Building and keeping a highly effective nonprofit staff is really tricky. The recently released 2015 Nonprofit Employment Practices Survey from NonprofitHR found that 50% of nonprofits surveyed plan to add new positions in 2015, compared to 36% of private companies. But, staff recruitment and retention are still significant hurdles for nonprofit leaders, with 52% of nonprofits lacking a recruitment strategy and 27% reporting their greatest retention challenge is low wages.

So how can nonprofits grow their staffs when they are hampered by significant recruitment and retention challenges?

  • Recruit Outside Your Comfort Zone
    • To find your next staff rockstar, be strategic about getting your job in front of new audiences and networks. Come up with a list of 50-100 people who might be connected to someone who fits the job’s qualifications. Think of strategic allies, leaders in the field, funders, volunteers.
  • Pay Enough
    • As I said, one of the biggest challenges to retaining staff is low salaries. But the fact is that staff turnover is an enormous cost to an organization (recruitment, lost time, retraining) so convince your board that you should pay competitive salaries in order to save the organization money in the long run.
  • Hire The Right Person
    • Nonprofit leaders must go against the default, which is to hire someone with less experience than the position requires (since it’s cheaper). Instead hire someone who can take the position to the next level.
  • Manage Effectively
    • Once you have a great person in place, make sure you lead them effectively by using goals and strategy, not micromanagement. The best way to do this is to schedule a 30-60 minute, weekly, one-on-one meeting with each of your direct reports that focuses on your goals for their position.

Read the full article about building and keeping an effective nonprofit by Nell Edington at Social Velocity.