A SPECIALIZED PRACTICE OF LEVINSON CONSULTING
Hawaiʻi Nonprofit Search
Leadership transition, key-staff searches, and organizational support for Hawaiʻi nonprofits
Hawaiʻi Nonprofit Search helps organizations make thoughtful, well-informed decisions about the people who carry their mission forward.
Leadership transitions can be pivotal moments for organizations.
We support succession and transition planning, executive and other key searches, hiring processes, and the organizational thinking that should accompany a change in leadership.
When appropriate, we can also provide interim or transitional leadership along with executive support as part of team/leadership transitions.
Change is part of every organization.
We see search and transition as part of the natural cycle of every nonprofit—not as elements that exist apart from it. Programs and priorities evolve. People leave. New positions are created. Organizations grow, contract, and adapt. What an organization needs changes along with it.
Changes in leadership and key staff are often challenging, but they also create important opportunities to step back:
Where are we now?
Where are we trying to go?
What do we need from this position at this point in the organization’s life?
What competencies will help us move forward?
That’s why we think about search as an opportunity window, not simply a hiring process. The goal isn’t just to fill a vacancy. It is to understand what the organization needs now, make thoughtful decisions about what comes next, and find the right person for the role.
Much of our work focuses on executive and leadership-team positions, working with boards that carry significant responsibility for navigating these transitions and making these hires. We also work alongside staff leadership on searches for other key staff positions when additional capacity, perspective, or support is useful.
PLAN · BRIDGE ·
SEARCH · TRANSITION
We can help with the full process or particular parts where support is useful. Each engagement is shaped around an organization’s needs, circumstances, capacity, and budget.
PLAN
Understand where your organization is now, where it is trying to go, and what it needs from the position at this point. From there, identify the role, responsibilities, and competencies that can best help move the mission forward.
Planning is an opportunity to look beyond simply replacing the person who left or filling an existing position. Does the current organizational and leadership structure still make sense? Has the organization changed? Should responsibilities or reporting relationships shift? What does the organization most need from this role now and in the years ahead?
BRIDGE
Sometimes the right next step isn't a search.
A leadership departure can create understandable pressure to fill the position quickly. But there are times when an organization benefits from creating some space before choosing the next permanent leader.
We can help boards develop interim approaches that provide stability and continuity while giving the board and staff time to identify and prioritize the organization’s most important needs. An interim period can create space to address immediate challenges, clarify strategy or organizational structure, strengthen board leadership, reflect on and refine a position description, and prepare thoughtfully for a successful search.
SEARCH
Once there is clarity about what an organization needs, we help translate that understanding into the position itself—clarifying responsibilities, reporting relationships, competencies, and expectations, and developing a job description and position announcement that reflect what the organization is actually seeking.
From there, we design and facilitate a thoughtful, inclusive process to identify, attract, assess, and select candidates. This can include developing an outreach strategy, building and exploring a strong candidate pool, supporting the development of interview and reference-check protocols, meaningfully involving staff and other stakeholders, and creating evaluation tools and synthesizing information—all to support decision-makers in making a well-informed choice.
We work with each organization to design the strongest process possible, taking into account its circumstances and budget, drawing on sound practices, and adapting to the organization and the people involved.
TRANSITION
Hiring the right person is the beginning, not the end.
We support effective onboarding, helping the new hire and the people they will work with to establish clear expectations, shared goals, strong communication, ongoing feedback and review, and the relationships and practices needed for a healthy and productive partnership.
Sometimes questions emerge that point to broader needs and opportunities—perhaps related to strategy and planning, governance, organizational structure, leadership support, facilitation, communications, or other areas of capacity.
- Some needs and opportunities may be important to address before moving forward with a search.
- Others may surface along the way and become priorities for the organization after the transition.
More about the type of work Levinson Consulting does beyond search →
Start with a conversation.
You don’t need to know exactly what kind of search—or whether a search—is the right next step.
We can start by talking about where your organization is, what is changing, and what you need. From there, we can think together about what comes next.
Get in touchExperience & Perspective
Hawaiʻi Nonprofit Search is a specialized practice of Levinson Consulting.
Our goal isn’t simply to complete a search. It is to help each organization navigate change thoughtfully and emerge ready for what comes next.
Elila Levinson
Elila has extensive experience in school and organizational leadership, hiring and supervision, professional development, and supporting people and teams through change. Her perspective strengthens our work around candidate assessment, organizational fit, onboarding, leadership development, and creating the relationships and conditions that help people and teams succeed and grow.
Josh Levinson
Josh has more than two decades of experience working with nonprofit and community organizations in Hawaiʻi—as an executive director, board leader, consultant, facilitator, and advisor. He has helped organizations navigate leadership and key-staff searches, interim leadership, succession, and executive transitions, as well as the strategy, governance, organizational development, and board leadership issues that often surface along the way.
Josh’s search and leadership transition experience includes
MCAPP · Sustʻāinable Molokai · Mānoa Heritage Center · Aloha Harvest · Hauʻoli Mau Loa Foundation · Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities · KEY Project · Project Dāna · Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute · Hoa ʻĀina O Mākaha · Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network
Our approach is grounded in the same principles that guide all of Levinson Consulting’s work: listening carefully, understanding context, respecting the knowledge that already exists within organizations and communities, and helping identify practical ways forward.