Executive Director

About NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page. NaNoWriMo began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with a first draft. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

Executive Summary

The Executive Director holds overall strategic and operational responsibility for NaNoWriMo as an entity, for its sustainability as an organization and for the execution of its mission. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated track record of effective executive leadership within a nonprofit, impeccable maturity and judgment, and a high degree of literacy and staff management skills as they pertain to major business areas: finance, operations, HR, legal, compliance, and IT.

Core Roles and Responsibilities

• Developing a long-term vision and strategic plan for the organization
• Securing NaNoWriMo’s financial future and the longevity of its services within the creative community
• Ensuring ongoing programmatic excellence and rigorous program evaluation. 
• Ensuring ongoing technological excellence and consistent quality and alignment of technical capabilities
• Overseeing and effectively managing key functional areas including programs, technology, fundraising, finance and revenue, and communications
• Assessing and pre-emptively mitigating organizational risk
• Brand management and ambassadorship within the creative community
• Accountability to the Board of Directors for meeting annual goals and reaching milestones around the strategic plan 

Desired Skills and Experience

• Leading other leaders and managing multi-level teams
• Strategic planning (the facilitation of collaborative planning as well as written business plan development) 
• Organizational transformation and rebuilding departmental and functional areas
• Crisis and reputation management
• Fundraising: major gifts, grants and development operations
• Strong self-awareness around data interpretation and decision bias
• Board building

Leadership Expectations and Desired Approaches

• Continually striving to further serve the NaNoWriMo mission
• Enthusiasm for contributing to the overall strategy of the organization
• Transparency and forthrightness with the Board, staff, and with our community 
• Belief in possibility and commitment to excellence
• Critical thinking and circumspection (and the ability to cultivate a culture of critical thinking) 
• Learning from our community via authentic engagement
• Striving to add value to the creative lives of current and prospective community members
• Developing and strengthening relationships with internal and external constituents

Job Specifics: Supervision

• The work of the Executive Director is supported and supervised by the Board of Directors
• The Executive Director supports and supervises the work of the leadership team: the Director of Programs, Director of Technology, Director of Finance and Revenue, and Director of Communications. 
• A reimagined Director of Development role is in the work plan for 2025. The Director of Development will report to the Executive Director as well
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Job Specifics: Key External Partnerships

• Cultivate and steward major donor relationships
• Personally steward sponsors to ensure the quality of their experience and their satisfaction in their partnership with the organization; collaborate with internal staff around new sponsor identification
• Cultivate and steward relationships with writing community organizations with key adjacencies to NaNoWriMo, both locally (in Northern California) and globally
• Actively pursue strategic external partnerships and personally shepherd relationships with strategic partners who approach the organization

General Job Expectations

• Availability during core office hours: 9am - 3pm PST + 2 hours on either side (some flexibility is available)
• Occasional in-person appearances and meet-ups with our audience including evening and weekend busy season events
• General understanding of independent and traditional publishing; as well as book-marketing and book-selling
• Completed and/or participated in NaNoWriMo.org contests
• Engagement in professional development opportunities
• Pursuing and responding to open dialogue about workplace challenges
• Engaging with the NaNoWriMo DEI tactics and strategy
• 4-year college degree preferred and/or work-equivalent experience