Why the Executive Director Shouldn't Always Be Your First Hire

When small nonprofits decide it's time to hire, the conversation almost always lands in the same place: "We need an Executive Director."

It feels right. EDs are senior. They lead. They give the organization gravity. So the board posts the job, runs a careful search, and brings on someone with twenty years of nonprofit experience — only to discover, six months in, that things don't feel that different.

The volunteers are still doing most of the work. The board is still answering emails at 11pm. The new ED is busy — but with strategy retreats, vision documents, and stakeholder coffees. The day-to-day still falls back to the people who were already carrying it.

This isn't a bad ED. It's a mismatch.

The work most early-stage nonprofits need is doing, not thinking.

Here's the truth that gets missed in the rush to hire: by the time a board is ready to make its first paid hire, the thinking has already been done.

The founders have a vision. The board has a strategy. There's usually a mission statement, a logo, a website, a few signature programs, and a fundraising approach that's at least sort of working. The thinking part, the part Executive Directors are trained for, is largely covered.

What's missing is the doing. Someone to run the spreadsheets. Someone to manage the volunteers. Someone to file the grant report, send thank-yous to the donor, schedule board meetings, and chase down the receipts. Someone to make sure the work actually gets done.

EDs can do that work. But it's not what they're hired for, it's not what they're paid for, and frankly, it's not what most experienced EDs want to spend their days on. You'll burn through your salary budget, and probably your ED, fast.

And often, it's a vision mismatch too.

A seasoned ED brings something else into the room: opinions. They've seen a hundred fundraising galas, run dozens of programs, sat through years of board retreats. So when they walk in, they bring a strong point of view about what to keep, what to change, and what to retire entirely.

That experience is a feature — but it can also be a flashpoint.

Maybe your annual fundraiser has been the heart of your community for ten years and the new ED thinks the format is dated. Maybe your signature program has scrappy roots and a beloved volunteer team, and the new ED wants to professionalize the model. Maybe the board has always made fundraising calls together, and the new ED wants to centralize them under their own name.

These ideas aren't wrong. They might even be smart. But they collide with the deep ownership founders and board members feel for what they've built. The result is friction — sometimes productive, sometimes corrosive — and a working relationship that starts in conflict instead of partnership.

When the founders or board aren't yet ready for that level of change, the ED who came to lead a transformation finds themselves stuck. And the organization, instead of moving forward, spends its early staff dollars on a tug-of-war.

Match the hire to the real work

Before you write a job description, sit with your board and answer one honest question: what kind of help do we actually need?

If the answer is mostly tactical — execution, coordination, follow-through — your first hire might be:

• A Program Coordinator to run the day-to-day of one or two programs

• An Operations Manager to handle finance, HR-lite, scheduling, and systems

• A Development Associate to manage donor records, gifts, and grant logistics

• A Communications Coordinator to handle email, social, and the website

If the answer is mostly strategic — fundraising leadership, board development, growth planning — then an ED (or a fractional ED to start) makes sense.

And if the answer is "honestly, both" — that's worth knowing too. It usually means you need a smaller, more tactical first hire, plus consulting or fractional support for the strategy until you can afford both.

Ask the better question

The default question — should we hire an Executive Director? — assumes the answer before you've named the problem. The better question is two-part:

• What does our organization actually need help with right now?

• At what level — execution, management, or leadership?

Match the hire to the answer. You'll get more value out of the salary, more sanity for your board, and a much better shot at building an organization that can actually grow into needing an ED someday.

Related reading: Your First Paid Hire: Three Questions to Ask Before You Post the Job — still wondering whether you're ready to hire at all? Start here.