By Leyna Bernstein

I’ve been serving on nonprofit boards since 1994, and I’ve been providing board training and consulting since 1998. So you’d think I would have figured out what it takes to develop a highly effective board of directors, right? Uh….not so much.

While I consider myself a certified “governance geek”, I still have more questions than answers about how we make the “unpaid volunteers managing paid professionals” thing work. There are, however, a couple of things I do know for sure.

I know that if you’ve seen one board…..you’ve seen one board.

A board model that works great for Habitat for Humanity doesn’t work at all for the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra. Even the board that worked well for you a few years ago may not be the right board for your organization now. You can go ahead and stop reading this now if you’ll promise to ask your board the question: What does great performance look like for this board at this time in the life of our organization?

The other thing I know for sure is that you cannot have an effective board without the right board chair. All the training and consulting in the world won’t build you a great board if your chair isn’t the right leader for the job.

I know this first-hand because I was a pretty lousy board chair.  Why? Because I’m often certain that I have the answer, I’ll quickly give an opinion even when I don’t know the answer, I enjoy the sound of my own voice, and I’m not the most patient soul in the world. Trust me, these are not traits you want in the leader of a collaborative group of volunteer leaders.

So what makes for a really good board chair?  In very effective organizations, the board chair is a facilitative leader—helping to develop the board, focus its attention, engage it appropriately in governing the organization, and build a strong partnership with the executive director.

Here are my top 5 traits for a really good board chair:

Listener
 Rather than broadcast her own voice, a board chair should draw out the ideas, opinions and knowledge of the rest of the board. This means paying a lot of attention to who is speaking, and for how long, at board meetings. It means spending time one-on-one with board members to learn how they make decisions, and how comfortable they are speaking up when they disagree with the majority. And it means soliciting ideas for making board discussions as rich as possible.

Planner
 Most board meetings waste the precious time that boards have to discuss and make decisions together. Since the authority of a board rests only with the group, not with individual board members, time spent at meetings should be very efficiently used.

In partnership with the executive director, a really good board chair sorts out what is most critical for the board to do. She identifies important issues and questions to discuss at board meetings, and crafts agendas that make the best use of the board’s time in meetings.

Match-Maker
 Board members really do want to feel productive and engaged. A good board chair makes sure to match each board member with the committee/task force/project that best taps her unique skills, interests and contacts. The chair should also ensure that the board is always thinking about its own evolution, and that there is a system in place to regularly identify needs, recruit new members, and advance promising leaders to greater levels of responsibility.

If I had a dollar for every board chair who told me they took the job because “no one else would do it” I would be a much bigger donor than I am.

Partner
 Executive directors know their lives can change overnight based on who the board elects to serve as chair. A good board chair works hard to develop a partnership with the executive director, and helps maintain clear boundaries between the ED’s accountability and that of the board. The chair should be available and accessible, act as an advisor and sounding board (when asked), and provide support and constructive feedback within the context of clearly defined performance expectations.

Diplomat
 The chair should be the model for board members’ behavior, both in and out of the board room. She should be able to represent the organization well in public settings, and handle delicate situations with tact and skill. A good board chair will be both diplomat and ambassador, opening doors for the organization and helping make useful connections in the community.

We’ve seen the amount and quality of leadership training for nonprofit executives increase dramatically in the last decade. I’ve yet to see similar programs for board chairs. Maybe that should be a topic of conversation at the next Governance Geek convention…

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By Leyna Bernstein

In the spirit of the Fourth of July holiday, I want to encourage all of you nonprofit leaders to throw off the shackles of inaction, fear and conflict-avoidance, and declare your independence from the fear of firing.  Firing (or freeing up someone’s future, as I like to call it) is an important part of being an effective leader.

You hire people to perform roles in your organization; if the person is no longer able to perform the role – or never was – then you need to help them move on so that someone suited to the role can take their place. Letting someone go isn’t about your opinion of them as a person; every one of your staff members is a wonderful person. As a leader, your concern is the person’s ability to perform in a specific role designed to support mission impact.  Unless you are running an employment training center, it is your clients you are serving; it is not your job to rehabilitate your employees.

I teach staff supervision for the Emerging Leaders Program in Marin, and one of the most common concerns voiced by participants is that they will be sued for firing someone. You know what? If you have enough employees, eventually you are going to get sued. Even great managers working for very high functioning organizations get sued for wrongful termination. I don’t mean to be cavalier about this, but hanging on to a poor performing employee out of fear of litigation costs your organization more than you think.

Other employees always know when someone isn’t pulling their weight. Your staff is waiting for you to do something, and lack of action teaches them that good performance isn’t that important to you. The poor-performer is costing you in efficiency and effectiveness. Your donors aren’t giving you money so that you can provide employment – they want mission impact. Don’t be held hostage by fear of lawsuits: be clear about what good job performance looks like and how it’s measured, and do the right thing.

I firmly believe that most people who aren’t performing their jobs adequately know it, and feel lousy about it. This doesn’t translate into them skipping into your office with a crisp letter of resignation, but ultimately they will be better off for being fired.  Who among us hasn’t been fired from a job? It feels terrible at the time, but we get over it, move on with our lives, and many of us eventually look back and realize it was a good thing, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

I am not recommending that you head to the office and fire someone today just to get it out of your system. If you aren’t clear what good job performance looks like for a position, chances are your employee isn’t either. You need to be sure you’ve crossed a few essentials off your list: 1) Clear expectations; 2) Frequent and consistent performance feedback; and 3) Equity in your treatment of employees.  Just don’t put off giving critical feedback in the hope that performance will magically improve. (Praying for the funny noise in my engine to go away has cost me lots of money in car repairs.)

Anyone who knows me knows I have a big heart and a deep interest in other people and their lives. I love getting up every morning because I know I’m going to be helping extraordinary people change the world for the better. I just want to be sure that nonprofit leaders don’t mistake caring about others and the planet with not taking action when needed, even when it is sure to hurt/upset/disappoint another human being.

So stand up all you brave and mighty nonprofit leaders! Free up someone’s future today!

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By Leyna Bernstein

Many of the executive directors and board members I have worked with over the years exhibit symptoms of a malady I call the “resentment flu”. It is a mild but annoying condition that is highly contagious and is easily passed back and forth. I believe I’ve found a cure for this pesky virus. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize they are sick, and thus do not seek out treatment.

I thought it would be helpful for me to list some of the main symptoms, so that you can see if any of them apply to you. If you are an executive director, do you experience:

• Occasional or frequent urge to complain about your board to others?
• A dull, nagging sense of frustration that your board isn’t more engaged?
• Recurring headaches associated with having the same fundraising discussion with your board over and over?

If you are a board member, do you experience:

• A nagging feeling of defensiveness?
• Frequent bouts of forgetfulness, when you can’t remember what great board performance looks like?
• A lack of appetite for board work?
• Soreness in the ego from feelings of inadequacy?

If you recognize two or more of these symptoms in yourself, then you have the resentment flu! The good news is, there is a simple cure. The bad news is, the executive director has to be cured first, or the board cannot get well.

Now, I realize that many of you reading this do not have these symptoms and are not sick. Perhaps, however, you recognize these symptoms in a friend or loved one. Here is the simple, 5-step cure to pass along.

The Executive Director’s 5-Step Cure for the Resentment Flu:
The first step is recognizing that you have a problem, and that you must change your behavior in order to be cured.
Second: Embrace the fact that your board members are wonderful, committed people doing the best they can in a job for which they have had no education or professional training.
Third: Wrap your board in good feelings. Celebrate and appreciate your board’s efforts and small victories as often as possible.
Fourth: Drink plenty of fluids, and be sure your cup is half-full at all times, not half-empty. (Fluids include caffeinated beverages, Jack Daniels, and, in moderation, water.)
Fifth: Have the patience to work with board members to define and implement a board performance plan, the courage to retire members who can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Please be aware that the incidence of relapse is fairly high, and that you may need to take the cure on a prophylactic basis from time to time. There are also more severe cases of the resentment flu that require professional treatment. Fortunately, there are specialists like me who can help cure difficult cases over time. Together, we can get rid of this virus and create a healthier nonprofit sector!

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By Leyna Bernstein

I just attended a conference programmed around the theme of storytelling.Since we first gathered around a fire together, we people have been telling each other stories. I’m a big story lover myself; tell me how you met your mate, or about your first job, or a story about your childhood, and I’m hooked.

All stories aren’t happy tales, however, and I’ve observed an interesting phenomenon in the 25+ years I’ve been managing people and teaching management. In the absence of a clear narrative – when people wonder “what’s the story?”—they tend to make bad stuff up. I call this creating negative drama. Especially during uncertainty or times of change, people feel anxious and seek information. They make up stories about bad things happening.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and employees do too. They will fill a vacuum with negative drama—even when there’s not a lot of material to work with.

As a leader, your job is to create positive drama. You are the holder of the vision, the dream, the exciting story of how your organization is going to change the world and triumph over evil. Even if the path you’re traveling together isn’t clear, it’s your job to regularly remind people that they’re engaged in something meaningful and important. Keep reminding people that you are making a difference in small ways, and link events back to the larger narrative – the story of your organization.

Here are some ways to keep the positive drama alive in:

• Post your vision statement in a prominent location, and hang pictures of your programs in action (clients/students/performances/green spaces) all over the workplace.
• Make sure everyone has your mission statement on their desk.
• Regularly ask employees to share short stories about the mission in action at staff meetings – not outcomes and statistics, but real life tales of small triumphs and little successes.
• Take admin staff on “field trips” to visit with clients, take a backstage tour, attend a site meeting.
• Use tokens, symbols, mascots, slogans, catch-phrases that remind folks of your mission or vision: they may be hokey but they are effective tools to create fun and esprit d ’corps.
• Provide all staff, volunteers, board members with regular updates and insights into what’s going on in your field – locally, regionally, nationally, internationally. Let them know they are part of a larger movement or community.

Trust me, you are gonna have drama in your workplace. Usually it takes at least 3 people to make this happen, but the right 2 people can do it all by themselves.  So go ahead and be a drama queen; if you don’t play the part, someone else will do it for you!

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By Leyna Bernstein

Most of the time, I think of the executive director role as the hardest job on the planet. Running a close second, or maybe even neck and neck, has got to be development director. Both jobs require leaders who can communicate a vision with passion, build and maintain relationships with many types of people, be highly organized and also highly adaptable, focus on the big picture but sweat the details, and remain optimistic in challenging times.  Let us pause a moment to give thanks to all the (slightly crazy) men and women who choose these two roles in their professional lives. Amen.

When the partnership between an executive director and development director works, it is a beautiful thing. When it doesn’t, both can come down with a serious case of what I call the “resentment flu”. I call it the flu because it is contagious — they keep catching it from one another, each feeling the other isn’t pulling her weight.

Working in our sector is hard enough. Why make it worse by failing to build the relationships you need to truly succeed? Here are three keys to developing and stewarding a strong and fruitful relationship with your development director:

Set Clear, Agreed Upon Expectations. Develop an annual performance plan together, based on your fundraising plan. In order to ensure success, you both need to agree on what success looks like, how you’re going to get there, what part you’ll each play in achieving success, and what metrics you’ll use to gauge progress along the way.

Share the Spotlight. Provide opportunities for your development director to engage with donors, work with the board, and represent the organization in the community. Don’t hog all the major donors to yourself (or hoard all the easy ones). Look for opportunities to give credit and praise to your development director, and let him know how much you appreciate not just his results, but his efforts as well. If your development director prefers to operate behind the scenes, find less public ways to acknowledge his importance to the organization.

Break Down the Development Silo. Find opportunities to engage your development director in high level conversations, strategic decision making, and programmatic discussions. Make sure that the development director and his team are well-integrated into the programmatic and operational life of your agency.  Work with your development director to build a culture of fundraising through-out the organization, so that everyone has a stake in your fund development success.

I can’t guarantee that, by doing these things, you’ll build a beautiful and lasting relationship with your development director. But with the average development staff tenure still hovering below 24 months, isn’t it worth a try?

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By Leyna Bernstein

For the past two years, I’ve managed the auction for my synagogue’s big fundraising gala. I volunteer as a fundraiser because we are a scarce breed, and because this work enables me to walk a mile in the shoes of the people I recruit. (Preferably red stilettos, but that is another blog….)

The two fantastic volunteers who created the gala and have run it for six years just officially “retired”. This year’s very successful event was their last. Pondering how we are going to replace Lisa and Susie got me thinking about the importance of succession planning for development staff, especially leadership.

With a little help from my friends, here are some tips for fundraising succession planning:

Know Thy Systems: Having a database doesn’t ensure institutional memory.  Robert Weiner, fundraising technology consultant, often encounters problems in the transition between Chief Development Officers. “I encounter problems when the prior CDO has had a custom system built, or really didn’t use or care about the database.  I also see lots of organizations that have a donor database, but where the CDO does all her tracking in Excel.” (Leyna: Yikes!)

Document, document, document: Make sure you have a written fundraising plan, including major strategies, calendar, tactics, and responsibilities. Be sure that your fundraising budget is annotated with clear information about variances in both income and expenses.

Share the Love: Laura McCrea, of Laura McCrea & Associates, says, “Development Directors often develop a wonderful understanding of their major donors and the nuances of how to keep each donor engaged and inspired.  All too often, this knowledge – which can’t typically be summarized in database fields – is not shared with other staff and volunteers on a regular basis.”  You don’t want knowledge of the passions and pet peeves of your biggest donors walking out with exiting staff.

Build Bench Strength: Your annual fund development budget should include a line for professional development, and not just for your Development Director. The best development leaders continually groom staff for more responsibility and provide skill development opportunities. (Example: Fundraising Day!)

Plan for the Unexpected: Prepare an emergency succession plan. There is no better way to identify your vulnerabilities than to develop a plan for dealing with the unexpected departure or absence of your Development Director. Theresa Nelson, an experienced interim Development Director, suggests creating a transition binder containing all the key information that your Director of Development would want were she new on the job, and updating it annually.

Pray. (Can’t hurt!)

Next month: Building a strong ED/DD partnership.

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By Leyna Bernstein

We have all heard someone say they joined a board because “I was told I just had to show up to meetings, and I wouldn’t have to do much.” I facilitated a retreat last week where 3 board members said this exact thing. I’m amazed I didn’t have a catatonic fit.

It isn’t easy to find good board members, and it shouldn’t be. Board recruitment is not taking anyone who is vertical and can fog a mirror. Board recruitment is executive search.  You are selecting members of a collective that is legally and ethically responsible for ensuring your organization fulfills its public benefit purpose. Approach the recruitment process very seriously, have very high standards, and have multiple people vying for each slot.

You have to do a lot of upfront work before you can actually start recruiting. You need to understand where your organization is in its life cycle; what the main priorities are for the board in the next few years; have a strong sense of your board’s culture (or the culture you’re trying to create); know where your gaps are; and create specific profiles for each of the board slots you’re trying to fill.

The good news is, if you’ve done the pre-work well, other people are going to find your board members for you. Your job is to identify candidate sources, provide them with a very clear picture of who you’re looking for, and a strong case for joining your board. Believe me, lots of well connected people who care about you or your organization will help you find board members. They will be incredibly relieved that you’re not asking them to join your board.

Here’s how it works:

* Ask your current and former board members to come up with 5 contacts each who know about your organization and have a strong likelihood of knowing someone who fits your candidate profile. Ask staff members and key volunteers to do the same.

* Each of these contacts is taken to lunch or coffee, called or emailed (based on how well you know them) and asked to recommend a candidate.

* Repeat this mantra to anyone with whom you speak about your search for board members: It is an honor and a privilege to serve on your board. You take recruitment very seriously, you are very selective in bringing people on your board, and your board is a fantastic group of people with a compelling focus for the next few years.

* Once you’ve identified a small pool of strong candidates, you begin your interview process. Remember: You are looking for candidates, not board members. No one is ever asked to join your board in the first conversation.

Board recruitment is an ongoing, year-round process. You may bring new members on just once a year (a practice I recommend), but you are looking for strong candidates all the time. Board recruitment should always be a top priority for your board.  Yes, this approach takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s worth it. It is hard work to build an effective nonprofit board — and you need the right people on the bus to do it.

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By Leyna Bernstein

Last week I attended a panel discussion on board governance at CompassPoint’s annual nonprofit conference. Speaking about interviewing prospective board members, Destiny Arts Center board President Erica Webber said: “We screen for character first.”

It turns out that she meant “we screen for fit with our mission, values and culture”. Not quite the same as character, but a really good idea. So what else should you be looking for in evaluating a perspective board member?

Many of us have enthusiastically voted on a new board member based on her profession and connections — a lawyer! a banker! an heiress! — only to discover that our new colleague doesn’t play well with others. I advise you to throw out the crayon box theory of board recruitment (one red, one blue, one lawyer, one techie…) and focus instead on what it takes to be an effective board member.

Screen for successful past participation in consensus-based groups. Look for skill as a listener. Search for the dual abilities of questioning the status quo and maintaining solidarity outside the board room. Seek out deep commitment to and passion for your mission. A pauper who has missionary zeal for your work is often a better fundraiser than the millionaire who only wants to write her own check (unless it is an awfully big check….)

When you bring on a new board member, you also get their contacts, networks, Faceboook “friends”, etc. Be sure that you are recruiting for divergent streams of contacts, rather than bringing on people whose outside lives mirror those of other board members. Board members should be constantly expanding your circle of admirers, not circulating your story to the same pool.

Recruiting new board members is high-level search.  Think of it as “hiring” members of an elite group that, collectively, are legally responsible for holding the organization in trust for the people you serve. Therefore, you should spend at least as much time screening and reference-checking potential board members as you do on hiring line staff, right?

Next blog: How do you find great board candidates?

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By Leyna Bernstein

The last time I wrote, I told you that the secret to hiring success is to hire happy people. Easier said than done, I realize. I can’t say I have a perfect track record, but I do have some ideas on how to screen for what we might call the “contentedness factor”.

Making the right hire (finding a good fit for the job and your organization) has a lot to do with expectations. You want to find someone whose expectations fit what you can offer. I learned this years ago when I was the VP of Human Resources for Smith & Hawken (may it RIP.)

Prospective S & H employees used to come crawling on their knees as though toward Mecca, out of a desire to work for such an environmentally correct company. I had to convince candidates that the company’s green mission wouldn’t matter for long if they hated data entry.

Here are some things to consider in determining whether a candidate is looking for more than you can offer (i.e. happiness or meaning in life), or worse, looking for a place to spread the misery around.

Do the reasons the candidate left prior jobs make sense, and seem unrelated to performance or professional relationships? Does she make any negative references to former employers? Does your job seem like the next logical step for this candidate? If not, what does your gut tell you about their reasons for being interested?

Determine through resume, interviews, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. what kind of life this person has outside of their profession. Got friends? Family? Other passions and ways of blowing off steam? All good indicators. (Yes, you should Google candidates and read their Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles.)

Last, references are just as important as interviews. You can ask a reference: Is Jane a happy person? You can ask how Jane got along with colleagues. You can ask if Jane was a mentor and support to others. You can even ask if Jane was fun to be around. (I promise, these questions are not illegal.)

Of course, you need to hire someone with the skills and experience to do the job. But I’d pick a happy person who needs a bit of training over a miserable yet highly skilled person any day.

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By Leyna Bernstein

I’ve been hiring line staff, managers and executives for my own team and for clients for the past 25 years. I’ve overseen human resources for two national companies, and taught classes on recruiting and hiring. All my years of experience and wisdom about how to “get the right people on the bus” can be boiled down to three words: Hire happy people.

I’m serious. I don’t care how talented, experienced or educated a candidate is, if she is unhappy with her life she will be a bad hire. We’ve all experienced this scenario: A single employee or board member impacts your entire organization through negative behaviors. A person who feels the need to build himself up through putting others down, or who sees every glass as half empty, or who constantly expects the worst of people, can wreak havoc upon your organization. And because this person may be very competent at doing his job, it is often hard to get rid of him (or “free up his future” as I like to say.)

Hence my advice: Hire happy people. So what do I really mean? I’m not talking about screening for bubbly, ever-smiling, “power of positive thinking” types. What I mean is that you need to discern whether someone genuinely likes herself — is comfortable in her own skin. You want to hire someone who has a life outside of work; a life rich with activities that provide enjoyment and meaning. Because a job with your organization, no matter how fabulous and meaningful your mission, cannot provide your employees with their life’s meaning. Trust me on this one.

Hire people who have healthy, nurturing relationships with close friends, a partner, kids or a spiritual community (or all of the above!) Hire people who have a passion for beekeeping, salsa dancing, dachshund racing, or something else entirely unrelated to their day job. Hire people who speak well of former employers, take personal responsibility for past career mishaps, and who will be okay whether or not they get offered your job.

Now, am I saying that you don’t have to screen for the right skills, experience, aptitude and cultural fit? Of course not. But no matter how skilled, qualified and mission-driven an applicant is, don’t hire her if she is unhappy. I promise you — unhappy people bring their unhappiness to work with them , and spread it around like a bad cold. You have enough work to do without having to worry about preventing an unhappy virus from infecting your staff.

So how do you screen and interview for the “happiness” factor? That’s another blog…

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By Leyna Bernstein

Most of us in the nonprofit community are familiar with the statistics about the short tenure of senior development staff. Is this rapid turn-over the result of all development folk being restless climbers? I don’t think so.

The reason development directors move around has more to do with unrealistic expectations, and the short length of their “honeymoon” period, than with the draw of greener pastures. Of course, sometimes the fit just isn’t right, or an offer no development professional could refuse comes along.

Here’s my list of hiring mistakes you do have some control over:

1. Hiring a Development Director when what you really need is a development coordinator/administrative assistant. You can’t hire a professional fundraiser with a track record of success and then expect her to do her own data entry. Too many nonprofits go from zero development staff to advertising for a director level person, without considering the support and tools a seasoned fundraiser requires.

2. Assuming that salary and benefits are what a Development Director will cost you. One of the most prepared candidates I’ve worked with provided the prospective employer with a list of the expenses she anticipated — in addition to her salary and benefits — during her first year of employment. These expenses included the costs of membership in professional associations, the cost of an outside consultant to do grant research, the cost of laptop to allow her to work remotely, the cost of attendance at AFP’s annual conference, and so on. You get the picture?

3. Not budgeting enough for fundraising expenses. It costs money to raise money. It really does.

4. Expecting the DD to raise her own salary in the first year. Even the most seasoned professional has a learning curve. If your programs are complex, or your new hire hasn’t worked in your field, she’ll need time to be able to effectively engage funders and donors. Be realistic about the foundation upon which your new DD has to build. If you’ve never raised major gifts from indivduals, it is going to take time for your DD to help grow that capacity.

5. Assuming that “Development Directors” is a generic term. Don’t expect your new DD to be all things to all people — she is going to be fiercely talented in some areas, and not so strong in others. To make a good hire, you need to know where you are going as an organization, the strategies you are employing to get you there, and what areas of fundraising you want to strengthen and grow.

6. Thinking that once you hire a DD, you can wash your hands of fundraising. If you hire an effective development professional, you should expect to be more engaged in fundraising, not less. The difference is in how your time will be spent. You should find yourself spending much less time on details, and much more making direct asks for large amounts of money.

7. Not including your board in the hiring process. I don’t know of a single nonprofit that can rely solely on grant funding in today’s economy. Raising money from individuals requires your board’s active involvement, and therefore your board needs to be engaged in the hiring process. If you hire a DD who doesn’t work well with your board chair or your development committee members, you’ve just hired the wrong person for your organization.

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By Leyna Bernstein

Some relationships aren’t meant to last, and that’s just fine. In hindsight, my rebound relationship after my divorce was just what I needed, even though I got my heart broken. I needed a breather in between serious relationships, and I learned a few things and had a lot of fun with my salsa-dancing beau. By the time my husband Brian came along, I was ready for him.

Which leads me to what I want you to think about: the value of interim management staff.  In addition to the obvious advantage of covering critical responsibilities while you conduct a search, an interim manager can provide you with unexpected dividends. A good interim will offer you invaluable (and honest) insight and advice — the kind that only an objective perspective can yield.

I’ve heard directly from some very happy boards and executive directors who hit the jackpot with an interim. I connected Sonoma Land Trust to interim Development Director Theresa Nelson (http://www.theresanelson.com) while conducting their search for a new Development Director. She provided Executive Director Ralph Benson and the development staff with advice about structuring the department, implementing new donor management software, and kept the ball rolling until Beverly Scottland was hired.

Similarly, Nancy Salamy at Crisis Support Services of Alameda County sang the praises of interim Development Director Duff Axsom (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/a16/b79). Same story with the board of Pacific Center in Berkeley. They hired Corey Pohley through CompassPoint’s (http://www.compasspoint.org) Interim Executive placement service — run by the stellar J.R. Yeager — and she helped with some critical operational issues before Leslie Ewing took on the permanent position. By hiring an interim, smaller nonprofits can tap into the experience and expertise of very seasoned professionals — people whom they couldn’t hire full time, but who make a major contribution filling an interim role.

There’s a great article about the value of Interim development staff in the January/February issue of Advancing Philanthropy – the magazine of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Written by D.A. Hickman, “Interim Help Wanted — and Needed” (http://www.afpnet.org/ka/ka-3.cfm?content_item_id=24783&folder_id=902)  makes the case for a stint with someone who is not afraid to give you the unvarnished truth.

The Bay Area is full of highly experienced, talented professionals who make some or all of their living by serving in interim management roles for nonprofits. Drop me a line or give me a call if you’d like some referrals. I won’t guarantee that you’ll get a salsa dancer, but you never know.

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