Show Notes:
Most nonprofit leaders treat retention as a problem to fix after the hire. The organizations that keep people for decades treat it as something they build into the hire itself.
Sarah invited Crystal FitzSimons, the president of the Food Research and Action Center and someone who has been at FRAC for twenty-four years leading a team where staff routinely stay ten, twenty, and even forty years, to unpack what actually holds people in a nonprofit for the long term.
This episode is for:
- Executive directors and nonprofit CEOs who are watching good people leave and unsure why
- Founders and EDs about to make a key hire and wondering how much process is actually worth it
- CEOs who have stopped sitting on interviews because if feels like too much time
What you'll hear:
- Why hiring is the single most important thing Crystal's forty-person team does, and how that belief changes the calendar
- The reason the CEO belongs in every final interview, even at forty people, even at five hundred
- What Crystal has kept, and what she has added, to sustain a culture where people stay through leadership transitions
- Why mission alignment is only the price of admission, and what actually keeps someone in the seat
- How Crystal is holding the team steady through a marathon-and-a-sprint policy season, and what that requires of a president
- How to think about a hiring process as a cultural transmission instead of a selection task
Crystal has been at FRAC for twenty-four years and just stepped into the president role. Her chief government affairs officer recently celebrated forty years with the organization. This is what genuine longevity looks like, and it is not luck.
Related Links:
Sign up for the The Inspired Nonprofit Leadership Newsletter
Connect with Crystal on LinkedIn
Check out the good work FARC is doing
❤️ And a big thank you to our caring sponsor Donorbox
