Navigating Nonprofit Success: An Executive Director’s Guide to Excellence

The executive director is the most important role in the management of an organization, so it’s critical that they be involved in every decision the board makes. Sound advice and guidance from the staff leader help the board stay focused and move in the correct direction, so they are a vital member of that team, but the executive director is different. They handle different problems than the board members and have different responsibilities.

Leading a nonprofit team to success requires an executive director who can wear many hats and effectively guide the organization toward its goal.

Challenges Nonprofit Executive Directors Face

With such a diverse job, nonprofit executive directors (EDs) must juggle many tasks to complete the work effectively and efficiently. Some of the biggest challenges include:

• Managing time commitments: As a nonprofit ED, many activities will pull you in different directions. While you might be tempted to dive into frontline work, executive directors must maintain a wider scope and focus more on supporting the team and mission through effective management. Your role is unique and impactful, but you need enough time to do it well.
• Relationships with the board: Some executive directors see their connection to the board as more of an obligation or hindrance than a mutually beneficial partnership. Maintaining positive relationships and good communication with board members is an essential but sometimes difficult part of the job.
• Staffing challenges: Many businesses face staffing difficulties, but as nonprofits compete with inflation and other employers, many struggle with turnover. Effectively hiring and managing a team is challenging in any organization, especially one with limited resources.
• Financial management: Depending on the size of your nonprofit, financial management can be exceedingly complex, with varying rules, requirements, and regulations for different funding sources. Keeping track of them all and maximizing the value of your funds is a demanding aspect of executive directing.

Your role will vary widely depending on the makeup and goals of your nonprofit. For example, a smaller organization focused on local support may involve you in more on-the-ground work, like attending events and planning fundraising. Alternatively, an executive director at a large, regional nonprofit might spend more time on tasks like developing overarching plans and communicating with board members.

Whatever your work entails, addressing it requires a multifaceted approach with appropriate planning, attitudes, skills, and resources.

Build a Strong Foundation

Every nonprofit ED needs to set themselves and their team up for success with a strong foundation. Laying the groundwork is crucial for facilitating future success.

If you’re new to the role or working toward transformation, start by taking stock. Consider opportunities for improvement and existing strengths you want to maintain. Evaluate the following elements and see where your nonprofit might benefit from a new strategy:

• The experience of donors interacting with your organization
• Tools and resources available to your team
• The overall organization and structure of the nonprofit
• Attitudes and mindsets affecting your results
• Hiring demands, including retention and engagement
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives
• Compliance demands and potential risk mitigation issues

Develop Leadership Skills

An executive director is a significant figure in the organization. Staff and volunteers look to you for direction, while members of the public and media see you as the face of the nonprofit. Understanding the organization’s goals, mission, and needs is crucial for being an effective leader. Like other leadership roles, you’ll need skills in areas such as communication, time management, and problem-solving.

Communication and Relationship-Building

Communication is a key component of nonprofit leadership, as you’ll need to keep your team on the same path and share that path with stakeholders, the public, and the media. Making these connections demands a good storyteller who can grab attention and engage an audience. You’ll also need to know how to communicate the value of your work to others and turn donations into long-lasting relationships.

Some of the jobs your messaging will accomplish include:

• Inspiring volunteers and teams to continue their hard work when times get tough.
• Motivating donors to contribute to your cause and feel that their contribution makes a difference.
• Effectively and accurately sharing information with board members and stakeholders.
• Clearly communicating a consistent direction to align everyone in the organization.
• Helping your team bond and work together toward a common goal.
• Articulating your model and vision in a way others can understand.
• Maintaining an excellent partnership with the board of directors.
• Showing professionalism and sharing your mission with members of the media.

Communication skills go a long way in performing this job. They’ll support you in building relationships with other people and organizations that can help you grow and achieve your mission.

The nonprofit executive director’s job goes far beyond their personal communications. In this role, you’ll also need to facilitate strong relationships at every level, whether training fundraisers on using the organization’s brand or implementing communication tools like messaging platforms and audience segmentation.

Beth D., the executive director at the Elmbrook Educational Foundation (EEF), uses our donor management and fundraising platform, GiveSmart, to foster strong relationships. “GiveSmart offers us a great opportunity to build relationships,” she said, “and if you look at where we are now compared to then [pre-2020] … the money, especially for the EEF events that we bring in, we’re selling out every event … I think a lot of it has to do with GiveSmart bridging those donor relationships.”

Time Management

With so many different jobs, a nonprofit ED must stay on top of their schedule. Organization is paramount, but you must also know when to delegate or set boundaries. Without these skills, you might be overwhelmed and pulled in too many directions. By prioritizing tasks that only you can do and delegating more accessible work, you give yourself the time you need to make larger decisions clearly and thoughtfully.

Nonprofit executive directors should also take advantage of automation. We found that nonprofit professionals spent 68% of their time on redundant systems and manual data and processes. Automating time-consuming or repetitive tasks streamlines your workflow and can help you focus on achieving your mission.

Prepare for Planning and Problem-Solving

Executive directors solve and prevent problems through many avenues. You’ll need a healthy mixture of strategic planning, agile methods, and critical thinking. Account for the unexpected with thorough planning for long-term and short-term goals, and evaluate your successes and challenges to improve in the future. This task is unique to the executive director, so give it plenty of attention to provide your team with the most effective direction possible.

Your leadership style may affect how you plan and solve problems. For example, a hands-off executive director may delegate some decisions to other leaders, while an involved director might want complete control over the results. You could collaborate with other staff members or provide detailed guidance. The options depend on your team, your style, and your goals. Whatever the process looks like, think about how your interactions with your staff impact your problem-solving and planning methods.

Understand Staff and Volunteer Management

In the same vein, staffing and volunteer management play a significant role in the job of the nonprofit executive director. Again, your involvement may vary widely depending on your organization, but some common tasks that often fall to the executive director include:

• Cultivating a positive, engaging workplace: Aligning employees with the right messaging also builds the right mindsets. Whether you want to foster empathy, enthusiasm, positivity, or another manner of thinking, the executive director has a great platform for making effective changes.
• Administering payroll, benefits, and other elements of HR: While you might not handle the nitty-gritty of these elements, you will likely contribute to overseeing HR decisions like these, which can affect your operations.
• Implementing DEI initiatives: Internal DEI efforts include many tactics, like training your hiring team on implicit bias or disclosing salary ranges in job postings, which can help you achieve more equitable hiring practices. Consider your current DEI position, and explore these resources from the National Council of Nonprofits for more pointers.
• Recruiting, retaining, and training employees and volunteers: Growth and retention strategies will affect the size of your team and your ability to meet goals. The executive director will contribute to staffing and volunteering plans via measures such as identifying needs and strategies in context with operations in the rest of the organization. Similarly, you’ll help establish the procedures for onboarding and training team members, including ongoing professional development.

The executive director’s position builds connections between different areas of the organization. You’ll have unique insights into the nature of different tasks and how to find the right person for each job. Use those insights to craft the best team for reaching your goals and ensure alignment between the different roles. You can also help create strong communication between departments and staff.

Embrace Financial Planning and Management

Financial planning and fundraising may not be the most glamorous parts of the job, but they’re core elements of a nonprofit ED’s duties. Some try to avoid the responsibility for these tasks, but a successful executive director should embrace financial planning and management, as they will impact your ability to meet goals in other areas. You can’t make informed decisions if, for instance, you don’t know the ebbs and flows of your cash cycle.

Your goal is to create the ideal environment for successful fundraising. After all, you’ll need those resources to achieve your mission. You can provide direction, align budgets with your objectives, and implement strategies that support your goals financially.

Start by understanding the basics of your organization’s finances, like cash flow, income statements, and auditing procedures. This information will help you make plans and budgeting decisions, providing details to back up your thoughts. You might reference the results of your last campaign to convince board members to sign off on a new project or show donors how you can maximize the value of their funds. Financial data is also crucial for identifying obstacles and planning for unexpected events.

Within financial management, an executive director might evaluate areas like:

• Tracking and compliance: You can influence how your organization monitors finances and what metrics to track. Some strategies may align better with your plan than others. Compliance must play a central role in a nonprofit’s financial solutions.
• Transparency: Emphasizing a transparent budget can help you build trust with donors, board members, and regulators. The executive director may need to enact change to achieve this goal.
• Risk mitigation: Do you have a plan and prevention tactics for various risks your organization might face? Having strategies and policies to reduce financial risk can help you weather the storms of nonprofit funding. 
• Projections: Financial planning can help you make predictions to guide your strategy. Use historical data to develop plans and minimize the impact of interruptions such as a recession or canceled event.

Another crucial component of your financial management strategy is your technology. Nonprofits now have many options for collecting funds, like online fundraising, mobile auction bidding, text-to-pay, QR codes, and peer-to-peer fundraising. By exploring and comparing these options, you can find solutions that support your budgetary demands and align with your overall goals. The executive director is often the one who must push for these resources and connect the nonprofit’s needs with the financial picture.

MaryEllis Petrosian is the executive director of Foundation and Fundraising Innovation at the YMCA of Greenville in South Carolina. They use GiveSmart in many ways to facilitate various technologies and support their donors’ needs. “We use GiveSmart for everything from events, auctions online, giving QR codes to text-to-give …. all the different ways to maximize donor giving, and meet the donor where they are,” she said. “We found that it’s incredibly successful, especially for our Day of Giving.”

Leverage Technology

A successful nonprofit executive director should also champion the right technology. Over 80% of nonprofit leaders felt that they could better meet the organization’s mission if the nonprofit managed its systems more efficiently. Digital tools are often necessary to complete day-to-day tasks efficiently and accurately, and they become even more important when you’re facing staffing challenges. They can automate time-consuming tasks, simplify complicated ones, and minimize errors due to manual entry.

From simple time savings to more effective ways of engaging with donors, technology solutions can help in all of the areas we’ve discussed. You might use messaging tools to connect with others, online donation, and fundraising tools to increase engagement, relationship management features to build connections with donors, or data analysis to explore new insights. The possibilities are endless, and the executive director has the crucial role of identifying which ones can empower the organization to grow and achieve its mission.

Establish a strategy for evaluating new technologies, like weighing the benefits and drawbacks and identifying implementation challenges. Create a team of people who know how to use it effectively, and evaluate how it supports your unique audience. Avoid adding technology just for the sake of a fun new tool. Instead, focus on how you can use the technology to make real, lasting differences in the organization and the lives of your beneficiaries.

Set Your Nonprofit up for Success with GiveSmart

Executive directors have a lot on their plates, but with the right strategies, you can give your nonprofit the best chance of success. Try these suggested tips to build a wide-reaching skill set for your organization. Then, empower yourself and your team with GiveSmart’s tools for nonprofits.

GiveSmart has a host of features to help nonprofit EDs meet their goals, from donor management and online fundraising to data analytics and event management. Explore how we can help, and request your demo today to see GiveSmart in action and learn more!