Thinking Strategically about Staff

In accepting our responsibilities for protecting land in perpetuity, land trusts are rightly focused on ensuring we have financial capacity to defend easements and recordkeeping systems that will serve to inform future generations. The third leg of this sustainability stool is recruiting and retaining staff that have the skills and experience to conduct our business in an effective and lasting way. It makes sense, then, that once hired we should focus on providing for those staff so that they remain with us long term.

Yet land trusts seem reluctant to strategically plan for the hiring and compensation of qualified professional employees. In my recent survey of staffed land trusts, fewer than 25% of respondents said they used strategic plans to identify future staffing needs and to develop fundraising goals to meet those needs. Many more added staff opportunistically, and nearly half had added staff using short-term grants. Without long-term planning and accompanying commitment to fundraising, many groups face instability in staffing.

This lack of planning is also evident in how staff compensation is determined. Several groups surveyed said that salaries are “based on current funds available,” rather than identifying what comparable staff positions make at other organizations, and then creating a fundraising plan to be able to offer similar pay.

While these approaches may staffing, nor will they attract the highest caliber candidates.

“The Unsolicited Windfall”

Land Trust X, a young organization with a handful of completed projects, held a strategic planning session with key stakeholders and landowners. One of the goals set through this planning work was to open an office and hire staff. Afterwards, one of the session participants came forward and pledged to provide funding for a staff person for two years.

Grateful, the land trust accepted the donation and quickly moved forward with hiring an executive director and consequently ramping up the pace of conservation work.

However, at the end of the two years, no work had been done to create a fundraising program that would bring in enough income to retain the executive director. The board had been focused on the conservation projects that having a full-time staff person enabled them to take on, and had neglected their fundraising duties. The executive director was let go and several promising projects were shelved.

How could Land Trust X have parlayed the generous contribution they were offered into sustainable staff?

They might have worked with the donor to extend the gift over several years, matching each year’s contribution with other fundraising so that the costs of having paid staff were not entirely covered by one income source. This strategy would have been especially successful if the donor’s contribution was made in decreasing amounts annually, forcing fundraising efforts by the board to increase correspondingly and generating an expectation that each year’s fundraising goals would be higher than the previous. This would have gone a long way toward cushioning the land trust’s budget sharp fall-off in funding that resulted at the end of the two years.

“The Unpaid Executive”

ABC Land Trust has been around for 20 years and has had the same hard-working president the entire time. The president spent at least 40 hours a week on land trust business — answering the phone, writing grant proposals, meeting with landowners and working on upcoming board meeting agendas.

At the most recent officer elections, she declined to be nominated for another term, and the vice president was nominated and subsequently elected president. Since then, many of the tasks formerly done by the president have languished, and a major grant proposal deadline passed without anyone submitting an application.

The board is now divided between those who think the workload of the president is untenable and that they should hire an executive director, and those who are opposed to raising money to pay somebody to do what has been done by volunteers so far.

What could the ABC Land Trust have done to prevent this impasse?

Volunteer time may be an invaluable part of getting the work done, but it can and should be given an actual value. The past president of the land trust was making an in-kind contribution of her time, which should be indicated on income statements as such. The land trust could list her time at an hourly volunteer rate, or determine what an executive director of a similar type of organization would make and include that amount as her in-kind donation. On the expense side of the ledger, they should include this estimated cost of having a paid staff person, so that the in-kind donation balances out the predicted cost. In this way, the board is presented with an accurate representation of what it might cost them to do the same amount of work with paid staff. When the president steps down, the board then has usable information about what it will take to replace her contribution, either with another in-kind donation of time, or with a paid staff person.

Becoming Professional

With our commitment to perpetuity, land trusts should be leading the way in establishing and ensuring responsible hiring and compensation practices. Our organizations are meant to last forever; once we hire paid staff, our commitment to maintaining a professional operation should also be forever. The ups and downs of an organization that does not adequately prepare for the hiring and retention of staff are detrimental to its work, its public image and its ability to attract and retain the quality of employees required for an undertaking as complex and enduring as ours.

In the same survey cited above, 99% of responding land trusts’ staff held Bachelors’ degrees. More than 75% had staff with post-baccalaureate degrees, including many law degrees and MBAs. We are clearly able to bring in staff with excellent credentials. How well do we do at rewarding them for their expertise and tenure? In 2008, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that managers in nonprofits made nearly 20% less than managers with similar responsibilities at for-profit companies.

Not only are pay scales lower, 63% of the staffed land trust survey respondents do not offer regular cost of living increases and 31% had no reserve funds to pay salaries if fundraising goals were not met. Those that did have some reserve funds averaged just over 50% of one year’s operating costs.

Some land trusts are taking steps to improve the situation. One hires a compensation consultant to review their salary ranges against the market every few years. Others take into consideration the cost of living in their communities, especially where it is higher than the norm. These are excellent steps toward ensuring that staff are paid in keeping with both their peers and their regions.

Land trusts must be proactive and strategic about hiring staff. The positions an organization chooses to fill should reflect its strategic plan — what skills and experience will be necessary to accomplish the goals?

Addition of staff should be planned and budgeted in advance, and fundraising plans should reflect not only the initial addition of new staff, but future salary increases and benefits as well.

For those of us working for a land trust, it’s more than just a job. We come to this profession from many directions, but we come here because we are committed to the mission and have a passion for the cause. But we should not be penalized for our passion. If land trusts want to be taken seriously as professional institutions, we must treat our employees as the professionals they are.