VP Revenue Development - Leading National Health Charity

IRC Global Executive Search Partner:

Madison MacArthur, IRC Global Executive Search Partners - Canada

Search:

VP Revenue Development

Client/Industry:

Leading National Health Charity

Situation:

The client organization had recently gone through significant change in moving from a Federated model to a National model with centralized marketing and fundraising. Like many charities, they were looking to bring more discipline and structure to their revenue development efforts. The client had been using another prominent search firm on a different senior level hire, that was still in progress, and were not pleased with the quality of candidates to date. As a result, the head of Human Resources decided to engage a different firm for this key hire. They called the SVP of Human resources of another organization, a former boss, for a referral and were referred through to Madison MacArthur (IRC Canada). We had worked with this SVP for several years on a wide range of search assignments.

Assessment:

The organization had recently completed the centralization process and had overcome most of the angst that such a radical change naturally created. The CEO had upgraded many of their processes and their technology and had successfully reversed a downward trend that they had been realizing for the past several years. They were now poised to take the organization to a new level and needed a very strong leader to galvanize the staff and lead the development of aggressive revenue targets. As the VP of Revenue Development was the natural successor to the CEO, it was important the candidate not only bring a high level of competency in revenue development but that they also have the leadership skills to assume the CEO role in the future.

Challenge:

The challenge in this search was the transient nature of senior people in fund development roles in the not for profit arena. The level of activity had also increased as all not for profit organizations were really fighting for diminishing donations due to the economic downturn of the past couple of years. As a result of this highly competitive market many organizations felt the need to recruit new leadership into these roles and many of the key people had recently moved on to new roles and were not available. Our client was also concerned about the transient nature of the people in these roles as they rarely stayed long enough with one organization to have a truly proven impact..

Methodology/Solution:

A long list of every conceivable health related charity was developed by the consultant and research staff. This list was further expanded to include disaster relief charities as well as hospital and university foundations and successful revenue development consulting groups. The key fund development people were identified in each organization and contacted y the Senior Consultant. Due to the level of movement in the area, it took an exceptional number of calls to unearth quality candidates that had not recently made a change and that had a solid track record and good tenure with their organizations.
As part of the process, we also vetted a number of candidates that had applied to the client posting as well as an internal candidate. A short list of 5 candidates was presented. Each had a depth of experience in fund development, extensive backgrounds in health related not for profits and solid management experience. The client ultimately met 4 of the candidates as one received another offer in the interim.

Candidate:

The successful candidate was a real find as they were an independent consultant that had extensive experience in health related organizations. They had been working on long term consulting assignments with various organizations and had a track record of success in each. As a previous CEO, they had been responsible for the major turnaround of a well known charitable organization and had real passion for the business. The candidate was very well networked and brought a rolodex of quality contacts. The candidate was more focused on the nature of the organization and the value they brought to the community, as well as the scope of the role, than they were on title.
A second candidate from the short list presented is now the lead candidate for the senior management role that the other search firm was working on. The CEO of the organization showed the other search firm the extensive references that Madison MacArthur had conducted and called to let us know that they commented that they had never seen such comprehensive references before.

Postmortem:

As this is a very recent hire, the candidate is just in the process of developing their group and strategy. The candidate has already made a very positive impact on the group at their recent annual management meeting.
The client has just engaged Madison MacArthur for another VP level assignment.

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