From the Chronicle of Philanthropy

Charity Heads Who Leave Their Jobs Find New Roles In and Out of the Nonprofit Field
By Rebecca Gardyn

The impulse to leave nonprofit leadership roles is a common one, and when it strikes, many executives seek a life away from the stresses of heading charities -- sometimes finding other roles in the nonprofit world, sometimes leaving that world altogether. While 85 percent of executive directors said they enjoy their jobs and their ability to help meet community needs, fewer than half said that they intend to lead another charity when they leave their current posts, according to a national survey of executive directors released late last year by CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, a management-consulting organization in San Francisco.

Ricki Baker, for one, left her role as executive director of the UJA-Federation of New York in 2001, an organization that supports dozens of Jewish health, human-service, and educational charities in New York and elsewhere, after three years to start a consulting business in Baltimore, where she specializes in marketing and strategic planning for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. She left her nonprofit leadership role, she says, because she wanted more latitude to take risks and to have her effectiveness measured by more objective standards, like profits. Even so, her passion for the work of charities has kept her close to the field, and she says she chooses as clients only those groups whose missions she supports. She adds that her nonprofit experience gives her deeper knowledge of her clients' needs. For instance, she is currently working with a trust- and asset-management company that assists charities in developing planned giving strategies. Ms. Baker is currently helping the company market donor-advised funds, which allow donors to open charitable accounts, receive tax deductions on their gifts, and recommend which charities should receive their money. "My nonprofit experience has helped me to understand the world in which the client is presenting this product and to shape the messages appropriately to the market," she says.