When It's Time to Hire a Nonprofit Executive Search Firm (and When It's Not)
Updated: 5 days ago
We should be upfront about something before this post goes any further: we are an executive search firm writing about why you should hire an executive search firm.
The truth is, we spend a meaningful amount of our time talking people out of it. Camp directors, board chairs, executive committees — we'll get on a call, walk through what they're working with, and more than a few times we've ended that conversation by telling them to handle it themselves and offering a few tips to get started. Not every search needs a firm. Not every camp is in a position where the investment makes sense. And telling someone that honestly, even when it means walking away from a fee, is the only way we know how to operate.
So this post is our attempt to lay out exactly when a retained search makes sense and when it doesn't. If you read it and decide you don't need to hire a firm, that's a good outcome. Better than the alternative — which is hiring a firm you didn't need and spending money that should have stayed in your program budget.
The honest answer: most camp roles don't need an executive search firm
Counselors, support staff, unit leaders, activity specialists, program coordinators — these roles should be managed internally. Job boards, referrals, your existing staff network, and a well-run application process get it done.
The calculation changes at the executive level. Camp directors, executive directors, C-suite leaders in organizations large enough to have them — these are the roles where a bad hire can be catastrophic, where the skill set is rare, and where the market is competitive enough that what you don't know can cost you.
According to Gallup's research, the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee's annual salary. At that math, a search firm's fee starts to look less like an expense and more like an investment in finding the right leader.
But the fee alone isn't the question. The question is whether you have what it takes to run the search well without one. Most boards, if they're being honest, don't.
What boards underestimate about running an executive director search themselves
The boards we've worked with who tried to do this themselves and struggled weren't incompetent. They were volunteers with full-time jobs, committee obligations, families, and a million other things happening in September that weren't a leadership search.
A serious executive search is hundreds of hours of work — sourcing candidates, reviewing applications, running a multi-round interview process, doing reference and background checks, managing internal candidates with the care they deserve, negotiating an offer across a lifestyle decision for a candidate who may be moving their family across the country. In our experience, it takes two to six months to successfully fill an executive position, and that's with a dedicated team running the process.
Camp adds a complication that most industries don't have: the hiring window. The market opens in September, runs hot through December, and freezes in February when currently-employed directors commit to their camps for summer. Miss the window and you're not just behind — you may have to wait months for the next hiring cycle.
We've watched this play out with camps that came to us in February, having spent the fall months trying to organize a search themselves. They weren't disorganized people. They were good boards who underestimated the lift and ran out of time. By February the market had largely frozen, and their options were significantly narrower than a few months earlier.
One of those camps went into summer without a permanent director. The search that could have closed in November closed the following October. They had to figure out an interim plan.
Another camp ran their own search, got to the end of the process with camp approaching, and found themselves with one viable candidate left. No real choice, no leverage, no time. They hired that person out of necessity. Two years later they let them go — and hired us to restart the search.
That's the real cost of a DIY search that doesn't work — not just the fee you eventually pay anyway, but the organizational cost of years in limbo with the wrong person at the top.
Five reasons boards hire a nonprofit executive search firm
Access to candidates who aren't looking.
Posting a job and waiting is not a sourcing strategy — it's a hope strategy. The best camp directors are almost never on job boards. They're running their camps and keep close tabs on a handful of places they’d consider for the next opportunity.
Three of our last four placements were candidates we had been in conversation with long before they were ready to make a change. One candidate we first interviewed three years ago for a position at a different camp. He wasn't right for that role, but we stayed in touch. When the right search opened up, we knew exactly who to call. The board never would have found him on their own — he wasn't looking, wasn't applying, and had no reason to respond to a job posting.
That relationship network is the value a firm can bring. It can’t be built overnight. The network has to exist before the search.
Time they don't have.
Volunteer boards are already busy. They have day jobs, families, and committee responsibilities that don't pause because a director resigned. Handing the search to a firm means the board's job becomes decision-making, not administration. They review shortlists. They conduct final interviews. They make the call. Everything else — sourcing, screening, candidate communication, reference checks, process management — gets handled by people who do this for a living.
Knowing what good looks like right now.
A board that last ran a search fifteen years ago is evaluating 2026 candidates against 2011 standards. The camp director job has fundamentally changed. The skills that matter now — digital marketing, P&L management, AI fluency, fundraising, revenue diversification — weren't part of the conversation a decade ago. A search firm that's active in the market can tell you what the talent pool actually looks like, what competitive compensation means today, and how to write a job description that attracts the kind of candidate you need for the next decade, not the last one.
Managing the internal candidates camp always has.
Every search surfaces alumni who think they're qualified, staff members who believe they've earned the role, board members whose family members want the job, parents who've been waiting for this moment. We've had husband and wife teams apply together. We've had a board member's adult child throw their hat in the ring. Every one of them needs to be handled with care, because every one of them is connected to your community and will talk about how the process felt whether or not they got the job.
A third party provides distance. It also provides the playbook — we've run enough of these searches to know exactly how to give every internal candidate a process that feels fair and respectful, even when the answer is no. If the board is trying to do that themselves while managing those personal relationships, something usually gives.
Getting to yes at the offer stage.
More searches fall apart in negotiation than most boards realize. The candidate has concerns they haven't voiced. The board has a number they aren’t flexible on. A competing offer comes in late from another camp.
We spent a week trying to close one candidate — a finalist who was the right person for the role and knew it, but was paralyzed by the life decision. She was moving to a new city, didn't know the area, and was trying to calculate whether the comp worked for her situation. We ended up on Zillow with her, looking at rental listings in her price range, walking through neighborhoods, helping her think through cost of living compared to where she was coming from. It sounds like a lot. But by the end of that week she had a real picture of what her life would look like, and she accepted the offer.
That conversation doesn't happen between a candidate and a future employer. It happens with the trusted advisor in the middle who can be honest and objective. That's the value we add at the offer stage, and it's the reason we've closed searches that were close to falling apart.
How much does a nonprofit executive search firm cost?
The industry standard for retained executive search is a fee of 20-30% of the placed candidate's first-year compensation. That covers the full process: role scoping, sourcing, screening, interview management, reference and background checks, internal candidate handling, and offer negotiation through to a signed acceptance.
Whether that fee makes sense comes back to the math from earlier. A mis-hire at the executive level can be costly. The fee is not the expensive option. The wrong hire is.
When you genuinely don't need a search firm
We had a camp come to us recently with two strong internal candidates — both assistant directors, both capable, both known quantities to the board. They wanted help benchmarking them against external candidates before making a decision. We could have taken that engagement. But we told them not to hire us.
Their situation was this: they had two good people they trusted, a community that knew and respected both of them, and a board that was fully capable of running a light external benchmarking process on their own. What they needed was the confidence to make the decision — not a firm to justify it. We gave them some guidance on how to structure the evaluation and sent them on their way. A few weeks later they promoted one of their own.
That's the right outcome. If your network is genuinely strong, you have a known candidate you trust, your timeline is flexible, and someone on your team has the capacity to run a real process — do it yourself.
The situations where that's actually true: camps with strong alumni pipelines and an obvious internal successor. Camps where the next leader is already in the building. Situations where the role is stable, the timeline is long, and the board has a designated person with real recruiting experience to lead the search.
The honest question to ask: what is the cost of getting this wrong? If the answer is survivable, you have more latitude to try it yourself. If the answer is that your organization does not recover easily from a bad hire at the top, the investment in a search firm looks very different.
How to choose a nonprofit executive search firm
If you decide a firm makes sense, the next question is which one — and the lists of "best nonprofit executive search firms" you'll find online won't answer it, because the right firm is the one that knows your corner of the sector.
Three questions separate the firms worth hiring from the ones worth skipping. First: does their network already include your candidates? Ask who they've placed in roles like yours and how they found them. A firm that recruits camp and youth-development leaders year-round walks in with relationships a generalist firm would spend your entire search trying to build. Second: how do they handle internal candidates? If they don't have a clear, practiced answer, they haven't run searches in communities like yours, where every candidate needs to be handled with care because of their personal ties to the community. Third: what does their process look like between kickoff and offer — and will they walk you through it stage by stage before you sign? Vagueness here is the tell. You want a partner that has built a tailored process designed around camps and youth-serving organizations.
And one more, because it's the filter we'd want used on us: does the firm ever tell prospective clients not to hire them? A firm that understands the weight of the investment is one worth partnering with.
Executive search firm vs. running a search yourself: a decision framework
Run it yourself if: your timeline extends through the full fall window, you have a dedicated internal lead with real hiring experience, your community has a natural candidate pool, and the role is stable enough that a six-to-nine month search wouldn't destabilize operations.
Bring in a firm if: your timeline is compressed, your board is all-volunteer with no dedicated internal capacity, the role is genuinely senior, your community has complex internal candidate dynamics, you don't know what competitive compensation looks like right now, or you tried it yourself and it didn't work.
Bring in a firm immediately if: your director just resigned with no notice, you're past October, and you need someone in place before summer.
The right hire changes everything. So does the wrong one.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a nonprofit executive search firm cost?
Retained executive search firms typically charge 20-30% of the placed candidate's first-year compensation, covering the full process from role scoping and sourcing through reference checks and offer negotiation. Compare that against the cost of a mis-hire and the fee is a fraction of the downside it insures against.
How long does a nonprofit executive search take?
Two to six months on average, with a dedicated team running the process. In the camp world, timing matters as much as duration: the leadership hiring market opens in September, runs hot through December, and largely freezes by February when sitting directors commit to their camps for summer. A search that launches inside that window closes faster and from a stronger pool.
What does a retained executive search firm actually do?
A capable search firm runs the search from end-to-end: role scoping, compensation benchmarking, sourcing candidates who aren't on job boards, screening, managing the interview process, reference and background checks, handling internal candidates with care, and negotiating the offer. The board's job becomes decision-making — reviewing shortlists, conducting final interviews, making the call — instead of administration.
When should a nonprofit run the search itself?
When the next leader is probably already in the building. If you have a strong internal successor or alumni pipeline, a flexible timeline, and someone on the team with real hiring experience to lead the process, run it yourself. The honest test is the cost of getting it wrong: if a mis-hire is survivable, you have latitude to try. If it isn't, hiring a recruitment partner is a worthwhile investment.
What should you look for in a nonprofit executive search firm?
A network that already includes your candidates, a clear playbook for internal candidates, and a tailored process they'll walk you through stage by stage before you sign. Sector specialization matters more than brand-name prestige — the right firm recruits leaders in your corner of the nonprofit world year-round, not just when you're paying them to.
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CampHire specializes in retained Executive Search for camps and youth-serving nonprofits. If you're weighing whether to run a search independently or bring in outside help, we're glad to have that conversation honestly — even if the answer is that you don't need us.