Losing a long-standing leader brings a host of unique challenges that many organizations are unprepared to face. When a long-term nonprofit leader leaves that person is typically beloved by the staff, creating a hole emotionally as well as functionally.
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Sometimes this person is the original founder, other times they aren’t but they’ve been in the role for the organization’s most formative years. Regardless of whether they were there at the very beginning or not, they are someone who has been at the helm though significant periods of growth. As a result, they have imbued institutional knowledge that must be retained by the organization and passed onto the next leader.

When a leader’s era is over it’s important to recognize the challenges that lay ahead, understand where opportunities for growth may exist, and craft a formal transition plan to guide the organization through the change.

Today we’re sitting down with Ed Rogan, Partner and Search Practice Leader here at Valtas, to discuss forming a search committee for your Executive Director (ED) search. He is going to share some nonprofit search committee best practices from his more than two decades of experience in connecting people with missions to help you be better prepared for finding a new ED to lead your organization.
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Our hope is that you will use this as a sort of “search committee formation FAQ” to get your most pressing questions answered, but if you still have questions at the end, please reach out to Ed directly to get those answered in a way that’s customized to your organization’s specific needs. Let’s get started!

​REST, a Seattle-based organization that has been supporting victims of sex trafficking for the last 15 years, has announced the appointment of Elizabeth Hodges as their new Chief Executive Officer. Elizabeth is an experienced nonprofit leader that will bring positivity and commitment to the organization to further help sexual exploitation victims find the support they need through REST’s programs and services. 

​After an extensive search, KNKX Public Radio has announced the appointment of David Fischer as their next President and General Manager. Their former leader, Joey Cohn, announced his retirement last spring after 37 years with the station, prompting the search. Joey will remain on board temporarily to ensure a smooth leadership handoff to David before his official start date on November 18.
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This leadership change ushers in a new era for the station, and David is certainly up for the challenge! As the long-time leader of Tacoma Arts Live and the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, David has worked with a multitude of jazz and blues artists and press personalities, demonstrating his love for not only the music but the people involved in the business. For these reasons, he was seen as a natural fit for the role. 

As a nonprofit Executive Director, Board President, or Director of Development balancing fundraising challenges is becoming more difficult as the giving landscape continues to change. Nonprofit leadership is asking questions like:

• How can we continue receiving the funding we need to operate when giving is down compared to previous years?
• Where can we find new supporters for our mission, outreach efforts, and programs?
• Are our old fundraising methods still going to work in the future, or do we need to take a new approach?
• What are top organizations doing and what can we learn from them?
• How can we think about fundraising more holistically to better align our efforts? ​

​The Nonprofit Association of Washington (NAWA) has selected Neal Mizushima as their new Executive Director (ED) after an extensive search to find the right person to fill the unique role. Throughout the process the NAWA Board sought a candidate who would be a heart-centered leader and strategic partner in building their shared vision of advancing the nonprofit sector in Washington State. 

​In our line of work, we talk to nonprofit leaders every day that are making career moves. Some are entering executive leadership roles for the first time after putting in their time on boards or in mid-level managerial roles. Some are seasoned nonprofit leaders that are making lateral moves from the helm of one organization to another. Some are coming over from executive leadership roles in industry to the nonprofit sector.

But regardless of where they’re coming from, they enter the role bright-faced and optimistic about their future with the organization. They are excited, ambitious, and ready to succeed!
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There’s just one problem... They can’t succeed alone!

Every new Executive Director placement brings an individual with a unique set of skills and experiences into an organization with unique needs and goals. To effectively unite the two, the organization’s board and existing leadership team needs to provide their new ED with everything that they need to find success. 

The idea of shared leadership has always been around in some form or another in the nonprofit space for years. However, nonprofit co-leadership across the entire sector gained popularity as a concept 5-10 years ago, and we continue to see some organizations choose this format today. Since its heyday conversation around whether it’s a worthwhile concept seems to have faded somewhat into the backdrop behind other more pressing nonprofit topics like decreasing philanthropy funding, diversity, pay transparency, and unionization. And yet, because “distributed leadership” is such a vague term we can’t say organizations are altogether done with it these days because it can mean different things to different organizations in different circumstances.
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Let’s look at where it’s still being used and why, as well as who is most likely to embrace it!