Ingrid Kirst Consulting
Nonprofit Leadership Transition Consultant
Being promoted to acting executive director can be an honor but comes with its fair share of stress. You are suddenly taking on a new set of high-level responsibilities while still trying to maintain your existing work. There’s a huge advantage to the organization to temporarily fill a position internally. It is a fairly fast and simple process, but there are significant challenges to overcome.
[Read more…] about Succeeding as an Acting Executive Director
The nonprofit sector here in Lincoln has many fantastic leaders doing great work. Some are executive directors and program managers, other are committed case workers and fundraisers. How can you be part of this cadre of people? Here are some beneficial tips to become a true nonprofit leader. [Read more…] about Building a Nonprofit Career
Leading for Justice by Rita Sever is well worth reading for anyone who supervises or manages others at a nonprofit. She has put so many nuggets of wisdom into this book. You will get a wide variety of great ideas on how to work with people more effectively, efficiently, and most importantly, in a way that they feel valued and heard.
She addresses every relevant topic for supervising people, including supervising remote staff, dealing with burnout, holding staff accountable, and much more. Some of her advice covers things I’ve learned the hard way, other suggestions were completely new to me. I appreciated her emphasis on making sure you are holding regular one-on-one meetings with staff to make sure everyone feels heard and to clear up problems before they become big issues.
She also shared a lot of good information on the role of HR, at what point an organization needs an HR professional, or at least someone who has that duty formally added to their position. While HR professionals can sometimes emphasize potential legal consequences to actions more than staff want to hear, they are a valuable partner in the health of an organization and the happiness of its staff. HR is someone who is not the boss but is someone people can go to with problems. They are looking out for employees’ well-being and helping train supervisors. All of these important roles are vital to an organization’s success.
Sever weaves in a focus on justice throughout the whole book. She includes many lessons that she has learned along the way as a nonprofit staff member, leader, and consultant. This includes ways to see your own privilege and questions to ask yourself. She also talks about the need to understand the unwritten rules in your workplace so you can examine them more closely and how they might impact those who aren’t part of the group in power.
Leading for Justice is available on Hoopla or at your favorite bookstore.
Partnering with an outside search consultant to hire the next executive director allows the board to focus on leading the organization and on choosing the best candidate, rather than getting bogged down in the details of the search. Too often, boards try to do everything themselves, not realizing until it is too late how much time a search takes, and how different it is from a corporate hire. The executive director is the most important position in the organization, and putting in the necessary time to get it right will save everyone time and frustration later on. [Read more…] about Advantages of Executive Search Consultants for Nonprofits
Every ED and board chair wish that their board did more, but how can you actually make that happen? I share a wide variety of methods from simple changes to your agenda to systemic changes to your whole board structure.
Conducting online surveys can provide a range of valuable information but the most popular survey sites have limitations on their free versions, especially in the number of questions, and the number of respondents allowed. Below are three sites that offer great value on their free plan, and a reasonably priced paid plan. They are listed below along with some of the key features that nonprofits need. Overall it seemed that QuestionPro offered the best options for a completely free version. [Read more…] about Online Survey Sites