Inverness resident and long-time nonprofit consultant Louise Franklin started her stint as the Dance Palace Community and Cultural Center’s interim executive director this week, a post she will occupy for four to six months until the organization hires a permanent director.
Last month, the Dance Palace board of directors announced that Dan Mankin, who served as the group’s executive director for six years after founding director Carol Friedman retired, would be let go. The board president, Ann Emmanuel, said at the time that the community center needed a leadership change to carry out a new three-year strategic plan, which emphasizes community relations, donor relations and community access.
As a short-term leader for the more than 40-year-old community hub, Ms. Franklin is not just fulfilling day-to-day tasks. She is an experienced interim director, and will help the Dance Palace transition to a new director. “The idea is…to use senior expertise to help strengthen the organization and get them prepared for the next permanent leader,” Ms. Franklin said on Tuesday.
A Southern Californian transplant, Ms. Franklin moved to West Marin about 30 years ago. She gave up a career as an advertising executive to work in the nonprofit sector, and about seven years ago she started serving as an “interim.”
She’s helped groups in Marin and across the Bay Area—at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in the San Geronimo Valley, the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek and the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside—transition to new full-time directors. Previously she worked as the executive director for the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Sausalito, which helps families and children through crises.
The healing center informed her interim work, too. “I trained people and facilitated groups going through those [difficult] situations, so I think that’s given [me] unique background experience in the field,” she said.
Interim directors serve an important role, said Skip Schwartz, the executive director of West Marin Senior Services and a trained interim who belongs to a Bay Area interim group with Ms. Franklin. “They bring fresh eyes, but more importantly they bring experience,” he said. “We use the word interim commonly, sort of like, ‘Oh, this is a placeholder.’ That’s not really what it is. There’s specialized work that goes on.”
On Tuesday the specifics of Ms. Franklin’s role were still being hammered out. But in general, she will be checking for disorganization, streamlining operations and assessing ways the nonprofit can improve before bringing in a long-term director.
She said she wants to keep West Marin informed about her activities during her brief tenure. “I intend to be out in community and connecting with people, and letting them know what goals and plans there are,” she said.
A town hall meeting about the future of the Dance Palace Community and Cultural Center, including a chance to meet Louise Franklin and share thoughts with the board of directors, will take place from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 26 at the community center. Soup and salad will be served. RSVP is requested to [email protected].