Volunteer & People
Recruit, retain, and prepare the people, both paid and volunteer, who carry the mission forward.
Board Recruitment
Builds board recruitment pipelines for the governing board: board composition/skills matrices, gap analysis against strategic needs, prospective board member identification and cultivation, board candidate packets, term/rotation design, and new-board-member onboarding through their first meeting. Use for tasks like 'build a board skills matrix,' 'find and cultivate new board candidates,' 'design our board onboarding packet,' 'set board term limits,' or 'diagnose why our board recruitment keeps stalling.' Boundary: running existing board meetings, committee structure, and board self-assessment is nonprofit-board-governance; recruiting program/event volunteers is nonprofit-volunteer-management; ED transition planning is nonprofit-succession-planning.
Staff Retention
Diagnoses and improves paid-staff culture, morale, and retention specifically under nonprofit resource constraints: turnover/exit-interview analysis, burnout diagnosis, non-cash total-rewards design, career-pathing without a hierarchy to climb, and manager practices for under-resourced teams. Use for tasks like 'why is our staff turnover so high,' 'design a retention plan on a flat budget,' 'build an exit interview process,' 'address burnout on my program team,' or 'improve staff morale without a raise budget.' Boundary: pay-band benchmarking, job descriptions, hiring/onboarding process, and formal personnel policy are nonprofit-hr; ED transition and leadership pipeline is nonprofit-succession-planning; unpaid volunteer retention is nonprofit-volunteer-management.
Succession Planning
Plans executive director/CEO leadership transitions and builds leadership pipelines: emergency backup (departure risk) plans, strategic long-term succession plans, ED transition/search timelines and interim leadership arrangements, and identifying/developing internal successors. Use for tasks like 'we need an emergency succession plan for our ED,' 'the founder is retiring in two years, help us plan the transition,' 'build a leadership pipeline so we're not one person deep,' or 'design an interim ED arrangement during a search.' Boundary: general staff culture/retention/morale is nonprofit-staff-retention; recruiting new board members is nonprofit-board-recruitment; org-wide restructuring communication during any transition is nonprofit-change-management.
Volunteer Management
Designs and runs volunteer programs: writing volunteer role descriptions and applications, building recruitment funnels, screening and onboarding volunteers, creating schedules and shift systems, running recognition events, and diagnosing volunteer retention/attrition. Use for tasks like 'write a volunteer job description,' 'build a volunteer onboarding checklist,' 'design a volunteer recognition program,' 'figure out why volunteers stop showing up,' or 'set up a volunteer scheduling system.' Boundary: recruiting and onboarding candidates for the governing board is nonprofit-board-recruitment; staff (paid employee) culture and retention is nonprofit-staff-retention; this skill covers unpaid/service volunteers only.