Hewlett Foundation Program Officer Tapped to Head GuideStar

New job: In October, Jacob Harold, 35, will become chief executive of GuideStar, the nonprofit online publisher of data on charities, after serving on the organization’s board since 2010. He will succeed Bob Ottenhoff, who has led GuideStar for a decade.

Background: Mr. Harold currently serves as a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where he heads the foundation’s philanthropy program. The program supports organizations that connect donors with effective charities. Before that, he worked at the Bridgespan Group, where he advised nonprofits and foundations on strategy.

Education: He received an undergraduate degree from Duke University and a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University. He also studied complex systems science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Agenda: He would like GuideStar to add more nonfinancial data about charities to its site, such as information about what groups are trying to accomplish and the progress they’ve made toward those goals. “Money is just the means to the end that we’re trying to achieve, which is a more just and beautiful and sustainable world,” he says. “If we in the nonprofit sector only focus on financial data, we’re actually missing what is ultimately most important, which is the lasting impact created by a nonprofit.”

Significant challenge: Finding the right balance between GuideStar’s business of selling data—which generates more than 90 percent of the organization’s $10-million annual budget—and its mission to make charity information widely available. Mr. Harold acknowledges the tension between the two aims, but says it’s “a very healthy tension.” For example, he says, selling information to large donor-advised funds, such as Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, has put that data in front of more donors than GuideStar could on its own. “Sometimes, in our efforts to pay the bills, we discover new ways to achieve our mission,” he says.

Salary: $200,000

Inspiration: His parents, who lead small social-service charities in Winston-Salem, N.C. Says Mr. Harold: “I very much grew up in the nonprofit community.”