When Recruiting an Externally Focused Role - Remember the Constituencies

For many nonprofits, externally focused roles can be the most critical and typically include the CEO/Executive Director and also Development.

Too often, we see organizations make hiring mistakes in these areas because they fail to address a fundamental issue that seems obvious: has the leader demonstrated success with the specific external constituencies that are critical to your organization?

For example, we recently consulted with a board leader who was chagrined that her board had to terminate the organization's Executive Director after only 18 months. And, although the issue is certainly more complex than the following, we did quickly uncover that in the ED's prior post, his primary external constituents were foundations and corporations. He had a sterling reputation for being outcome-focused and highly professional. His references were impeccable and the interviews all went quite well.

So, what happened? Well, the board leader's organization also worked with foundations and corporations but its primary stakeholder base was the donor community. As it turns out, the ED struggled in this context because he lacked the cultivating skills required to promote true stewardship. To the donors, he came across as transactional and not capable of building deep and meaningful relationships.

I'm sure this ED will land squarely on his feet and once again succeed so long as his next organization is not specifically donor-centric. As for the board leader, she'll be debriefing her search committee on the concept that the next ED ought to demonstrate terrific donor relations capabilities.