Bridging Your Nonprofit From Past to Future
Leadership transitions within nonprofit organizations can be an especially challenging period for Board, staff, volunteers, and donors. If you’re a Board member whose nonprofit organization is facing an executive director transition, it can be difficult to know how to best handle the day-to-day management while you search for the person to lead your organization into the future. Do you promote a current staff member to acting manager? Hire a consultant? Just make do?
While they are challenging, executive transitions also present an opportunity—for Boards of Directors to revisit vision, mission, and relevance. The transition period is critical to the future success of the organization. However, this exploration takes time to do well, and like any important work, it should not be rushed.
With an interim executive, it doesn’t have to be.
Interim executives give Boards the luxury of time to thoughtfully execute on this critical undertaking. When you hire an experienced professional from the Interim Executive Network, your nonprofit gets a focused and stable executive who can lead and manage until you hire your next leader.
As experts in managing transition, IEN Interims help bridge your organization from the past to the future that your Board envisions.
Like other interim management companies, we provide you access to professional, experienced executives who will help your organization during this critical time. The difference is, it won’t cost you! We do not charge any referral fees to either the organizations we work with, or to our members.
IEN members have served both large and small nonprofit organizations, with budgets ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to millions. We have provided interim leadership to many organizations driven by diverse missions, but all needing experienced transitional leadership during periods of change.
OUR MISSION
To strengthen nonprofit organizations experiencing leadership transitions by providing access to a Network of experienced, professional interim executives.
OUR HISTORY
The Interim Executive Network (IEN) was started by a small group of professional interim executives in the Metro DC area in 2014.
Frustrated by being unable to fulfill needs of Board members who requested interim executives, this group saw the need for an organization to connect interim professionals to nonprofits in the DC region.
The Network began with informal brown bag lunches to gather interim professionals, board members, and funders. Later on came a substantive visioning meeting to solidify and gain consensus about the best practices of using interim executives and how the practice fit into the vision of a healthy nonprofit sector in the DC region.
Subsequently, this group was invited to meet with the leadership of the Meyer Foundation, who recognized the value of having a cadre of qualified interim executives available. With funding through the Center for Nonprofit Advancement, which had attempted to start a referral program for interim professionals several years prior, the Interim Executive Network was officially born.
Since that time, IEN has grown substantially and provides mentoring, support, and training to people interested in building an interim executive practice, as well as information and resources to Board members and organizations interested in engaging an interim executive.
OUR STRUCTURE
The Interim Executive Network is an all-volunteer membership group led by a small steering committee. Current steering committee members are Rhonda Buckley-Bishop, Teri Bordenave, Kathlyn Taylor Gaubatz, Jacquelyn Lendsey, John Lloyd, and Ed Spitzberg.
Our Process
Our simple, no-fee process ensures that you get quality candidates for your nonprofit’s interim position:
Step 1
Step 1
Reach out to the Network for assistance in hiring an interim executive.
Step 2
Step 2
IEN leadership will work with you to write a job posting to be distributed to the Network.
Step 3
Step 3
IEN leadership publicizes your job posting to the Network via email.
Step 4
Step 4
Available candidates contact you directly to apply and negotiate the terms and conditions.
“The Interim Executive Network led by Barbra Kavanaugh, provided great advice and counsel when our Board was presented with an unplanned and quick departure of our nonprofit organization’s executive director. Barbra delivered guidance around expectations for an interim ED, the process for putting out a job description, contract expectations, and promptly posted our job description. Within days of the posting, we interviewed multiple candidates and selected an interim ED. Barbra made the process easy and I am grateful an organization like IEN exists to assist in finding highly qualified and skilled IEDs to lead organizations through the transition and change period of hiring a permanent ED.”
“At first I was philosophically opposed to the concept of an interim executive director. I felt that resorting to interim help suggested poor succession planning by the board and a volatility of operations that might concern employees and important outside audiences. However, I was forced to change my view after I witnessed first hand the benefits of an interim executive. The right person can come in and make the difficult decisions, budget cuts and personnel choices that enable the permanent new executive to start with a clean slate. An interim executive can give the board a more objective, reliable voice about the state of an organization before the board has to make a long term, expensive commitment on a permanent replacement.”