Spend some time working in the nonprofit space and you start to appreciate what amazing things can be done for such amazingly small amounts of money. For the last five years or so nowhere has this been more true than in digital team staffing. Traditional communications teams have evolved from having interns do the digital work to hiring full time junior staff, and eventually senior staff.

Now, a new era is at hand. The digital space is coming of age, made valid by solid research from places like the Congressional Management Foundation, NTEN, Communicopia and of course our team here at EchoDitto. This means that internal management structures, boards, and foundations are investing in digital like never before, and organizations are finally starting to build their digital teams in earnest.

This is made starkly clear on the various email lists and job boards of the nonprofit community. This weekend, I spent some time looking through the posts and found nearly a dozen director-level digital positions open. Across the board, from really large international organizations to smaller community-based ones, organizations are taking the plunge and are formalizing their structure.

The problem is, there is no one to hire. There are no available candidates with ten, eight or even five years of experience in this field. I've spoken to a few of the organizations doing the hiring and they all say the same thing, there are just no applicants that meet the requirements. Election years are like that. The political party headquarters, the DNC and the RNC, have been hiring up the most experienced staff for months (those with the deepest digital experience come from electoral campaigns and are often just waiting for the call to come home), and have left the applicant pool a veritable ghost town.

I think that is a good thing. The boat has not been sailing itself all these years. Hard working junior staff and interns have been keeping the boat seaworthy for some time, and now is an opportunity to invest in their professional development. Granted, in some instances a director is needed immediately, but organizations should not overlook the value of a staff who have invested so heavily in the success of digital efforts. Management training, certification programs, team-building workshops, all these things cost less than a new salary and go a long way towards making a stronger, more effective team.

The candidate pool will be flush again in November, no doubt, but nine months is a long time. Better to spend that time building a more effective team who already feels a sense of ownership than waiting for the right candidate to step off the campaign trail.