Hiring a nonprofit executive is one of the highest stakes decisions a board makes, and it usually starts with a document almost no one enjoys writing: the job description. Get it right and you attract the mission-aligned leaders you need. Get it wrong, or copy it from a for-profit template, and you spend months interviewing the wrong people.

So we built something to help. The Nonprofit Executive Job Description Builder is a free, no-signup tool that helps boards, search committees, and executive directors write a sharp, realistic job description for any senior nonprofit role. It reflects 27 years of watching what actually attracts strong candidates in the mission-driven world.

What it does

The builder covers all 27 executive roles a nonprofit might hire, from Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer to Chief Development Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Program Officer. For each one, it does something most templates never do: it changes the job description based on the size of your organization.

A Chief Financial Officer at a 12-person community nonprofit is a fundamentally different job than a CFO at a national organization with a hundred million dollar budget and multiple sites. The reporting lines, the team, the board relationship, the required experience, and the measures of success all shift. The builder walks through six organization sizes, from small local nonprofits to international NGOs, and adjusts the responsibilities and qualifications accordingly.

What you can generate

• A full, editable job description for your chosen role and organization size, with the position summary, key responsibilities, first-year priorities, required versus preferred qualifications, and measures of success already drafted.
• A tailored writing prompt you can copy into any AI assistant if you want to refine the language further, built from every detail you enter about the role.
• Search committee tools, including a quality checklist, an interview scorecard, and a worksheet your committee can fill out and download.

Everything downloads or prints. There is no account to create, no data collected, and no cost.

Why we made it free

Strong nonprofits hire strong leaders, and strong leaders are found through clear, honest, well-scoped roles. A vague job description filled with phrases like dynamic self-starter and proven track record tells a serious candidate nothing, and it quietly screens out the thoughtful people you most want. A specific one, grounded in your mission and your actual scale, does the opposite.

We would rather help the whole field write better job descriptions than keep that knowledge to ourselves. It is the same reason ExecSearches has focused on nonprofit and mission-driven careers, and only those, since 1999.

Try it

If you are about to open a search, start here: open the Nonprofit Executive Job Description Builder. Pick your role, pick your organization size, and you will have a working draft in a few minutes. Then, when you are ready to reach mission-driven candidates, you can post the role on ExecSearches.

Have a role we have not built out in depth yet, or feedback on what would make the tool more useful for your committee? Tell us. We are adding to it.