Fundraiser to CEO - Top 3 Challenges

Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the AFP Calgary annual conference. I was asked to share about my journey from fundraiser to CEO. This opportunity, of course, led me to pause and reflect on the path I have taken.

In the spring of 2016, after 6 years as Director of Development at Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta where our team had established a strong major giving plan, strengthened corporate giving, and grown our keynote event (The Alberta Business Hall of Fame), I was ready for a new challenge. That spring I interviewed for a number of roles with other non-profits in the community. I was on the cusp of accepting an offer from one of those organizations when I chose to open up to my boss and mentor. I wanted to make sure that the people who knew me at work believed this was the right move for me.

Within 24 hours of that conversation, I was asked to turn down the external offer to stay at JA to become CEO, while my predecessor moved on to become the CEO of Junior Achievement of Canada.

I tend to make decisions quickly. I am driven by gut instinct and, if I am being honest, I rarely regret it. However, as I have matured, I have learned to pause on the big decisions – even when my gut has already spoken. After a few days of thoughtful consideration, pros and cons lists, and conversations with mentors and family, I decided to decline the external offer and remain at JA to become CEO.

During my fireside chat at the AFP conference, I shared with attendees, it is my opinion that if you can grow where you are then that is what you should do. It is so much easier to make that transition into the top spot in a place that is familiar as opposed to learning the intricacies of the Executive Director role in a new environment when you don’t even know where the light switches are.

Whether as an internal CEO or an external hire, there will be challenges to face. In my experience here are some of the biggest challenges a non-profit CEO faces and how to address them:

1.      Establishing yourself as a leader.

When you are an internal promotion, you go from being a peer to a boss. The challenge in that can be finding the way to transition those relationships while remaining your authentic self. For me, I am a leader who likes to really know my people. I like to grab a coffee, hear about your weekend, and speculate over who will win the Bachelor this season. And, it took me a while to figure out how I could still do that as a CEO.

As an external hire, you literally know less about the organization and operations than your subordinates. You have to find ways of establishing trust and leadership, while still deferring to the knowledge and history of your team. In this case, time is your friend. You simply can’t rush the time it takes to build real credibility and trust. You have to trust yourself that you will gain the knowledge needed and trust your people that they will get their jobs done, whether you understand those jobs, or not.

2.      Backfilling yourself

When you are promoted, you often have to backfill yourself. That was hard. Not only does it mean finding the right person to lead your old department, but it means you have to let go of some of the day-to-day aspects of that role and that can be kind of hard.

When you are hired externally, you are leaving behind an organization you care about, including staff and donors whom you have built relationships with. Often, those staff will still call and ask for support while you are juggling learning a new job and a new team. It can be easy to default to taking those calls ahead of the ones from your new team – these people and these problems are familiar to you. You have to be intentional about balancing your new priorities with your loyalties.

3.      Managing Board of Directors.

As an internal promotion, you likely have had some exposure to the Board of Directors. In my case, I attended meetings, gave reports, and helped to lead various committees. But I had never had to be the sole employee accountable to a Board and I quickly learned that that is a different ball game. Figuring out what to tell the Board, when to bring them in, and when to keep them out. That takes some trial and error and some hard conversations. You are in charge of operations. You have to own the hard decisions - and that can be tough.

As an external hire, you are a foreign entity to the Board. They do not know your track record; they may have different expectations from you than you are used to. Their balance of governance and operations may be different. You are the one who is new to this equation, and it is important to take your lead from them. Building relationships through 1:1 coffees and informal connections can be helpful in establishing rapport. Asking questions about what they like to know and don’t care to know, how they prefer to receive communication, and their relationship with your predecessor, can help you to establish a baseline for your future with them.

If you are working in the non-profit sector today and hoping to make your way to the Executive Director/CEO role in the future, check out my article next week, where I will offer some advice on how to get from here to there.