Should your organization consider a merger?

Farra Trompeter: This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. Today we’re going to ask the question: should your organization consider a merger? And I am delighted to talk about this topic. I actually went to graduate school at The New School almost 20 years ago and studied nonprofit mergers as part of my graduate thesis. And for today’s guest, I am talking with someone I’ve known for over 10 years, Ami Dar who I met originally through NTEN. We were both actually board chairs, though at different times in the organization’s existence, and worked together on some local meetup events many years ago that Ami graciously hosted at his office. And it’s just a delight to talk with him today. But let me tell you about Ami just in case his name doesn’t ring an immediate bell. Ami Dar uses he/him pronouns and is the founder and executive director of Idealist.org. Built in 1996 with $3,500, Idealist has become one of the most popular nonprofit resources on the web, with information provided by 150,000 organizations around the world. Ami was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Peru, and in Mexico, and lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Ami, welcome to the show.

Ami Dar: Hello, Farra. Thank you. And that, I think that was all true. So thank you.

Farra Trompeter: Hopefully, hopefully. I like to give truth here. Well, we are recording this in March 2025, and it has certainly been a rough start for the nonprofit sector this year. But there have been some bright spots. And one of those was the news that Idealist and Volunteer Match have merged, now going by Idealist, and you’re soon going to introduce a unified platform to better serve your networks of organizations and the people who help them thrive: job seekers, interns, volunteers, social impact organizations, and more. We’re going to link to the press release for those who want to learn more about the merger and what’s happening over there. You can get that on our transcript at bigduck.com/insights. But for those tuning in and being in the space in this conversation, Ami, can you talk a little bit more about why you pursued this partnership and what really led to Idealist and Volunteer Match coming together?

Ami Dar: Yeah, so maybe take, take sort of one small step back. Idealist.org was launched in ‘96, a long time ago. Some of our staff, I think, is younger than the website, which is, I guess, sort of interesting. From the beginning, Idealist was a place where nonprofits could come and list their opportunities, jobs, from the beginning also volunteer opportunities, internships. And we did that, you know, doing that forever. A couple years later, Volunteermatch.org was launched in California (we were in New York), and they focused on volunteerism, the same idea, essentially: organizations coming and posting opportunities and people sort of searching on that. And we lived that way in parallel, sort of sister organizations for many, many years. I always felt from my end that we should be one. Like, it made no sense to me that we were sort of two separate organizations essentially doing something very similar with a very similar architecture. Like, in both cases, orgs are coming, creating a profile, and then posting things. Users are searching for those things, getting updates, etcetera. You know, I knew the CEO there for a long time. Greg Baldwin, we were friendly. Once in a while I would, you know, poke him at a conference, “Hey man, come on, this is, this is just dumb. You should just give us your nonprofit and take your money and give yourself some severance and go away.” And he would laugh, you know, at my sort of poke.

Farra Trompeter: I’m sure he didn’t love that joke, but maybe, you know.

Ami Dar: He would’ve said the same thing, you know, and like, it depends who said it first. And then there were some leadership changes there a couple times. And then back in May we started talking with them. A couple board members there became sort of co-CEOs after the last CEO left and that opened up a set of possibilities. And so then we spend too long, I think from my end point of view, six or seven months back and forth, negotiating, lawyers, due diligence, all these like corporate terms. And then we signed finally December 31st, and then it closed officially January 31st. And then here we are. And now we’re working on turning the two things into one big website, basically.

Farra Trompeter: So I hear in that story, shared mission, shared user base, very similar work that you’re trying to accomplish for the nonprofit sector, and that it makes sense for you to come together. But was there an event that precipitated it? A lot of organizations go through mergers when there’s a leadership shift, there’s a strategic plan that recommends something, there’s a drop in funding, and one organization needs to support the other. Was there a specific catalyst now that led to this merger in 2024?

Ami Dar: Yes. I think it’s only coincidence that we started talking and we sort of got together and started talking with the respective boards after this leadership change that they had where, where this longstanding CEO, Greg, who left three years ago a new CEO came in two and a half years ago, and then he left back in May. And when I saw that he left, I reached out to a board member that I knew for a long time there, Meg Garlinghouse, who is at LinkedIn, who joined our board post-merger. And I reached out and said, “Hey, Meg, you know, I see that you guys again, you know, a CEO left. If you guys want to talk, we’re here.” And I think you’re right, Farra, that this is a moment where boards literally can take a decision, right? We’re going to basically try to find a new CEO or we’re going to find new kind of a different kind of solution for where we are now. And that’s a place with that.

Ami Dar: I think one question, which you may have already lined up, and I’m sure people are thinking about, is, you know: Why are mergers relatively so rare in the nonprofit sector, relatively compared to the for-profit sector, right? And the basic answer is that the economic incentives are just not there for a merger. So, in the for-profit world, if you are a founder and you start a company and the company reaches a certain size, it doesn’t have to be very large. Even very relevant example, many years ago in the 90s, I was working for a software company that bought another company in the Chicago area, and they had, you know, 30 employees and they had, you know, sales of $5 million a year. So imagine a nonprofit with, you know, a staff of 30, revenue of $5 million, and when that company was acquired, the founder got $5 million for his effort, right? And so you’re going to be separated from your baby, but at least you get $5 million for that separation. You can go, you know, play golf or whatever, or start something else if you want.

Ami Dar: In nonprofit world, you put in the same amount of work or more, but you don’t own it, and so you can’t be compensated for it. And so your baby can feel just as much yours, and you can be just as emotionally attached, but there’s no incentive to separate you from your baby. In fact, in theory, after a merger, you could be laid off with two weeks’ notice. I mean, you basically have nothing, in theory, right? And so it’s “helpful” in quotes or not when suddenly there’s only one CEO in the situation that can allow the thing to happen. And when the CEO is not the founder, I think founders merging are even more rare, I think merging into something else. And so a board can make that decision, and I think their board made a decision, and it was time to come together for the good of the sector and the good of the organization.

Farra Trompeter: Well, let’s stick with the good part of that conversation for a minute. You know, I’m an eternal optimist over here. You know, with everything happening and all the changes that are brewing, I’m guessing we’re going to see some more organizations thinking about alliances, partnerships, mergers, things like that. And I’m just curious, what would you say for organizations who might be debating this, why do it, what’s positive about it? You mentioned there’s a lot of corporate stuff you have to go through. It can take a lot of time. You don’t have the same equity financially that maybe a for-profit would if they were to go through something like this. What’s the benefit for an organization who might be thinking about, should I do this?

Ami Dar: Well, again, the benefits I think for both, depending on who is doing it, is obviously you can do in most cases, as in most, you know, successful mergers, you can do more with less, right? At the most basic thing, you don’t need the same overhead. You don’t need two accountants, you don’t need two IT people, you don’t need two offices, you don’t need. And then the closer the mission is, and the closer in, in our case, for example, in this case, I couldn’t think of something closer. Not only in terms of mission, but in terms of basic architecture, right? Like, think of you know, two dating sites merging or two apartment rental sites merging. There’s literally no need in a sense for both sites, right? You can take the apartments of one, put it in the other, and you’re sort of done, right? Imagine, for example, if Volunteer Match had merged with an organization that doesn’t have a big website. In our case, it really makes tremendous sense to merge. But every organization has to see it, you know, in its own way. And yeah, so there’s some savings, hopefully be stronger.

Ami Dar: I think the US is a big country. I think regional stuff can make a big difference. You know, you’re stronger on the west coast, some else is stronger on the east coast, you merge, and you become stronger nationally. So I think there are many possibilities there. It should happen more, I think, but only if it makes sense, obviously. The other piece, I think, that matters tremendously, I think in our case, it was fairly obvious, was that it happened in this case that their CEO left, two board members, sort of became volunteer CEOs, co-CEOs, and they came from business world. They both had merger experience, they were “deal guys” in the finance world.

Ami Dar: In a previous life, both myself and someone else who works here 30 years ago were part of software companies that did some mergers. And so I knew the basic language, like what’s a merger? How do you work with a lawyer? What is M&A? What is due diligence? How do you…? And I was thinking afterwards with them about how in a different scenario, four people who are running, you know, typical nonprofits with an academic background… how do you even begin the conversation? What do you, what is a merger, right? How do you do this thing? How do you negotiate? So it’s tough, but I think hopefully it’ll happen more if and when it makes sense, not just the heck of it, obviously.

Farra Trompeter: Exactly. And the sort of mission and the audience really having to be supported and served by this. Now I want to talk a little bit specifically, though, back to your, to Idealist. And I mentioned in the opening that there’s a new platform you’re working on, and I wondered if you could share a little bit about that and what’s coming up for you? What are some of the things that Idealist is going to be offering in the years to come? What’s the vision for the future of this newly merged organization?

Ami Dar: So the platform level basically is the idea that you’ll be able to go to essentially these two URLs, Idealsist.org or Volunteermatch.org. We’re going to keep both URLs up and running. I mean, there’s lots of equity out there in terms of SEO and links and stuff. So you’ll have two entry points, but into really one platform, one sort of data side, one stack, if you like. For the people who are more technical here, there’s no reason to keep two entire stacks running, right? One of the fascinating things when we first met them and started talking more in depth was, it was interesting. We you know, in a stack like these days, right, how do you upload photos? How do you charge your credit card? How do you do, you know, caching? How do you do…? In many cases, you have two or three choices. And so we looked at the whole stack, and it was fascinating how in almost every case, like 10 or 15 items, we had chosen one thing, and they were choosing another. Like they were doing Amazon Web Services, we’re working with Heroku, they’re doing this.

Ami Dar: And so to keep two entirely different stacks with two teams, this makes no sense. So it’s becoming sort of one, we’re merging the data, we’re migrating everything into one place. There’s the duping to be done. There’s a whole bunch of things like that need to happen. But then what’s going to happen is that if you’re an admin for an organization either on the Idealist or Volunteer Match today, you will come to one site where you’ll find essentially one profile and on that profile you’ll be able to list your jobs, opportunities, internships, whatevers, that you want under one place with one integrated search.

Ami Dar: And I think hopefully with strong cross-promotion, right? So if you’re looking for a job now, maybe you want to volunteer while you’re looking. And if you want to volunteer, maybe your sister is looking for a job. So, in other words, there’s no reason why you can’t see it all in one place. And both sides can benefit from this. And from the doubling of traffic, it’ll be about a doubling. We have sort of similar traffic. So the joint sites will have like a doubling of traffic, a doubling of SEO, and that can just benefit everyone we hope.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, that’s great. Is there anything else you’re thinking now with the idea of volunteering and working somewhere and interning and all of this coming together? Is there anything else in the next like few years out you’re thinking about?

Ami Dar: Yeah, I mean, a few years is a long time. We’ll, you know, we’ll see what happens.

Farra Trompeter: That’s true. One day at a time, one day at a time.

Ami Dar: We’re about to launch, which is sort of an additional piece of, it’s like, it’s a triangle, if you like, in my mind there is Idealist, there is Volunteer Match, the third piece of this, for a long time now, we’ve been working, this is not a tech piece, more programmatic. You know, how, so we’re going to be launching these monthly days of celebrating sort of action, collaboration, and stuff like that. Very specifically, if you think about the fact that if you take any date in the US, like, you know, 3/7, for example. In the US, that’s March 7th. In Europe, that’s July 3rd. Very often they flip the, you know, they flip it. And the only days where that’s not true are 3/3, 4/4, 5/5, 6/6, right? Those 12 dates from 1/1 through 12/12 work around the world, and they’re memorable. So we’re going to grab those dates from 1/1 through 12/12, we’re going to call them Idealist Days. And we’re going to tell people everywhere that on that day, you have the permission, the encouragement, go out and, you know, bake a cookie for your neighbor, or organize something, or bring a nonprofit to speak at the office, or shine a light on something, or close a city street for your mayor. And the more people do it, the more people will do it. And so that’s been in the works for a while now. The Volunteer Match piece, I think, helps a lot because in that case, we’re having lots of people coming to a site looking for ways to get involved and do stuff, right? For Idealist, very often they came looking for a job. For Volunteer Match, they’re coming to make the world a better place. We might as well give them even more ways of doing that. So that’s coming also in the next few weeks, actually, we’re going to start launching that.

Farra Trompeter: That’s exciting. We’ll be looking forward to those Idealist Days to do something good in our neighborhood. Now you mentioned how you’re keeping Idealist, I mean the sort of overarching brand is called Idealist, but you’re keeping on the web for now, Idealist.org and Volunteermatch.org. So, of course, the communicator in me wants to talk a little bit about some of these things. You know, when organizations structure a merger, obviously some of the first conversations have to do with the legal issues, you mentioned they talk about options for staffing, for programs, hat comes together? What do we shed? What do we create? There’s lots of approvals that go into things, figuring out board members, all of it you spoke about, but then they need to figure out communications.

Farra Trompeter: What are we going to brand this new thing as? Are we going to create a new brand? Are we going to going to subsume one brand over the other? At Big Duck, we’ve had the chance to develop the names or brand identities for a few merged organizations. So I’m very interested in this aspect of the story. And I’m just curious if you could talk about how you determined what to name the merged entity of Idealist and this approach to communications. Is there a plan to phase out volunteermatch.org, and it’s all going to be idealist.org? Is there concerns about confusion in any of that? Was there, or is there a rollout plan? We talk a lot about when you have a new name or a merger, really being mindful about what kind of approach you’re going to take to introducing this change to your community. So yeah, would love to hear a little bit about the comms piece of all of this.

Ami Dar: All of the above. Let’s see, so starting from the names of the brand itself, I think that sometimes when two entities merge, there can be one of two sorts of situations. One is one, for whatever reason, they both really don’t like their names very much, and they’re almost looking for the opportunity to find the third one that will be better for what they do, right? So that’s, I think, let’s call that the, you know, the good scenario. The bad scenario, which I think also happens, is that maybe they like their names, but for organizational ego reasons, one of them doesn’t want to give up their name, and so a solution ends up being to find a third name. Now, personally, I think that’s a terrible idea. If you both like your names and there’s a consensus out in the world that you both have good names, then literally flip a coin. It is dumb to throw both.

Farra Trompeter: I’m not sure I agree with making a naming decision by a coin flip, but I hear what you’re saying.

Ami Dar: No, if they literally both, if they actually agree that they both like their names, right? So, you know, take an example from real life. Like, imagine, I have no idea what the case was, right? But imagine that GuideStar liked their name and Foundations Center liked their name, and then they went for Candid. If the reason they went for Candid was because they really honestly think, and if you ask the staff to vote anonymously, the staff would agree that Candid was a better name than both names. Great. But if in fact both teams would’ve preferred for the thing to be called either GuideStar or Foundation Center, et cetera, literally flip a coin, it’s better than a third thing. Why a third thing?

Farra Trompeter: Let me just say one thing before we leave this real. Now you’re getting me fired up here, Ami, I like it. You know, I would say, I hear what you’re saying, and we want this decision to be informed by what is the purpose of this merged entity and what do we want associated with us? And so for example, in that, in the example you gave of Foundation Center and GuideStar, and that was an interesting merger, we’ll link to an article about that. We were not involved, but certainly kept our eyes on it. You know, if they’re not just working with foundations, being called Foundation Center could actually be a misleading in that case, right? So there may be a reason for a new name based on that name causing confusion. So even if we like it, does it make sense given our brand strategy, given what we’re trying to accomplish? So I have to soapbox a moment, but go back to your thread.

Ami Dar: Completely, completely agree. I think maybe I should have sort of stayed away from giving example, because I think in their case, for example, I can see why they may have, I can see why they would’ve said, well, GuideStar is like, “What does GuideStar mean anyway for someone who’s never heard of us?” Right? And then Foundation Center, “We’re not really a foundation center anymore, we’re not a library, you know, where, so let’s find a new name,” But I’ll give you a better example. I’ll give you a hypothetical example. Imagine Amnesty tomorrow, Amnesty International merging with Human Rights Watch. I think it’d be dumb to abandon both names. Hypothetical here, I think both have Human Rights Watch. Is Human Rights Watch Amnesty International? To throw those two names away for like some third consultant thing would just be weird to me. Or you know, Amnesty Rights Watch, right? Or whatever you want to call it, right? Amnesty Watch.

Ami Dar: The thing is that we decided that we both liked our names. In this case, the merger, the way it happened was the Volunteer Match was sort of being merged, you know, into Idealist. That was a decision that was taken by us, by their board. I mean, it was obviously that sort of decision that was going to happen. It wasn’t really truly a, in this case, a you know, a merger of equals that then leads off into a third entity, which is what happens. You know, we actually create a third entity that you both merge into. This was more of a merger, literally into Idealist. It was decided that Idealist was a strong brand. We loved the brand, we’re not going to, you know, it never even crossed our mind to sort of give that up as a brand.

Ami Dar: And so now what’s going to happen is that gradually the site will be called Idealist. But again, anyone who finds Volunteer Match on the web, I think it’s really important, if someone’s looking for volunteer opportunities and finds Volunteer Match, they should land on a thing that says Volunteer Match. Imagine someone who’s never heard of us, it’s just doing like a search and they land on, they should land on a volunteering page that then, you know, goes deeper and becomes something else. We’re going to keep the logo, you know, even on Idealist.org, where it says volunteer, you’re going to see the little Volunteer Match logo there, so people feel welcomed. I think that’s important. So yeah, so it’ll be a gradual process. We immediately emailed, you know, the whole Volunteer Match community. If you go to Volunteer Match from day one, there’s a header on top that says, you know, “We have merged”. So it’s a gradual process to, sort of understand that.

Ami Dar: We hired probably their most senior staff senior in terms of longevity; there’s two people there who’ve been here for 17 years. They’re both happily with us now and are the people who are the most user-facing on their site. It’s the people who the community truly knows and counts on. They’re with us. So there’s a sense of continuity there. That stuff is very important. Most mergers fail, and they fail for very good reasons. And so you have to be careful of each of those reasons. Not presuming you know things you don’t know, usually you don’t know enough about the other person’s business. Really listening, really asking. So, as much as we think we know about volunteering, we don’t really, they know about volunteering and vice versa. So long process, but we’ll see.

Farra Trompeter: Great. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate banding about comms and branding with you. If you’re listening and you’d like to learn more about Idealist’s offerings and join their community, be sure to visit Idealist.org. You can also connect with them and Ami on LinkedIn. Ami, before we sign off, any other advice you have for people who are thinking about a merger or a formal alliance with another organization? How do they know whether it’s right for them or anything else they should have in their minds as they’re questioning whether or not they should consider a merger?

Ami Dar: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s some good things to read out there. The main thing is to truly imagine it, right? Truly imagine if coming together is going to work. Some things, you know, it’s funny, one thing that just crossed my mind, I didn’t think about before, the fact that so many people are working remotely now. It’s funny how that, in a sense, makes it easier. Like in our case, at least, had we done this six years ago or whenever, and we had had a strong New York office and they had a strong San Francisco office, and you merged the two, you really can get into a clash of cultures. You can get into this place, like, you know, how do you truly become one? Whereas now we’re remote, they’re remote, whatever, right? Everyone’s at home anyway. So the little things like that matter, but every detail ends up mattering, I think.

Ami Dar: And so, talking to the people who have done this before, the logistics are important. The accounting is important, you know; we’re going to have to do a 990 now. We’re going to have to do their 990 for 2024 and their audit. So, all these details matter. Insurance issues you learn. So this is why I understand why people are so scared of this. I’ve seen articles that, in some cases, you know, writing that in some cases in the end, nonprofits almost prefer to go under than to merge. And that’s just weird for, again, organizational ego reasons. You know, if you’re going under, then become part of something bigger, don’t go under. Why, why would you do that? I don’t, I’m happy to talk to anyone who’s thinking about this. You know, you know where to find me. I’m here. I’m at idealist.org. But thank you Farra, thanks for this.

Farra Trompeter: No, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it. Good luck on this new chapter, and thanks again. Take care, everyone.