NPAG partners with purpose-driven organizations to achieve healthy, equity-centered transitions. Whether you are anticipating a leadership transition, aligning your team to a new strategy, or expanding to new mission areas or geographies – our team brings expert counsel, practical guidance, and a commitment to process that reflects your values. Since 2002, we have partnered with a broad range of foundations and nonprofits working in racial and gender equity, LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive health, democracy preservation, public health, economic justice, climate, and other social justice movements. We are a women-owned and women-led firm with a diverse team of 20+ professionals, and we have completed over 1,400 searches – including many hundreds at the CEO/Executive Director level – nationally and globally over nearly 25 years. In addition to search, we provide bespoke training and capacity building, outplacement, Board facilitation and development, and both team and individual leadership coaching services.

We specialize in flexible, tailored search processes that include thoughtful staff and community engagement, values-based process design, hands-on support for candidates, and onboarding planning and coaching that extends support after the hire is made. We bring deep experience and expertise leading senior-level searches that cross grantmaking, program leadership, finance and operations, fundraising, impact investing, policy and advocacy, research and evaluation, human resources, and diversity, equity and inclusion roles. We have a particular interest in the field of philanthropy and building connections to movement leaders to strengthen grantmakers’ ability to drive sustainable, community-informed change.

We have developed practices that reflect our proven and practical commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, including: proactively mapping and effectively engaging diverse networks throughout the search, identifying and removing obstacles to participation in searches that have historically disproportionately hurt candidates of color, women, and people with disabilities, and bringing tools, norms, and strategies that help our clients identify and mitigate different forms of bias as they surface in searches.

We prioritize relationships. Whether with clients, with candidates, with our networks, and with community partners, we create conditions for engagement and experiences that are participatory rather than extractive. We ensure all team members affected by a hire – regardless of their positional authority – have the opportunity to provide confidential, candid feedback at the beginning of each search process about what is important to them.

We communicate transparently and often. It is critical to the integrity of the process that people who have contributed throughout understand their role, how their input will be incorporated, and how and why decisions are being made.

We stick with you. We’re invested in the long-term success of your team. Beyond the hiring process, we can help co-design onboarding and transition processes and identify and/or provide coaching and professional development resources needed to support incoming leaders and teams.