If You Want a New Leader by July 1, Your Board Is Already Behind

Every February, some version of the same call comes in. The board chair is mostly calm but she tells us she needs to speak right away because her executive director told the board in December that he would step down at the end of June. The board spent January forming a search committee, debating whether it needed a firm, and waiting for the next meeting to vote. Now it's February, and she wants to know one thing: can we still have someone in the seat by July 1?

Sometimes the answer is yes, but it sometimes comes at a cost, and the board almost never sees that cost at the moment that it’s deciding how long to wait.

The math most boards don't do

Last season, Fall 2025 to Spring 2026, our 35 completed searches averaged 8.1 weeks from kickoff to a first slate of candidates and 22.7 weeks from kickoff to a completed hire. That's one firm and one season, so treat it as a signal rather than a study, but it is still a data-driven way to think about an executive director search timeline.

Additionally, most sitting executives owe their current organization about two months, and school leaders often can't leave before their own year ends, so we need to work backward from July 1, 2027.

For this to happen, an accepted offer needs to land by early May. That means the search needs to launch before the new year. Between a board agreeing it needs a search and a search actually starting, there is a firm to choose, a compensation range to approve, and a committee to get onto one calendar. For a board that meets monthly, that easily takes six to eight weeks. So the real decision point for a July 1 start is earlier in the fall, i.e. now.

Where late searches lose

A board that starts in January usually still hires someone. What changes is who they hire.

The first thing that shifts is the candidate pool. The leaders you most want are running something right now, and many of them commit to next year over the winter, when their own boards ask about renewals and their teams start planning. A slate that arrives in March is drawn from the people still available in March.

The second is the “safe-choice trap.” When the calendar tightens, committees stop evaluating and start defaulting to the internal candidate or to whoever feels least risky to explain. Our searches narrow roughly nine to one from first-round interviews to finalists. Compress the timeline and that ratio is the first thing to go, because the early, wide rounds are where the time is spent.

What to do in October

1. Pick the start date first and plan everything else backward from it. If July 1 matters, put the search decision on your October agenda, not November's.
2. Decide who will be on your search committee and ensure their availability matches what the search will demand, i.e. time for regular committee meetings, candidate interviews and debriefs.
3. Approve the compensation range before kickoff. A range still under debate in January will stall a search that is otherwise on schedule.
4. If there's an internal candidate, decide now how the committee will consider them. Leaving that question open tends to slow a search, and it is hard on the candidate.

We built a search launch date calculator to make this concrete. Enter your target start date and the seat you're filling, and it shows your decision-by date, your launch-by date, and what each month of delay does to your start date.

A prediction you can hold us to

Boards that engage a firm by Thanksgiving will mostly have new leaders in place by July 1. Boards that start during or after January will split: some will make the date by accepting a thinner slate, and the rest will find themselves with an interim.

If your leader's departure is already on the calendar, run the date through the calculator today. If your launch-by date has already passed, call us this week. There is usually more room than boards expect, as long as they stop waiting for the next meeting to decide.

Christina Greenberg is CEO of Edgility Search. Follow her on LinkedIn to join the conversation.