IEDs: leadership transition specialists serving San Francisco Bay Area

The Challenge: Nonprofit Leadership Transitions.

A leadership transition within a nonprofit organization—whether planned or unplanned—can be challenging for Board, staff, volunteers, and donors. For Board members whose nonprofit organization is facing an Executive Director transition, it can be difficult to know how to best handle the day-to-day management while you search for the right person to lead your organization into the future. You may consider promoting a current staff member to acting manager, hiring a consultant, or just soldiering on with the leadership vacancy; however, none of those options seem like the right one for the health of your organization.

While it is challenging, often the organization can benefit from this opportunity to take a “deep breath.” An executive leadership transition provides the Board of Directors a chance to reassess capacity, priorities, mission relevance, and leadership structure. Because this transition period can be critical to the future success of the organization, such an important decision should not be rushed.

With an interim executive, it doesn’t have to be.

Benefits of Interim Leadership.

An interim executive gives your Board the time, information, and insight necessary to understand and address your organization’s challenges and select the next leader for your nonprofit.

An experienced interim leader can:

Identify

Step in to help identify areas of growth, challenge, and opportunity.

Lead

Lead, manage, and make informed decisions with insight and intention alongside the Board and staff.

Support

Support the Board in its executive search process and ensure that a new Executive Director is thoughtfully recruited, interviewed and selected. We also ensure their success through a comprehensive onboarding plan that familiarizes the new executive with the organization and charts a course for ongoing professional support and advancement.

Provide a Neutral, Objective Voice

Function as an impartial observer and change agent for the Staff and a trusted advocate and trainer for the Board. As a neutral and experienced third party, our primary goal is the success of the transition and creating a stable future for the organization.

Benefits of Interim Leadership.

An interim executive gives your Board the time, information, and insight necessary to understand and address your organization’s challenges and select the next leader for your nonprofit.

An experienced interim leader can:

Identify

Step in to help identify areas of growth and challenge

Lead

Lead, manage, and make informed decisions with insight and intention alongside the Board

Support

Support the executive search and ensure that a new leader is thoughtfully recruited, vetted, and placed, providing sufficient onboarding support to ensure their success

Advocate

Function as an impartial advocate for the Staff and a trusted resource for the Board because they do not have a personal stake in the organization

The Solution: Bay Area Interim Executive Directors.

When you select an experienced executive from our group of Bay Area Interim Executive Directors, your nonprofit benefits from a focused, compassionate, and equity-minded professional, best suited to your organization, to build or increase stability until you hire your next Executive Director. BAIED provides you with access to our executives who will help your organization during this critical time. We do not charge any fees to either the organizations we work with, or to our members.

Serving nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California, and beyond, BAIED members have led organizations of varying sizes, with diverse missions, clients, and budgets during critical periods of change.

Several of the Bay Area nonprofits our interims have served with:
Alameda County Behavioral Health
Berkeley Food and Housing Project
San Francisco Marin Food Bank
Ocean Science Trust
Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir
San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
Congregation Beth Jacob
PEERS
Berkeley Food and Housing Project
San Francisco Marin Food Bank
Ocean Science Trust
Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir
San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
“Our organization hired a BAIED member as the Interim Executive Director during a leadership transition period from a founding ED. She was an amazing and unexpected mentor, manager, trainer strategist and colleague. She helped both staff and Board be better leaders, step up in our roles and prepare us as we moved to hire, support and work with a new Executive Director.”
“The BAIED interim we hired stepped into our 6 county, 150 employee, $18 million organization during our beloved ED’s maternity leave, and did not miss a step, and actually moved a few items forward – all while ensuring our ED could seamlessly step back into the organization. We are pleased and grateful!”
“From his very first days with us, the BAIED interim brought calm to our organization, where he was quickly able to assess what was needed to keep the staff productive and engaged. There was no lapsed time in gaining the complete confidence of our Board. Old and new members alike were impressed with his ability to correct ingrained deficiencies in former operations and management. His clear communication, insightful analysis, and creative visions afforded our Board the opportunity to really see our organization for what is was and could be.”
“The BAIED member we hired is an outstanding professional who can step into any situation and bring clarity and direction. Her skill and experience in non-profit management spans every aspect of the business: budgeting, grant writing, negotiations, fundraising, change management, and more. She very quickly gets to know the organization and the people, and rolls up her sleeves and gets to work with staff and trustees. Her passion for helping organizations is clear, and she inspires those around her.”
IED for nonprofit leadership transitions

Why BAIED?

Experience

Our interims have extensive backgrounds as nonprofit executive leaders. Our members have a minimum of three Interim Executive Director assignments prior to joining the group and 10 years of previous Executive Director experience.

Stability

Our executives provide frontline, in-depth operational, staff, Board and financial expertise from the moment your leadership transition begins to the hiring of a new Executive Director or CEO.

Time

Our members have exemplary executive management skills to lead your organization during a vulnerable time. This gives the Board the necessary time to make critical decisions about the current state and future of the organization in order to hire the best person for the permanent position. Typically these positions span a period of 4-12 months.

Diversity

Our members have led a wide array of nonprofits, representing many disciplines, locations, staff sizes, industries and budgets. Individually and collectively, we are deeply committed to honoring the diversity of our region and the journey towards equity and justice.

Simplicity

We will send your request to our experienced network for review. If members are available, they will contact you directly. Ideally we recommend you interview two to three Interim candidates to determine the best fit for your organization. There is no charge to you for this service.

Select an experienced interim executive to lead your nonprofit.

The experienced professionals of BAIED are here for your organization’s leadership transition.