The career paths of executive directors: Founders, fillers, planners and risers

Abstract

This paper analyzes qualitative interview data with a sample of 41 executive directors of human services nonprofits to discover why people become executive directors, what career paths they follow, and how well these career paths prepare them for the job. All became executive directors because they wanted to help others.Less important motivations included influencing how programs operate, wanting to be successful, and wanting a higher salary. The paper proposes a new typology of career paths: founders who started their own nonprofit, fillers from the board or a volunteer position, planners who actively pursued an executive position for years, and risers who worked their way up through the ranks and found that executive director was the next step. Most considered themselves well prepared at the time they took on the position, and there was little difference among the four types of career paths in the level of perceived preparedness. The findings suggest that nonprofit organizations should pay more attention to training leaders who rise up through the ranks, and that management education programs can assist in this mid-career training. Future research should expand the examination of career paths and preparedness to a large and nationally representative survey.

Bending the arc of nonprofit leadership toward justice: Impacts of racial representation and organizational publicness on diversifying executive leadership

“…In other words, what are the barriers preventing Black and Latino candidates from being represented proportionally in nonprofit executive positions, and what can be done to change this? While there is a small but informative literature on the career paths of nonprofit executives (Einolf, 2022;Norris-Tirrell et al, 2018;Stewart & Kuenzi, 2018), this work largely overlooks the role of structural inequities faced by minority candidates, and how increased racial representation at the board level might impact the prospects of minority candidates being selected for executive roles. Given that nonprofit boards are tasked with hiring the agency's Executive Director, we contribute to this literature by drawing on representative bureaucracy theory to provide the first known test of the passive-active link in the context of the US nonprofit sector.…”

Understanding nonprofit leader engagement and turnover: A story of job demands and resources

“…They build teams based on a shared, emotional desire to make an impact for the cause (Miller‐Stevens et al, 2014; Word & Carpenter, 2013). They often have made considerable investment of time, or deeply identify with the group's mission, in order to have reached the rank of executive (Einolf, 2022). So, when things do not go perfectly or a team member leaves, it can strike deeper for a nonprofit director who feels the impact on the mission, rather than a bottom line.…”

A woman's place is in the lead: a narrative research study exploring nonprofit women leaders' experiences in getting to the corner office

“…Spencer et al (2019) suggested getting women into core roles that put them on the path to leadership early in their career or using midcareer moves to expend their scope of responsibility and learning. Encouraging women to seek master's degrees in nonprofit management is one way to address midcareer efforts to stand out, but Einolf (2022) pointed out that other training such as leadership certification programs may be a good substitute if an individual does not want to pursue or already has a degree. Spencer et al (2019) also suggested that women push themselves into the pipeline by being transparent about their ambitions and building internal and external networks.…”