The Playbook on Hiring a Tech Nonprofit Team
We always say the biggest social problems deserve the best tech, but they also deserve to have the most talented people working on them. And while talent is everywhere, mission-driven individuals who care more about impact than their financial windfall are harder to find.
Part of the challenge in tech nonprofit hiring comes from the fact that you’re competing with tech company salaries and equity. But you offer something different – purpose. The good news: Talented, mission-driven people do exist, and they want to work on the very thing you’re building. There are so many ways to go about hiring impactful team members, even in the early days. Where to find them? Start with posting on Fast Forward's Tech Nonprofit Job Board.
“Working at a tech nonprofit is immensely fulfilling. There’s nothing like waking up every day and knowing your work is helping people and solving important problems.”
– Oliver Hurst-Hiller, CTO & Head of Product, DonorsChoose
So You Want to Find a Co-Founder
Let’s take it from the top. Say you’re just getting started and know you don’t want to navigate this path of entrepreneurship alone. First off, your future self thanks you for acknowledging the need for a partner in thought and action. Co-founders fill in each other’s gaps, distribute the work, and build a strong foundation for the team. Even though it’s viable to go at it as a solo founder, seasoned tech nonprofit leaders admit they wish they’d found a co-founder in retrospect, and emphasize the need for a counterpart who is either technical or an issue expert (or both – jackpot!) early on.
If you’re starting out a project as a solo founder and want to find a co-founder, start by looking for someone whose strengths vary significantly from yours. We recommend you start this process the good ol’ fashioned way – with your network.
Maybe you’ve personally experienced the problem you’ve set out to solve and know the issue area front and back, or maybe you’ve spent your career up until now in fundraising or marketing. You’ll be best served looking for a CTO type, whose varied experience will complement yours. We cannot stress enough the importance of bringing in technical leadership early on. Would a for-profit tech startup launch without a single technical person on the team? No. Freaking. Way. And neither should a tech nonprofit.
Put yourself out there. Fast Forward’s own co-founders met at a bad fundraising event. At the risk of this sounding like dating advice, you never know who you’ll meet!
From Solo Founder to Solo Founder…
Co-founder models are great, but confidence in the co-founder relationship should outweigh the desire to have a co-founder just for the sake of having that support early on. Utkarsh Saxena, founder of Adalat AI, notes: “Date your co-founder before marrying them! My co-founder and I met through a GenAI community, worked together for months, and aligned on mission, values, and culture before officially partnering. Friendship is the foundation of our cofounder relationship.”
Put Out the Bat Signal for a Co-Founder
Call on your personal and professional networks to spread the word
Post across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and any professional groups or listservs you’re a part of. Our Tech Nonprofit Job Board is also a great place to share job openings.
Attend relevant events
You’ll be surprised how many connections you’ll make simply by attending virtual or IRL events related to the work you want to do. Networking is key.
Get involved with local tech for good groups
Chances are there’s a local meetup dedicated to tech for good, or maybe even a topic more tightly tied to your issue area. See where you can get involved organically.
Revisit your network
Your co-founder doesn’t have to be a new connection. Consider who in your existing network might be the right fit. If you’re finding it challenging to navigate your vast network, AI-driven tools can help streamline your search. For instance, platforms like CoFoundersLab use AI to analyze your professional interactions and recommend connections based on shared goals and complementary skills, potentially surfacing your ideal co-founder.
Core Tech Nonprofit Leadership Roles
Executive Director (ED); President; Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Generally the highest ranking position in an organization, these roles are responsible for guiding the tech nonprofit’s success and ensuring mission fulfillment.
Chief Technology Officer (CTO); Head of Product
Lead the technical team and product vision.
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Complements the ED in a variety of ways, mostly by overseeing all internal functions and programs.
There are more leadership roles you may want to hire for depending on the type of organization you’re running.
Case Study
Dost: A Tale of Two Co-Founders
A great example of co-founder matching comes from Dost, a tech nonprofit using audio messages to transform early childhood education in India. While Sneha Sheth, Co-Founder of Dost, was in grad school at Berkeley, she started the organization as part of a school project aimed at bringing early childhood education to urban slums.
Sneha was spending time on the ground with communities in India, relearning the problem she’d been exposed to growing up and outlining a solution. Without technical expertise, Sneha wrangled a friend of a friend to help her build out the Dost prototype. He helped get the MVP off the ground but couldn’t commit to longer term support. He introduced Sneha to Sindhuja Jeyabal, who had a winning combo of skills: technical chops and an interest in education.
From the first conversation, Sneha could tell Sindhuja had a rooted curiosity around the problem Dost aimed to solve. They worked on Dost together for a semester, eventually traveling to India for deeper immersion in the work. Since Sindhuja had spent her career working at huge tech companies like Samsung and Adobe, Sneha mentally prepared herself for Sindhuja to leave at the semester’s end and take a higher-paying job in tech. But while Sindhuja liked the fast pace of the tech sector, she felt drawn to building something for impact.
After that semester, Sindhuja called Sneha and told her she was turning down the other tech job she had been offered. She wanted to commit to Dost full time. Before she knew it, she was using her technical skills for social impact full time as the Co-Founder & CTO of Dost.
Nonprofit Hiring in the Early Days
You and your co-founder or CTO can’t do this work alone. While you’re likely too cash-strapped in the beginning to fully flesh out the team, there are a few key players you’ll need to bring on. The roles you should hire for obviously depend on your own organizational needs, but we’ll say it again: if you don’t already have a technical team member on staff full time, that should be a high priority. Utilize the Tech Nonprofit Job Board to find great candidates.
Scope Early Nonprofit Hires
Tech
In the beginning, you may not need a full time UX designer or even backend developer. Contract workers and agencies provide an efficient and cost-effective way to get the talent you need at a price you can afford. Plus, remote contract teams enable you to work with highly skilled engineers at a lower cost.
Fundraising
New founders often want to offload fundraising because it consumes a lot of time. But as the founder, it’s your job to bring resources to the organization in the early days. You can bring on individuals to support fundraising, but funders are betting on founders so founders have to make the asks.
Programs
Are you managing a high volume of volunteers or running in-person programs? You’ll likely need a community or program manager who can stay focused on those initiatives. Consider hiring from a less experienced candidate pool. Sure, the person won’t have 15 years of training and an MBA, but ambition, intelligence, and desire to learn can go a long way.
Marketing & Design
As you’re getting started, you may not need a full-time marketing lead, but could benefit from 10 hours a week of contract support. Similarly, you likely won’t need a full-time designer, so contracting out design needs makes a lot of sense.
Streamline the Hiring Process with AI
Hiring can also be time-consuming, especially if you’re sorting through a large number of applications. AI tools can help by acting as an extra reviewer. Consider feeding resumes and cover letters into an AI tool that aligns with your organization’s values. This tool can help identify candidates who best fit your mission and may otherwise be overlooked. By highlighting the most aligned resumes, AI can help you prioritize which candidates to review more closely, saving time while ensuring you don’t miss strong potential hires.
Pro Tip
Invest in Future Talent
Explore fellowships and university programs, and bring on interns who have the potential to evolve into full-time employees.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Hiring
Integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into your company ethos is critical. Your organization is strongest when it is comprised of people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and skills. Tech nonprofits owe it to their beneficiaries – who are often from marginalized groups – to operate with DEI as a core value. And it’s easier to do this well if DEI is built into the organizational design from the outset and not added as a feature later. Hiring is a critical component of organizational design.
Since this is a cursory overview, we provide additional resources at the end of this section to dive deeper into DEI. First, let’s get into what we mean when we say diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity
Refers to the diversity of identities present in a given group. These identities include race, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, and people with disabilities, seen and unseen. Understand that individual people are not diverse – rather, institutions and groups are (or are not) collectively diverse.
Equity
The process of intentionally correcting both the way we think about and the way we do things to account for the fact that we don’t all start at the same place. When we operate from a standpoint that centers around equity, we recognize that opportunities are not equally available to everyone, and that internalized prejudices and biases exist (including, often, in ourselves). Thus, we must ask hard and specific questions about the ways our processes are not equitable, and rethink how we do things across hiring, promotions, who we make space for in meetings, etc. to ensure we’re actively correcting for equity imbalances that exist in all organizations.
Inclusion
Refers to the concept that everyone – across identities – feels welcome and valued. Creating an inclusive environment requires a thoughtful interrogation of the systems and culture we’ve (often unconsciously) normalized. Asking challenging questions about your workplace norms, and thus making changes to the way you operate, is a prerequisite to fostering inclusive environments.
Pro Tip
Open Feedback Processes
Have you thought about how employees or users can share their perspectives on your products, programs, or processes, anonymously or not? If you haven’t, consider defining a system wherein your organization gathers feedback and listens to those it impacts.
DEI Questions to Consider During Hiring
Every time you initiate a hiring process, re-evaluate the way you do things in service of an environment that celebrates and elevates individuals from historically under-represented groups. Here are some important questions to guide your thinking:
- Have I thought through how to mitigate biases in our hiring plan?
- Am I considering how even minor decisions made in the hiring process impact diversity, equity, and inclusion during hiring?
- Is my recruiter (or hiring manager) considering unconscious bias during hiring, and prioritizing DEI while assessing candidates during first round interviewing? If not, how can I support the person in engaging in unconscious bias training?
- Is everyone involved in the hiring process committed to DEI? If not, how can I support them in engaging in unconscious bias training?
- Does my hiring page explicitly outline an organizational commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion? If not, why not?
- Where do I post jobs? Am I seeking out digital spaces where I could reach a more diverse pool of candidates, or does where I’m posting limit the scope of individuals who will access this job posting in the first place?
- What barriers have I placed in both the hiring process and the job description that might dissuade candidates from under-represented backgrounds to apply?
- Am I considering whether the language I use in my job posting is exclusionary or unknowingly skewing who feels comfortable applying for the position?
As we’ve mentioned before, culture is heavily influenced by its leaders. In terms of DEI, this points to two important concepts:
- If you – as the founder – are not focused on DEI, it will not become an organizational priority – full stop. You need to prioritize DEI across every facet of your organization for it to matter.
- If you don’t come from the group you’re serving, it’s imperative that you work with leaders who do. Prioritize diversity on your leadership team.
There is so much to consider as you orient your organization to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Hiring is only one component. A commitment to DEI requires a concerted practice of considering – and re-considering – all of your organizational structures, processes, and functions and the way DEI shows up. This work isn’t easy, but it’s a critical endeavor to the greater movement of dismantling systemic oppression.
Additional Resources
Case Study
Lessons from a $4M Hiring Spree
Michelle Brown, CEO of reading platform CommonLit, experienced hiring growing pains firsthand when she won a $4M grant and raced to hire 15 people in 40 days. Hindsight is 20:20, and after the fact, Brown realized that you cannot hire people as individuals, you must hire a team.
She recalls: “Early on, we failed to think about how that person might interact with the other people on the team. Is this person a good manager? Is this person good at accepting and giving feedback? Is this person good at working in a startup environment?”
Solidifying CommonLit’s core values and then translating those into the hiring process was a key first step. This pushed the team to change up its interview process, incorporating interview performance tasks into candidate interviews to gauge how candidates would respond to tasks or scenarios that were routine at CommonLit.
When You Can Finally Afford to Hire a Full Staff
We’ve seen this happen time and time again. Early stage tech nonprofits keep their full-time staff as lean as possible as to not deplete resources…and then they get their first big grant. All of a sudden you have the funding you’ve been needing to build out a team and hit the ground running. Next thing you know, nonprofit hiring becomes front and center. Your first inclination might be to hire as many people as quickly as possible. While, yes, there is a sense of urgency, remember that your team will make or break your organization.
We repeat: your team will make or break your organization. You must enter team growth phases strategically.
When you start hiring more extensively – even if this is just your first three hires beyond your executive team – be intentional in hiring for a team, not a singular role.
For many tech nonprofit founders, running an organization might be your first or second full-time job. Ask mentors, board members, or peers who are familiar with the state of your organization for advice on what specific roles to hire for next. Tunnel vision is real, and what you as the founder might envision as the next three hires could be off-base.
Case Study
Early Nonprofit Hiring With Watsi, as Told by Co-Founder Grace Garey
#1: Engineer
“Our third co-founder, Jesse, was also an engineer and went through Y Combinator with us, but our first additional hire was a second engineer. We prioritized this because we were limited by execution power. Watsi had a very scrappy MVP, and as we amassed more attention and users, we had product feedback and actionable ideas coming in faster than we could act on them. People wanted recurring donations, donors were creating hack-y solutions for themselves by gifting donations. Without stronger technical infrastructure in place, we worried we were missing out on a lot of future donation revenue and impact.”
#2: Designer
“We had a student designer volunteer to help out with the first MVP version of our site, but we needed someone in-house to give it a facelift and partner with the engineer for key product changes.”
#3: Medical Partnerships Manager
“This was the first hire that felt like forward progress rather than just helping us tread water more effectively. I’d been running all the medical partnerships and managing the patient storytelling process for the first year or so. The day-to-day was getting overwhelming in terms of volume, and I didn’t have any professional global health expertise to lend credibility to the program and get sophisticated about the way we looked at impact. My other main focus area was on marketing and communications, which was a more natural strength of mine, so we hired someone to take the day-to-day medical partner operations off my plate.”
Every company is different, so your hiring needs will be distinct
Peter Gault, Founder & CEO of Quill, the machine learning-powered grammar and writing tool, first hired an Operations Manager, an Educator, and a Programmer. Reflecting back, he shared: “Depending on the organization, you probably need either one ops and two engineers, or an engineer, a content developer, and an ops manager if content development is a central component of your platform. Our fourth hire was a designer, and that was the first hire we made that was non-standard. Most organizations hire designers at a later stage, but having a designer early on played a big role in Quill’s success. The designer was also doing project management, user research, and some operations, making them plugged into the current problems customers have.”
Case Study
What If I’m Not Starting From Scratch?
Insights for Technical Nonprofit Hiring
Have we mentioned this is one of the most important, albeit hardest, parts of nonprofit hiring? Fine, we know we did, but it’s only to underscore how important it is. When you’re working on an entrenched social issue, you cannot afford to have your technology not work. You need the best engineers, product managers, and designers building your product. But as mentioned earlier, you also need these individuals to be mission-focused and willing to sacrifice some of the for-profit tech startup perks.
Fast Forward Board Member and CTO & Head of Product at DonorsChoose, Oliver Hurst-Hiller, has long-standing expertise in hiring a technical team at a tech nonprofit. When thinking about what an ideal candidate should possess, he breaks it down into three core qualities: mission excitement, startup experience, and generalist.
Mission Excitement
Mission excitement is a given in the tech nonprofit space and particularly important when you’re hiring technical folks who could make more money working for a for-profit. An initial, simple screen is the cover letter. If it doesn’t reference your nonprofit’s mission or a commitment to social impact, that’s a problem.At Fast Forward, we hear from tons of technologists who are burned out from the for-profit sector and know they want to use their skills for social impact. They may not have a particular issue area they’re attached to yet but want to do some good. You might initially think your dream hire is the developer with 12 years of experience at Apple, but if the person doesn’t care about social impact, you’ll quickly learn that the person’s time at your organization will be fleeting.
Startup Experience
“Tech company experience” is not a singular bucket. For example, if you’ve worked at a startup, you’re familiar with a work environment that’s fast-paced and ever-changing. You’ve been called upon to wear many different hats, and you’re well-versed in adaptability. But if you’ve only worked at a huge tech company, that might not be the case – transitioning to a startup tech nonprofit could send you into a tailspin. The right candidate will have a “get stuff done” attitude and be excited about a role that changes week to week, with ample opportunity to touch different parts of the business. A core attribute to keep an eye out for when nonprofit hiring.
Generalist
Tech nonprofits are committed to the problem they’re solving but not the technical solution that will get them to impact. So back to that whole adaptability thing we mentioned earlier, Hurst-Hiller advises against looking for specialists. If someone specializes in something niche like search engine optimization or only wants to do technical system architecture, you might not have enough work for the person within that narrow scope. If an individual is a specialist and wants to remain that way, the individual won’t be excited when things change six months from now and the person has to work on something totally different. According to Hurst-Hiller, it’s tricky to find generalists because they rarely describe themselves as such. You need to build questions into the interview process that probe at whether people are willing to widen the scope of their work.
Pro tip
Bring in the Experts
Not an expert in engineering, product, or design yourself? It will be pretty difficult to distinguish the perfect candidate without understanding the work the person will be doing. Again, use your network and ask a subject matter expert to take a call with your top candidate or join the final interview. The expert will notice different things, positive and negative, than would an interviewer without that exact professional experience. This advice goes for nonprofit hiring across all roles! Not just technical.
Hire a Social Impact Tech Team Checklist
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Consider finding a co-founder if you don’t have one already. Put the ask out across your network. Be as specific as you can.
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Audit your skill set gaps. Make a strategic plan for how you’ll fill those gaps, including outlining the values each team member must possess to make your organization function as a team.
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Get technical talent (full time or contract) on your team – ASAP! Look for generalists with startup experience and mission excitement.
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Need more help but not ready to make your next full-time hire? Look for fellowships, interns, and contractors.
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Ask experts in your network to give a second opinion. If you’re hiring your first product person, but don’t have deep product knowledge yourself, ask an experienced contact to vet your candidate.