NESC History

It’s a common occurrence. Nonprofit organizations, in their intense focus and justified determination to help their communities, typically find that they have too little time to deal with their own internal managerial and operational challenges. Inefficiencies creep in; opportunities slip away; simmering problems go unaddressed. And nonprofit executives and boards grow frustrated.

 

Helping more than 2,000 nonprofits in the New York tri-state area deal with these and similar problems is what the National Executive Service Corps has been doing since its founding in 1977. In that year, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation asked the International Executive Service Corps (IESC) to create an institution that would recruit the vast untapped ranks of American retired private-sector executives and professionals to bring their valuable business expertise to help voluntary groups across the nation. Initially, the Clark Foundation mandated that this new organization “operate in five sectors of American life: education, health, religion, the arts and social service.”

 

As the founding chairman of this new organization, to be called National Executive Service Corps, the Clark Foundation wisely tapped Frank Pace, Jr., then IESC Chairman and retired Chairman of the General Dynamics Corporation. His long, illustrious Washington public service career had seen him serving as Director of the Budget, Secretary of the Army and member of President Harry Truman’s Cabinet. During its first decade, under Pace’s dynamic leadership, NESC and the 33 fellow Executive Service Corps (ESCs) that had been established throughout the nation mobilized over 5,000 volunteer consultants to aid 3,500 nonprofits.

 

Today, our Manhattan-headquartered NESC has branch offices in Central and Southwestern Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island and Greenwich/Westchester & Rockland Counties. We can call on some 250 volunteer former chief executives, architects, managing directors, chief financial officers, entrepreneurs, top fundraisers, law firm senior partners, human resources specialists and more. For good reason our motto is Profit From Our Experience. Each year these volunteer consultants help some 100 New York, New Jersey and Connecticut nonprofits. Some of these clients are large, enjoying nine-figure annual incomes, such as Lincoln Center and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Others are small neighborhood groups such as Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra and Dancing in the Streets. All receive the same high level of NESC service.