Your Organization Needs a COO. Here's Why You Probably Can't Hire One)

In February of this year, Bridgespan published a piece on how nonprofit COOs keep their organizations running smoothly. It is a thorough look at a role that does not get nearly enough attention, and if you lead or work inside a growing organization, it is worth reading.

The research captures something true: the COO (or operations director, or deputy director, or whatever your org calls this role) is often the invisible infrastructure of a functioning nonprofit. As one COO in Bridgespan's survey put it, they are the ‘oil in the machine’. Almost invisible, but vital.

That framing stuck with me. Because here is what the article describes well but does not fully solve: what happens when your organization cannot afford the machine, let alone the oil?

What the Research Found

Bridgespan identified three roles that COOs play beyond their operational responsibilities including thought partner and sounding board for the CEO. They translate strategy into day-to-day execution. And they hold the culture of the organization, especially during transitions and periods of growth.

Those are not “administrative” functions. That is senior leadership. And the organizations in Bridgespan's research that have a strong COO-CEO partnership describe it as one of the most consequential factors in their ability to deliver on mission.

That finding is both clarifying and, for many smaller and mid-size organizations, quietly frustrating.

The Constraint Nobody Names Directly

Most of the nonprofits I work with know they need this kind of operational leadership. They feel the absence of it every day. The ED is making too many decisions with limited ways to delegate. The team is operating without a clear through-line between strategy and execution. Culture is being held together by individuals who are already stretched thin.

But when the conversation turns to actually filling the role, the same barriers come up:

•       A full-time COO-level hire is an investment that is often simply not possible.

•       Even when there is a budget, the hiring process for a senior operations role is long and high-stakes. Getting it wrong is expensive.

•       Funders rarely cover senior leadership salaries, which means this cost falls almost entirely on unrestricted revenue that most small nonprofits do not have in abundance.

•       And perhaps most quietly: a lot of small nonprofits are not sure exactly what they need. They know things are not working, but the gap between "things are not working" and "we need a COO" isn’t always obvious.

A Different Way to Think About It

Bridgespan's research makes a strong case for investing in this role. I agree with that case completely. But for organizations that cannot make a full-time hire, the question becomes: how do you get the function without the full-time position?

That is the problem fractional operations leadership is designed to solve. Not as a workaround or a compromise, but as a model that is genuinely well-suited to where most small nonprofits actually are.

A part-time, embedded operations partner can do the work Bridgespan describes: thought partnership with the ED, translation of strategy into execution, and steady stewardship of team culture. Not at full-time depth, but at a level of consistency and seniority that most small nonprofits have never had access to.

It is not the same as having a full-time COO. But for an organization at $1M to $5M, it may be exactly what is needed to get the infrastructure stable enough to grow into that full-time hire someday.

The Bottom Line

The Bridgespan piece is a good read, and I recommend it. It names clearly what strong operational leadership does for an organization and why it matters.

What it cannot fully answer is how smaller organizations close the gap when a full-time hire is out of reach. That is the conversation I am in every day, and it is worth having directly.

If your organization is feeling the absence of this kind of leadership, I would love to talk about what it could look like to fill that gap in a way that actually fits where you are.

Read the Bridgespan article: How COOs Keep Their Nonprofits Running Smoothly

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This is part of Holding It Together, monthly observations from inside growing organizations. Subscribe at eihconsulting.com