Generocity.org and hiring experts Jane.HR to launch Generocity Nonprofit Leadership Search program

A nonprofit’s impact on mission is directly tied to the effectiveness of its leadership team.

For all the overdue reckoning with nonprofit workplace culture in recent years, too little of that reckoning has focused on how nonprofit leaders are selected.

Too often nonprofit leaders, especially volunteer boards of directors, are forced into a crucial process without the expertise or time — and often both — to make the right hire. Instead, when done well, searching for a new executive director or other high-ranking organizational leader is an opportunity to communicate mission and approach with influential stakeholders.

Even when nonprofits do enlist outsourced hiring support, many third-party firms have a reputation for being too expensive for the value created — some charge in excess of 30% of a position’s first-year compensation. In years of conversations with nonprofit hiring managers and board members, I routinely hear familiar complaints: pulling from the same group of ‘usual suspects’ and misalignment with the mission and impact goals of the nonprofit itself.

That has to change. As our contribution to the work, today, we’re proudly announcing the Generocity Nonprofit Leadership Search Program Powered by Jane.HR.

For a decade, Generocity.org has told the stories of nonprofit professionals and their impact work — with special focus on the next generation of leaders, which must be led disproportionately by those with different lived experiences, no more prominently than Black and Brown leaders. Our reporting has tracked toxic work cultures and thriving efforts around employee engagement and professional development.

One consistent theme is that those with power, especially white leaders who benefit from network effect, must be the first to take on the responsibility to enact change. We do that everyday with our community journalism. Starting today, we’ll now be able to do that by helping shape the processes for placing future leaders at nonprofit organizations. It’s worth reminding how news organizations work. We at Technically Media, which publishes Generocity.org, maintain an independent newsroom (including Generocity editor Sabrina Vourvoulias), who are not directly involved in our client services. This program will be produced by our expert talent services team as a way of serving the community of professionals that our journalism forms.

This is a two-step process.

For all nonprofit board members, consider Generocity.org as your retained executive and director-level search firm of choice for your next nonprofit executive search effort. We’ll prioritize our community of nonprofit professionals, but through our partnership with Jane.HR, we’ll also produce the national search that your nonprofit deserves — and can afford through our flexible retained search model. You can simply contact my colleague Vincent Better at vincent@technicallymedia.com.

Secondly, to our Generocity.org community of nonprofit professionals. Have you wondered what secret network exists that you can’t access? Why do nonprofit jobs go to some and not to others? We hope to change this process and open up more opportunities. Even if you’re plenty happy in your current role, if you’d simply be interested if and when Generociy.org might think of you for a future executive search, then tell us. Consider Generocity.org your talent agency of choice.

Simply fill out this basic intake form, which we can keep discreetly on file.

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You might ask: what business does a news organization have with executive search? Funny, we think we have plenty of business. For one, Generocity’s sister site Technical.ly has been a resource for technical talent search for more than five years. Secondly, Generocity has found increasingly that our reporting on nonprofit professionals editorially and via our events and services is among the most popular work we do. We have informally played a role in several search efforts already. We’ll now make this more formal. Helpfully, as impact professionals, this work will both benefit from and leverage the community built by our local journalism.

To be clear, our search efforts remain independent and separate from our newsroom. We have, and will continue to, produce private searches when necessary. But increasingly we find one additional value we can provide is to drive an organization’s employer value proposition and employer brand to amplify the effectiveness of our search efforts.

Better yet, Generocity.org is enlisting the support of a trusted partner of ours, Jane.HR. These experienced talent services professionals have been longtime collaborators of ours and are experts in nonprofit search. Proof positive of that expertise is their work with The Monkey & Elephant, Motivate Lab, Philly Startup Leaders, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and KIPP, among others.

Our process includes the best of both of these worlds: the unique community and position of Generocity.org and the expertise of Jane.HR.

Let’s continue to improve the effectiveness and process of our important nonprofit and impact work.