A St. Louis parks conservancy saw a risky move pay off when it hired a transit engineer to provide fresh leadership. She also helped raise $139 million for a capital campaign.
Over the past decade, Forest Park Forever, a St. Louis conservancy that helps restore and maintain the city’s 1,300-acre park, has notched some remarkable achievements. In fewer than five years, it completed a $130 million capital campaign. It developed an innovative bond offering that guaranteed the city’s commitment to Forest Park. And it has grown so much that it has more than doubled its staff.
The organization achieved all of this under the leadership of an engineer who had never worked at a nonprofit before. In fact, she turned the job down twice.
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Over the past decade, Forest Park Forever, a St. Louis conservancy that helps restore and maintain the city’s 1,300-acre park, has notched some remarkable achievements. In fewer than five years, it completed a $130 million capital campaign. It developed an innovative bond offering that guaranteed the city’s commitment to Forest Park. And it has grown so much that it has more than doubled its staff.
The organization achieved all of this under the leadership of an engineer who had never worked at a nonprofit before. In fact, she turned the job down twice.
Lesley Hoffarth spent her entire career with the Missouri Department of Transportation and had never considered working for a parks organization. In the spring of 2009, when the conservancy asked if she wanted to talk about leading the group, Hoffarth was in the midst of the most challenging project of her career. “I said, ‘Thank you, but I am not interested,’ " she says.
Hoffarth was directing the reconstruction of 10 miles of the main highway — Interstate 64 — that runs through the heart of St. Louis. More than 150,000 cars a day travel the stretch of road that has 16 interchanges and 30 bridges spread over six municipalities. Her plan called for shutting down the highway piece by piece for construction — doing it in stretches of five miles at a time, each one for an entire year. People worried it would be “Carmageddon.”
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Ed Hassinger, the deputy director and chief engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation, chose Hoffarth to oversee the $535 million project. Her expertise as an engineer and talent for working with others, as well as her ability to build consensus and comfort with risk, made her the perfect choice. “The engineering was the easy part,” Hassinger says.
Hoffarth spent years meeting with politicians as well as business and community leaders to ensure the project’s success. One of those leaders was on the board of Forest Park Forever. And she was deeply impressed by Hoffarth.
The organization’s previous director, Jim Mann, resigned in 2006. It had already spent years looking for the right person to replace him. In the interim, Mann, who was part of the search committee, says fundraising dropped off, and the organization started to drift.
Local Treasure
Forest Park is complex and treasured by residents. It has vast natural areas, recreational facilities, including athletic fields and a skating rink, as well as attractions like a zoo and the World’s Fair Pavilion and cultural institutions including a history museum, art museum, and science center.
The board needed someone who could manage big projects, who understood public-private partnerships, who could raise money, and, most important, who could help reorient the organization from one that revitalized the park to one that could manage it in partnership with the city.
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“All of the things they are asking for are really hard to find in one person,” says Gina Hoagland chairman and principal of Collaborative Strategies, the consulting firm hired to find the organization’s new director.
Though Hoffarth had turned down the job, the board remained interested. “Leslie has this personality. She listens to people even when they are angry or frustrated,” says Mann. “She is very direct but kind.”
A few months later, the board tried Hoffarth again. “I read the job description and I thought, ‘I have done these things in a very different setting. This is actually very interesting,’ " she says.
Hoffarth had deep experience with public-private partnerships from the highway project, and the possibility of creating a stronger partnership between the park and the city was important to the organization. She did not have any fundraising experience, but she had many of the skills required for success: She could read people and develop strong relationships. She could also build consensus and enthusiasm for projects. “She is just really the whole package,” says Hoagland.
But the highway project was more than six months from completion, and Hoffarth had no interest in leaving early. Again, she turned the job down.
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The board decided it could wait until January 2010, when the project would be complete.
It was a wise decision, says Hoagland. Hoffarth’s team completed the highway project a month early and under budget — and avoided the widely predicted Carmageddon. “Her stock was so high by the time she started,” says Hoagland.
Finding Leadership Skills
Nonprofit organizations rarely look so far afield for leadership, says Karen Schuler, manager of search, transition, and planning for the consulting firm Marcum. Even when they try to branch out, they often just consider executives at other organizations with similar missions.
That is because volunteer boards of directors are risk-adverse, says Mary Bear Hughes, a senior consultant with the Georgia Center for Nonprofits. They often confuse expertise in a group’s mission with leadership skills. “Boards are a little nervous bringing someone in who does not have the expertise and long track record in the same type of organization,” says Hughes.
As a result, nonprofits may be missing out on talented leaders. “I encourage boards to consider what skills and capacities they need in a leader beyond subject-matter expertise,” Hughes says.
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Looking for leadership outside the nonprofit world is especially important because many charities don’t have the right internal candidates, hiring experts say; confining searches to the leaders of other nonprofits is just too limiting.
Kirk Kramer, a partner who directs the leadership practice at the nonprofit consulting firm Bridgespan, says nonprofits hire from outside at about double the rate of for-profit companies.
Though internal promotion may be easier for an organization, there are some good reasons to consider outside talent, says Kramer. In small organizations the gap between leadership and the next level of management may be too large for a manager to move into the director’s role. And organizations that are making a strategic change may need candidates with different skills than they will find among their internal candidates, he says.
One 2018 study found that more than half of the executives at 150 health and human-service organizations had job experience outside of the nonprofit sector. And nearly 70 percent were hired from other organizations.
Amanda Stewart, an assistant professor in the department of public administration at North Carolina State University who co-authored the study, says that many of those external hires were the result of personal connections. One executive in her study was hired by a tennis partner.
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Schuler notes that boards rarely plan for the departure of their directors. And, sooner or later, every director leaves. For example, she says, in 2008 President Obama brought several prominent nonprofit directors into his administration, leaving those organizations scrambling for leaders.
“Every board has the responsibility to have a succession policy and an emergency backup plan in place,” Schuler says. “Boards have to be ready for the unexpected.”
Unusual Financing
Hoffarth’s unusual background and training were assets early in her tenure. When she started, her first priority was to strike an agreement with the city to ensure that it would remain an active partner over the long term.
Gary Bess, director of the city’s parks department at the time and now director of St. Louis County’s Parks and Recreation Department, says that Hoffarth’s government experience helped immensely. Hoffarth knew, based on decades in government, that priorities change with politics. Funding that is here today to rebuild athletic fields or restore natural habitats may disappear quickly.
In a meeting, Bess mentioned, almost in jest, that they should create a bond offering. “A light bulb went off for Lesley,” he says. She knew that a bond would commit the city to fund the park.
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In 2013, the city created $30 million in bonds that it would sell to Forest Park Forever. The organization raised money and bought the bonds in installments over about five years. A third party holds those funds and releases them to the city for projects in the park. The city repays Forest Park Forever about $2 million a year in principal and interest — funds that the organization uses for ongoing maintenance. This way the city has funds on hand for restoration projects and is forced to pay into the park’s maintenance.
How Boards Can Help New Leaders Succeed
Forest Park Forever
Lesley Hoffarth drew on her community-outreach experience to get up to speed on fundraising. Here, she talks with Andrew Taylor of Enterprise Holdings during a Forest Park Forever event.
The city’s parks department also helps maintain the park using its own budget. The bonds have been used to add restrooms and improve irrigation and drainage to sports fields, to connect waterways and remove invasive species, and add sidewalks, LED lights, and safer pedestrian crossings around cultural institutions, among other projects.
“Her knowledge of how government works and her ability to manage construction jobs contributed to her success,” says Bess.
Hoffarth’s biggest deficit was her lack of fundraising experience. Mann, the former director, says the board hired a senior vice president for fundraising to direct the effort and to mentor Hoffarth. Another person was hired to run the $130 million capital campaign called Forever: the Campaign for Forest Park’s Future.
The campaign solicited funds to finance future restoration projects. Some of the money funded the bond offering and built the organization’s endowment, much of which is used for park maintenance. They coached Hoffarth about the personalities of major donors and helped her acquire the skills to persuade them to contribute.
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The board considered sending her to fundraising school but decided against it. “Once she was up in front of people, she was likable and believable,” says Mann.
Hoffarth says fundraising was similar to the community outreach required for the highway project. “It is about relationships and creating a shared vision that people can get excited about and having a good track record,” she says.
Early Challenges
For all of her success, Hoffarth faced early challenges, too. Some board members were skeptical that an engineer from a government agency could lead a fundraising organization. “I had to overcome some opinions that I was not the right person for the job,” she says.
“She was not necessarily an obvious choice,” says Kathy Osborn, the CEO of the Regional Business Council and a member of the Forest Park Forever’s Board of Directors’ executive committee at the time. (She is now an emeritus member.) Hoffarth clearly had the skills to manage complex projects and a large staff, but the organization needed a leader who could raise money. “She didn’t have a lot of experience in that area,” Osborn says. “It was a calculated risk.”
With direction from her allies on the board, Hoffarth focused on cementing the partnership agreement and the bond offering with the city. However, with the lag in fundraising between directors, many board members were also hungry to begin the capital campaign. “We need to get a win, a big gift to start building confidence with the board,” Hoffarth says.
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There was a lot of pressure. Osborn was one of the board members who wanted to jump-start the fundraising. “When she talked about the magnitude of the campaign, I would sit there and think, She doesn’t have any idea how hard it is to raise private money,” says Osborn.
But Osborn and other board members worked closely with Hoffarth, helping her learn both fundraising skills and the personalities of major donors. Osborn was immediately impressed. Hoffarth quickly absorbed everything she was taught; she never took criticism personally. “She was very easy to coach,” says Osborn. “She responded and adapted, and the next thing you know, she developed remarkably in this area.”
Thanks to the work of Hoffarth and others, a donor pledged $5 million, an early gift that was conditional on the completion of the agreement with the city. That helped inspire confidence in city leaders so the organization could finalize its agreement with the city and initiate the bond offering. In 2013, the capital campaign began.
It was more successful than Hoffarth could have hoped — it raised $139 million in just under five years.
Hoffarth had the skills and determination to be successful. But she is also clear that she needed the support and guidance of the board.
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“I knew that when I was in the thick of it, in the weeds,” she says, “I had these champions behind the scenes working with me to get some major wins under my belt.”
Jim Rendon is senior editor and fellowship director who covers nonprofit leadership, climate change, and philanthropic outcomes for the Chronicle. Email Jim or follow him on Twitter @RendonJim.