December 7, 2006 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Q. Are charities more inclined to fill their upper-level management jobs from the corporate world or from the nonprofit world?
A. Most nonprofit employers are more interested in finding the right person for a job than they are concerned about whether a candidate comes from the for-profit or nonprofit world, says Elinor K. Hite, strategic director for human resources and organizational development at the YMCA of the USA, in Chicago. “We don’t usually approach our recruiting solely from the perspective of ‘corporate’ or ‘nonprofit’ candidates, but look at both pools in order to ensure we have done a thorough and thoughtful search.”
Ms. Hite notes, however, that when her organization does hire leaders with corporate backgrounds they tend to be people who have a strong understanding of nonprofit culture or have had at least some experience working with charities, even if only as a volunteer.
Steven Lufburrow, president of Goodwill Industries of Houston, agrees that when hiring from the corporate world it is important to find candidates who understand what they’re getting into. He says he has often interviewed people who expect a nonprofit job to be “easy.”
“They don’t realize they’ll actually be working longer hours for less money and with little to no budget,” he says. “That can be quite an adjustment especially for senior-level people who have gotten used to things like pens and pads being supplied for them and now sometimes they need to bring their own.”
Still, Mr. Lufburrow says that in his 20 years at the helm of Goodwill Houston, he has very rarely hired an executive to run a division of his organization who did not come from a business background.
“The major reason I hire outside of the nonprofit world is availability of candidates,” he says. “Top nonprofit executives aren’t usually willing to leave once they get to the top, and I want top people.”
He adds that, while Goodwill has an extensive executive training program of its own, one of the things he likes about candidates from the for-profit world is the amount of business training they already have when they walk in the door. “I like to hire people who are looking for a change in their career and who understand that money won’t be the same in the nonprofit [world], but they are at a point where they are ready to give back to the community.”
Indeed, Lyn Brennan, a partner at Battalia Winston International, an executive-search firm in New York that works with nonprofit organizations, says she has had nonprofit employers specifically request candidates from the corporate world. When this happens, she says, it is usually because the employer seeks some skill, such as information-technology expertise, that is easier found in the for-profit employee pool.
But unlike Mr. Lufburrow, some charity leaders are still wary of hiring candidates from the corporate world, says Ms. Brennan.
“Not-for-profits tend to be more consensus- and process-driven in terms of decision making, and they sometimes have concerns as to whether a corporate executive will be frustrated by that,” she says. “When a corporate executive does not work out in a not-for-profit, it is often a result of that frustration.”
In the end, however, whom a nonprofit manager chooses to hire usually comes down to pure chemistry, says Ms. Brennan: “Most executives want to hire the person who they not only believe will do the best job, but who they will enjoy working with most.”
