By Clark Beavans
I remember the last time we initiated a search for a new Executive Director. It was late 2008 when the Board of Directors of the SC Urban & Community Forestry Council (yep, we were still struggling under THAT unwieldy moniker) made the decision, and it was a huge step because although we’d had a couple of Executive Directors in the early 2000s, we’d not had a great fit with the personalities who had served. As a result, we had reverted to a contracted position which we called Executive Coordinator (in functional terms, a band-aid). This accomplished the day-to-day organizational necessities and some limited administrative function but did not permit any kind of decision-making or leadership authority.
Coming off the 2008 Conference in Greenville, both the Board of Directors and the individual who bravely served as Executive Coordinator knew the organization could not continue in this fashion for another year. Not only were we all exhausted, we realized we needed someone who had expertise in nonprofit administration and event planning to help us accomplish our goals.
Take a gander at our 2008 Annual Report, if you will. Look at the meetings we managed to pull off as an active and cooperative Board of Directors, without the luxury of a true leader with event planning skills and a vision for this organization. For me it does 2 things: it shows what we can do if pressed, and it makes me deeply grateful that we haven’t had to for the past 12 years.
Liz Gilland, who was then SCFC Urban Forestry Coordinator, encouraged us to try to solicit another contracted Executive Director. If memory serves we may have had some supplemental funding that could potentially make a difference in fielding a good proposal.
As you would expect, it was a process: the Board asked the Executive Committee to proceed with the search, advertisements were placed in newspapers around the state (ha ha – 12 years ago was the dark ages!) and it took a few weeks for Liz to gather up all the proposals and send them to the committee. The Executive Committee reviewed and graded the proposals. We interviewed the top 5 individuals, all well qualified with both nonprofit experience and event planning expertise, at the Forestry Commission headquarters in Columbia on one long day in December 2008. From that fortuitous effort we landed KBH Solutions, LLC.
Karen Hauck has served this organization at the discretion and the pleasure of the Board of Directors ever since. Please take a minute to think about this – 12 years is an extraordinary length of time for such a relationship with a small statewide nonprofit.
Trees SC has been incredibly fortunate to have had someone like Karen for as long as we have. An individual of her character and capabilities doesn’t usually stick with one organization for many years – they typically blaze a trail upward through progressively better opportunities. Karen has shown extraordinary loyalty to the Board and to Trees SC – we have rarely gotten less than her best, and she has coaxed our best from us. I am profoundly grateful to her for her tenacity, her loyalty, her people skills, her leadership and vision for Trees SC, and also for her friendship. We have been blessed far beyond any hopes we harbored back in 2008.
As Karen transitions to her post as Chief Operating Officer with North American Training Solutions, in addition to sadly (and selfishly) bidding her farewell, on behalf of both the Board and the Membership of Trees SC, I warmly congratulate her and offer our heartfelt best wishes. I know she will excel wherever she decides she can make a difference, and I’m looking forward to following her career with great interest. I wish her personal fulfilment, meaningful challenges, and excellent people to work with. And from the bottom of my heart I thank her for hanging with Trees SC for longer than we deserved. Thank you my friend, and Godspeed!
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