How to Prepare Your Board for a Leadership Search
Getting the news that your camp director is leaving is rarely easy. (If it just happened and you need the first-week triage, start with Your Camp Director Just Quit. Here's What to Do Next.) Whether it was expected or not, running a leadership search, often for the first time in years, can feel like a lot to take on, especially for a volunteer board whose members all have full-time jobs.
The good news is that this has been done before, and done well. But the market is likely more competitive than it was the last time you hired. Leadership hiring has become a professional discipline, candidates are sophisticated, the window is tight, and the cost of getting it wrong is significant. A KPMG Board Leadership Center survey of over 2,300 board directors found that nearly 70% of boards struggle to fill seats with people who have both general business knowledge and the specific skills their organization needs. Boards face the same challenge when hiring their own executive, in a hiring cycle that rewards preparation and can cost those who wait.
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This post is the complete playbook for what a nonprofit board needs to do before, during, and after a leadership search. It is the hiring process for nonprofit organizations at the executive level: all twelve elements of a professionally run search, in the order they should happen.
The twelve steps
Here is the full process at a glance. Each step links to its section below.
The board's role during a leadership search
Before the twelve steps, it helps to be clear about what the board is actually responsible for, because this is where most first-time search committees get lost.
Hiring the executive is the board's single most consequential governance duty, and one of the few operational decisions that sits entirely with the board rather than with staff. That makes board involvement during a leadership search different in kind from the board's usual work. You are not advising here. You are deciding.
In practice the board owns five things: defining what the organization needs in its next leader, approving the compensation range before anyone goes to market, running a process that treats every candidate consistently, making the hiring decision, and supporting the new executive through their first year. Everything else, scheduling, candidate communication, sourcing, and reference logistics, can be delegated to a search committee, to staff, or to a search firm.
This is the same structure whether you are a nonprofit board hiring an executive director, a camp board hiring a camp director, or an independent school board running a head of school search. The titles differ. The governance responsibility does not.
1. Form the search committee
A search committee is a small group, drawn from the board and the wider community, that runs the leadership search on the board's behalf and brings a recommendation back to the full board for a vote. Keep it to four to eight people who have genuine time to dedicate to the process.
Composition matters. BoardSource's Leading with Intent research found that 49% of chief executives say they do not have the right board members to build trust with the communities they serve, and the search committee is where that gap shows up first. You want people with an eye for talent, people who have evaluated candidates before, and people who bring diverse perspectives across professional backgrounds, community relationships, and life experience. You also want people who can actually show up. A member who misses half the meetings creates inconsistency and drag on everyone else.
One point of contact with candidates is essential. Multiple board members reaching out independently with different information is one of the most common ways a good candidate experience falls apart. Designate who communicates with candidates and let everyone else support from behind the scenes.
2. Run a compensation analysis before you go to market
Many organizations have not benchmarked the camp compensation market since the current executive was hired, and the number they paid their outgoing leader is likely not the number that wins a search today.Boards that start recruiting without understanding the current landscape often underperform in their offers.
A compensation analysis looks at what comparable organizations in your sector and region are paying, what total rewards packages look like in the current market, and what your organization can actually support financially. Sign-on bonuses, relocation allowances, performance incentives, housing, healthcare, PTO structure, professional development funding, and tuition for the leader's children are all part of the conversation in 2026.
We covered how housing and compensation interact in The Right Way to Include Housing in Camp Job Offers, and a full compensation package post is coming later this year. For now, the critical point is this: know your number, your levers, and where you are willing to be flexible before the first candidate conversation, not during the offer stage.
3. Build a stakeholder communication plan for the transition
A nonprofit leadership transition is a community moment, not just a personnel change. Alumni, parents, staff, donors, and program participants all have feelings about it, and those feelings need somewhere to go. Boards without a proactive communication plan end up managing rumors and fielding anxious calls when they should be focused on the search.
Before anything becomes public, map your stakeholders. Who needs to know first? Who can wait? What is the message for each group and who delivers it? Year-round staff deserve to hear this directly and early. Major donors and board-adjacent community members are another tier. The general community can often be reached in a single well-crafted communication once transition milestones are confirmed.
Give the community a place to voice their thoughts, too. Surveys, open office hours, and one-on-one conversations with key stakeholders make people feel heard, and they surface names of potential candidates and institutional context the search committee needs.
One important nuance: confidential searches almost never work in small, tight-knit sectors. The camp community is too small, the connections too tight, and candidates too smart for confidentiality to hold. Have the hard conversation with the outgoing leader directly, treat them with dignity, and run an open search. Read more: The Myth of the Confidential Search.
The plan also needs to cover the internal candidates who will inevitably apply. Alumni, parents, and staff who apply deserve structured, fair, and personal treatment, which we cover in an upcoming post on managing internal candidates.
4. Review the organizational structure before you write the job description
A leadership search is an inflection point. The best boards treat it as an opportunity to ask whether the current organizational structure is the right one for the next chapter, not just to backfill the person who left.
Start with the job itself. What should the next leader actually be doing with most of their time? Executives buried in program details, staff scheduling, and family communications are not doing the business-level work organizations increasingly need from their top leader. If those can be delegated to an assistant or program director, what does the executive role become?
There is a significant trend here: many organizations are moving from the title of Camp Director to Executive Director, or restructuring to accommodate both. The industry is deliberately shifting toward business-oriented leaders who oversee the whole operation rather than program-focused leaders who run the summer, and that shift attracts a different, more business-focused candidate. We go deeper on this in an upcoming post on what top camp leaders are looking for right now.
A full organizational health assessment is worth running at this stage. Evaluating enrollment trends, financial sustainability, staff retention, fundraising trajectory, and the health of key functions gives the search committee a clear picture of what the next leader needs to prioritize, and that clarity should shape the job description and the candidate profile.
5. Make the housing and location decision before you post the job
One of the most consequential decisions a board makes before a camp search is how it approaches housing and location, and how early that decision gets made. This applies to any organization with a physical site the leader is expected to be near. It is not a detail for offer negotiations. It needs to be defined before the job description is written, because it directly determines the size of the candidate pool. If the leader can live remotely during the offseason, the pool of interested applicants opens up dramatically.
Year-round on-site living is the most restrictive option, limiting you to candidates willing to live in a rural setting with their families. The pool of people who want that life and have the professional background to run a multimillion-dollar nonprofit is small, and requiring it by default rather than by real operational necessity costs boards candidates they would have loved to hire.
For organizations with legitimate year-round operational needs, our recommendation is to require that candidates live within driving distance of the site, close enough to respond to emergencies, manage year-round staff, and be present for key moments, with exceptions for the right candidate. Location flexibility is one of the highest-value signals an organization can send in 2026, and most of the candidates we talk to prefer to choose where they live.
Housing also has legal complexity. As we covered in our housing post, whether housing is provided, how it is structured, and how it is positioned against base salary all carry compliance implications that vary by state. Work this out with legal counsel before you put anything in writing.
6. Understand the hiring calendar and design around it
Camp and youth-serving leadership hiring has a season (here is why fall is the best time to hire). It opens in September, immediately after summer ends, runs hot through December, and then slows significantly. By February and March, sitting directors have committed to their summers and largely exit the candidate pool. The market does not wait, and organizations that miss the September-December window are recruiting from what is left.
For boards that know a transition is coming, do this preparation work during the summer: form the search committee, complete the compensation analysis, write the job description, build the interview guide and scoring rubric, and finalize the sourcing strategy before September. For boards that get the news unexpectedly in August or September, the work happens immediately. Either way, be ready to recruit the moment the market opens.
Speed matters, and time kills deals. A disorganized board that needs two weeks between each stage loses to a prepared one that moves decisively. We have placed candidates in searches that competed with three other organizations for the same finalist. The one that communicated clearly, moved quickly, and treated the candidate well at every touchpoint won. The ones that could not get their committee aligned in time did not.
7. Build a bias-resistant evaluation process
Search committees are usually made up of people who care deeply about the organization and have strong opinions about what the next leader should look like. Those opinions are often rooted in bias, even when well-intentioned: a preference for candidates who speak the organization's language, have personal connections to the community, or simply feel familiar. Camp searches often include alumni, former staff, current parents, and even board members as candidates. They understand the culture and history of a place far better than external candidates do, but that does not predict whether they can run the organization well.
A structured evaluation process is the mitigation. SHRM's benchmarking research has found that structured interviews predict on-the-job performance far better than unstructured conversations. Consistent questions for every candidate. A scoring rubric tied to criteria established at the start of the search. Scores submitted independently before any debrief. Interviews recorded so members who missed a session can review the full conversation rather than a secondhand summary.
Multi-format evaluation matters too. One-on-one interviews, group interviews, scenario-based rounds, case study presentations, and on-site visits each reveal different dimensions of a candidate. Someone who shines in a panel interview but cannot read a room at an informal dinner is showing you something important. So is someone who stumbles in a pressure scenario but thinks their way through it transparently.
The full guide to structured interviews is coming in an upcoming post on evaluating leadership talent. The principle: evaluate the job, not your feelings about the person or their history with your organization.
8. Design the candidate experience intentionally
The best executive director candidates have options, and they know it. They are usually interviewing with several organizations at once and deciding based not just on the role and compensation but on how the organization treated them at every step.
The boards that do candidate experience well have a few things in common. One central communication point, not four board members emailing the same candidate different information. A clear roadmap of the process delivered upfront. Substantive, timely feedback. And a genuine effort to understand what matters to the person across the table, not just what the board is offering.
The on-site final round is the highest-stakes moment in any search, and it is why we tell boards to fly out finalists. It is the organization's chance to make its case as a place worth uprooting a family for. Pay for the travel. Put them up somewhere nice. Take them to dinner. Introduce them to the community in a way that feels human, and show them the property in a way that lets them picture their life there. Organizations that rush this moment, or assume they have already made a strong impression, risk losing candidates they thought they had.
9. Plan the background and reference check process
Background and reference checks happen at the offer stage, not before. In many states you cannot run a background check until an offer has been made conditional on clearing it, so know your state's requirements before you design the timeline.
The American Camp Association has specific background and reference check standards that accredited camps are expected to meet, and they are a reasonable benchmark for any youth-serving nonprofit. A federal criminal check, sex offender check, and county-level records review are standard. Driving history matters too, since the leader will often transport participants and staff. Use a third-party provider and budget roughly $300 or more per candidate, depending on the states and counties involved.
References should be planned intentionally. To align with ACA standards you need professional references on file, and you can talk to more people if it helps. Ask every reference consistent questions and listen for themes rather than individual opinions. References were chosen by the candidate, so what you are listening for is convergence: if several mention the same strength or the same area of growth, that pattern is meaningful. A single comment about a conflict ten years ago is less relevant.
Social media and credit checks are used by some organizations, particularly for roles with financial authority. Both require a third-party provider and a policy the committee has agreed to in advance, including the disqualification criteria. Deciding those reactively, under time pressure, is where bias and compliance issues creep in.
10. Negotiate the offer like a partner, not an adversary
Offer negotiation is not a transaction. It is the first moment of the new relationship, and how the board conducts itself here sets the tone for everything that follows.
When posting the role, list a salary range rather than a single number. A range communicates flexibility, gives candidates a realistic picture, and reduces time wasted on conversations that were never going to close. When you make the offer, name a specific number within that range based on where the candidate scored against your criteria. Most candidates we work with in the camp world receive an offer in the middle of the posted range and negotiate up $5,000 to $10,000 from there. A board that can say yes to a reasonable counter starts the relationship on the right foot. One that digs in over a number well within its range risks losing a candidate it wanted.
Working at camp is a lifestyle decision. Someone moving their family across the country, leaving a community they know, and betting their career on a new organization is doing something significant, and the negotiation needs to honor that. Ask what the candidate needs to make this work: a slightly higher number, a sign-on bonus to cover moving costs, flexibility on start date, or just the feeling that the board wants them and is willing to give a little.
Keep the channel tight. One board member leads the negotiation and the others stay informed but not involved. The candidate needs to feel like they are in conversation with a person, not a committee.
11. Build the executive director transition plan and onboard the new leader
The search is over. The offer is signed. And then, for many organizations, the real challenge begins: the new leader has no one to hand them the keys. Bridgespan's research on nonprofit CEO transitions is blunt about where the cost lands: the gap between a planned departure and an unplanned one shows up most in the new leader's first year, not in the search itself.
Camps and seasonal nonprofits have a structural onboarding challenge most industries do not. The outgoing leader departs around the time the incoming leader arrives, and both are busy running programs during the summer, when overlap would be most valuable. The institutional knowledge in the outgoing director's head does not transfer automatically.
We have seen this play out two ways. One organization we worked with hired their new director six months before the outgoing director left. The two had half a year of overlap, handed off responsibilities gradually, and the incoming director had their feet under them before running a summer alone. A year later, that director was still in the role, performing well, and the community transition had been smooth. Another organization made its hire and provided almost no structured onboarding. Within a year the person was clearly struggling, and by the time outside help arrived, trust that could have been built early had already frayed.
Three things make the difference. First, get the outgoing leader to document everything: processes, vendor relationships, key contacts, institutional history. Load it into a shared drive or an onboarding guide, and ask them to sit with the new leader, even informally, after they leave. That knowledge transfer is worth more than almost anything else you can do.
Second, form an onboarding committee separate from the search committee. The search committee finds and hires the right person. The onboarding committee integrates them: introductions to key stakeholders, support through early challenges, and regular check-ins on how they are settling in.
Third, consider an experienced industry coach who works with leaders in transition. We work closely with coaches who specialize in this and have seen it make a real difference in the first year. Budget $5,000 to $10,000, a small investment relative to a failed hire, and let the incoming leader have a say in choosing their coach.
In the first 90 days, build a structured plan with the new leader collaboratively. Map the stakeholder meetings they need across parents, board members, staff, donors, vendors, and alumni. Set quarterly goals tied to the organizational health assessment, start mapping priorities for a 1-3 year plan, and schedule regular check-ins to discuss progress and provide coaching. Our nonprofit executive director performance evaluation template is a useful starting point for the first-year review.
12. Know when to bring in outside help
Twenty years ago, leadership hiring in camp was a local effort. Directors came from the communities their camps served, and a search was often a few calls and an offer to someone already known. That world is largely gone.
Today, many camp leadership searches need a national effort: sourcing at scale, understanding market dynamics across regions, a network of passive candidates who can be activated when the right search opens, and a process that can compete with other organizations doing the same thing at the same time. BDO's nonprofit benchmarking puts a number on the difficulty: 44% of nonprofits report trouble attracting high-quality leadership. Most volunteer boards are not equipped to do all of that on their own, and the ones that try often end up with months of effort and a shallow candidate pool.
A search firm brings three things a volunteer board almost never has: a pre-built candidate network, data on what competitive looks like in the current market, and the bandwidth to run the process at the level it requires. Decide whether to hire a firm before the search begins, not midway through when momentum has stalled.
That said, not every search needs a firm. Roles that are not business-critical, searches where a strong internal candidate is likely, and boards with real internal capacity and a flexible timeline can reasonably try it independently first. For executive director and camp director roles where a bad hire would be costly, outside help is usually worth the investment. We covered this at length in When to Hire a Nonprofit Executive Search Firm (And When Not To).
The through-line
Every step in this list connects back to the same principle: leadership searches are high-stakes organizational moments, and they reward preparation. The boards that do this well spend the summer getting ready, hit September organized and moving, and close before the market freezes in February. The boards that wait and improvise spend months catching up to a market that has moved on without them.
There is no version of this that is easy, but the version that works starts with building the plan early.
How ready is your board?
Most boards discover the gaps in their process halfway through a search. Our Leadership Search Readiness Assessment scores your organization across six domains, governance and decision rights, compensation readiness, transition and continuity, clarity on the role, process capacity, and the first year, and tells you which one to fix first. Bring it to your next board meeting and have every member fill it out.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a search committee?
A search committee is a small group, usually four to eight people drawn from the board and the wider community, that runs a leadership search on the board's behalf and brings a recommendation back to the full board for a vote. It handles sourcing, scheduling, candidate communication, and evaluation. The hiring decision itself stays with the board.
What is the board's role during a leadership search?
The board owns five things: defining what the organization needs in its next leader, approving the compensation range before going to market, ensuring the process treats every candidate consistently, making the hiring decision, and supporting the new executive through their first year. Day-to-day mechanics like scheduling and candidate communication are delegated to the search committee or a search firm. This structure is the same whether the board is hiring an executive director, a camp director, or a head of school.
What is a realistic executive director search timeline?
A typical search runs 90-120 days from kickoff to accepted offer, with another 30-60 days before the new leader starts. Boards should also plan for a first-year onboarding period rather than treating the start date as the end of the transition. Timelines stretch when committee availability is limited or when the compensation band is below market.
What are search committee best practices?
Keep the committee small enough to move quickly, designate one point of contact for all candidate communication, establish evaluation criteria and a scoring rubric before meeting anyone, have members score independently before group discussion, and use consistent questions and formats for every candidate. Committees that skip the criteria step tend to make decisions based on which candidate felt most familiar.
Should our board hire an executive search firm?
It depends on the role and the board's capacity. A firm brings a pre-built candidate network, current market compensation data, and the bandwidth to run a competitive process. Boards with genuine internal capacity, a flexible timeline, or a likely internal candidate can reasonably try the search on their own first. For executive director roles where a failed hire would be costly, outside help is usually worth the fee.
Is board succession planning the same as an executive search?
No. Board succession planning is about recruiting and replacing board members and officers, including the board chair. An executive search is about hiring the organization's chief executive. They are separate processes with separate timelines, though a board in the middle of its own turnover will struggle to run a strong executive search, so the two are worth sequencing deliberately.
CampHire specializes in Executive Search and HR Consulting for nonprofits, camps, and youth-serving organizations. If your board is preparing for a leadership search, or wants to assess whether your current process is set up to succeed, we would be glad to talk through it.