.”

It’s important to identify a method for screening all the resumes that the organization will receive because not all candidates will be well suited for the position. Krieger said that the Boys & Girls Club’s Human Resources Manager is eliminating the candidates that don’t fit the criteria they established. He added that after this initial screening, the candidate pool is now down to “around 30 or so.”

After the initial screening is complete, it’s time to begin interviewing the candidates. To ensure fairness, it’s wise to ask all candidates the same questions and to have at least two people conduct each interview. Interview questions should focus only on how the candidate would perform the job duties and the direction in which the candidate would lead the nonprofit into the future. Questions should never address any candidate information that is protected by federal, state or local laws. Krieger said, “Our next step is phone interviews. It’s just a guess, but that could be for 8 to 12 people.” Some organizations choose not to conduct any phone interviews and, instead, conduct all face-to-face interviews, even during this initial phase.

After the search committee completes the initial interview phase, it can then recommend three to five candidates to be further screened by the entire board of directors. In addition to a formal board interview, the finalists may be invited to social gatherings, may be asked to provide a formal writing sample on-the-spot by responding to a case study or developing a strategy for implementing a new program, may make a formal presentation or may participate in some organizational activity with the staff. The purpose of this final phase is for the board (and staff) to become acquainted with the candidates to ensure that the finalist is a good fit for the organization. The board then ranks its finalists. Generally, the board chair then makes the offer to the top candidate, followed by the second choice if the top candidate doesn’t accept the offer.

Once the candidate has accepted the position, the board should send a follow-up letter to the individual outlining the compensation, benefits, and starting date. The board should check with its legal counsel to determine if the organization should enter into an employment contract with the candidate and, if so, if there will be a probationary period (often is six months). It is then the board’s responsibility to ensure a smooth transition from the interim or current executive director to the new staff leadership by creating an onboarding program for the new executive director that can last several weeks.

Although the Boys & Girls Clubs search committee’s goal is to have the new staff leader in place by May 1, Krieger said, “If we don’t feel like we have the right person then, we will go longer.” When asked what advice he would offer to other nonprofits searching for an executive director, he offered this, “Take your time…don’t just fill the position to fill it.”  Sometime this summer, we can all look forward to welcoming the new, carefully selected executive leaders of these important Sonoma Valley nonprofits.

Dr. B.J. Bischoff is the owner of Bischoff Performance Improvement Consulting, a Sonoma firm specializing in building the capacity of nonprofit organizations and public sector agencies to better serve their stakeholders. She assists her clients with strategic planning, training resulting in performance improvement, fund development, and community relations.  She is Past President of Impact100 Sonoma and serves as a Sonoma County Board of Supervisors’ appointee to the Sonoma County Portfolio of Model Upstream Programs Review Committee. Contact her at [email protected].