Hiring an executive director: thoughts to keep in mind

["Stormy Peters" <stormy gnome org>]

I was asked awhile back what safe guards I thought should be in place when an open source nonprofit hires an executive director. Here are some of my thoughts. They are a bit rough but hopefully they are interesting to folks.

I think the main concerns happen when:

• the board is made of volunteers that may change and rotate over time,
  
• the organization is very small so the executive director is the only (or one of the only) employees,
  
• there's not a lot of project and/or organizational infrastructure,
• most things are done in public - by this I mean a lot of what the executive director does may be done on mailing lists that are available to the public.
  

So here are some of the things I think the nonprofit board can do:

• Expectations - the executive director needs to know what they are supposed to be doing or it's very easy to flounder. 
• What are the organizations main goals and which ones is the ED expected to deliver on and is there a preferred method? (For example, if GNOME's primary goal is to get more developers, that's very different than become a household brand name. And if they expect me to increase our funding by 200%, that's very different than recruiting new developers.)
  
• Having clear set goals is hard but something worth working on.
• Feedback - frequent feedback, at least quarterly if not monthly is really important since the board may not really know what they want either at the beginning.
• Internal communication
• What's the best format for the ED to keep the board posted on what's going on? Are there other people they should be talking to as well? Blogs? Mailing lists? One on one meetings?
  
• What level of detail is the ED expected to deliver?
• What happens if the ED falls behind on communication?
• If this happens by phone, how is it captured?
• Do you want a list of everyone they talk to? All the ideas they've thrown out?
• Record keeping
• How are records kept? From conversations to status to contacts. If the ED went into the hospital tomorrow, could somebody pick up where they left off? I think this is particularly hard because many nonprofits don't have extensive infrastructure (email hosting, network drives, etc) and even if they did, you still need an easy process for storing or backing up the material.
• Authority
  
• Your ED is going to speak for the organization whether you want them to or not. What are they authorized to say?
• What decisions can they make?
• If they can't just make decisions, who can and what's the process?
• What can they promise or commit the organization to?
  
• How much of a public figure do you want them to be?
  
• What should they do when they are invited to speak places?
• Should they be putting in talk proposals?

Others? (BTW, if the new ED wasn't familiar with how open source communities work, I think there would be even more.)

Best,

Stormy