The Seeing Eye President Search

Isaacson, Miller, a national retained executive search firm in Boston, is assisting The Seeing Eye in their Presidency search.

The Seeing Eye is the premier dog guide school in the world with a mission to enhance the independence, dignity, and self-confidence of blind people through the use of Seeing Eye dogs. They select, breed, and train dogs for lives of service, carefully match dogs and their blind owners, and teach them to work together as a mutually supporting team. They have a 70-acre campus outside Morristown, NJ, and a nearby state-of-the-art breeding station. Its $22 million annual expense budget is supported by annual giving, bequests, and a $200 million endowment. They have 190 staff and they match and train about 270 teams of graduates and dog guides each year.

The ideal candidate will have experience overseeing professional staff, managing the facilities of a small campus, managing the provision of training or educational services, and representing a service organization to external constituencies. Successful experience building cohesive staff teams and developing organizational focus is important, as well as some fundraising and public speaking experience. Experience with marketing and/or branding is helpful. This candidate could conceivably come from higher education, an independent living facility or residential treatment center, a social service agency with a residential facility and professional staff, or an institution that supports the blind and visually impaired community. A love of people and dogs is essential.

The position description follows for your review.

Best regards,

Rebecca

________________
Rebecca M. Swartz
Associate
Isaacson, Miller
334 Boylston Street, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02116-3805

www.imsearch.com
tel (617) 262.6500 x. 106
fax (617) 262-6509

Profile and Challenge Statement
PRESIDENT
The Seeing Eye, Inc.
March, 2006

Summary
The Seeing Eye, the premier dog guide school in the world, is seeking its next President. For over 75 years, The Seeing Eye has enhanced the independence, dignity, and self-confidence of blind people through the use of Seeing Eye dogs - selecting, breeding, and training dogs for lives of service, carefully matching dogs and their blind owners, and teaching them to work together as a mutually supporting team. From its inviting 70-acre campus outside Morristown, NJ, and a nearby state-of-the-art breeding station, The Seeing Eye's 190-member staff match and train about 270 teams of graduates and dog guides each year.

The Seeing Eye is distinguished by the clarity of its purpose, the excellence of its program, the strength of its finances, and the stability of its leadership. Its $22 million annual expense budget is supported by annual giving, bequests, and a $200 million endowment. This is an exceptional organization, proud of its history and determined to preserve the culture of respect and dignity for which it is known.

Reporting to a 21-member Board of Trustees, the next Seeing Eye President will facilitate the organization's adaptation to changing markets while preserving its supportive and familial environment. Only a small percentage of the blind population uses dog guides and the overall population of blind adults is becoming older and less mobile. The President will need to ensure that The Seeing Eye maintains a high and positive profile, particularly among its potential student population. In addition, The President will sustain The Seeing Eye's leadership position in the field of dog guide schools through support for its genetics and breeding program, attention to the opportunities and challenges of new technologies (such as GPS systems), and strengthening of its financial base.

The Board of Trustees is open to candidates from a variety of backgrounds. However, senior organizational leadership experience and strong interpersonal and communication skills are required. Experience with residential and educational environments is helpful, as is experience representing and generating support for an organization externally. A personal temperament that is both interpersonally respectful and organizationally inspiring is essential.

The Seeing Eye has retained a national executive search firm, Isaacson Miller, to assist in this search. Confidential nominations or applications should be directed to the search firm as indicated at the conclusion of this document.

Background
Founding. The Seeing Eye, the world's premier dog guide school, was founded in 1929 by Dorothy Harrison Eustis. Mrs. Eustis was a Philadelphian who lived in Switzerland and had become interested in breeding German shepherd dogs for desirable character traits and for roles of service. After visiting Germany where she saw German shepherds being trained as guides for blinded veterans of World War I, she wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post called "The Seeing Eye." When the article reached Morris Frank, a young man in Tennessee, he wrote to Mrs. Eustis seeking her assistance in his bid for greater independence. "Train me and I will bring back my dog and show people here how a blind man can be absolutely on his own," he wrote. Mrs. Eustis selected and trained a dog for him; then he was invited to Switzerland and taught to work with the dog. Back in the United States, Mr. Frank crossed and re-crossed the country, demonstrating convincingly the independence available to a blind person teamed with a trained dog guide.
Mrs. Eustis and Mr. Frank established The Seeing Eye in 1929, initially in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1931, The Seeing Eye moved to the Morristown, NJ area, and to its present campus in 1965. It has no branches. Since its founding, The Seeing Eye has matched over 14,000 specially bred and trained Seeing Eye dogs with nearly 8,000 blind men and women from across the United States and Canada. Its 1,700 currently active graduates come from all walks of life. They have learned how to use and care for their dogs at home, on the job, on public transportation, and in all public accommodations.

Mission. The Seeing Eye is a philanthropic organization whose mission is to enhance the independence, dignity, and self-confidence of blind people through the use of Seeing Eye dogs. In pursuit of this mission The Seeing Eye:
. Breeds and raises puppies to become Seeing Eye dogs (or obtains them occasionally by purchase or exchange);
. Trains Seeing Eye dogs to guide blind people;
. Instructs blind people in the proper use, handling, and care of the dogs;
. Teaches Apprentice and Associate Instructors the science and art of training dog guides and instructing students; and
. Informs the public about the role of dog guides and the rights of access for people with dog guides, works to establish uniform street and traffic regulations, and serves as an advocate for its graduates.

The Seeing Eye is more than a place or a school, however. It is a philosophy, a program, and a metaphor for independence - independence that is the result of the ability to travel safely without the aid of others. It encompasses puppies bred for a special destiny, loving volunteers who nurture the pups for about a year, dedicated instructors who prepare the dogs for their life's work, and blind people who seek increased mobility, dignity, self-sufficiency, and self-confidence with Seeing Eye dogs as their companions and guides.

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Students. The Seeing Eye serves students from all over the United States and Canada. Each student is asked to pay a fee of $150 for his/her first dog and $50 for every dog thereafter (or $1.00 if blindness is a result of military service for the United States or Canada). Payment of the fees, though they are modest, symbolizes the independence of the graduate, who acquires absolute ownership of his or her dog upon graduation. The actual cost of breeding and training a dog and matching it with and instructing its new owner is more than $50,000

First time Seeing Eye students are usually between the ages of 16 and 75. About two-thirds of each class are graduates returning for a replacement dog. Students are evaluated for their walking pace, strength, lifestyle and other factors and matched with an appropriate dog. First-time students spend 27 days in residence training with their new dogs, while those returning for successor dogs are in residence for 20 days. The Seeing Eye matches about 270 teams of graduates and dog guides each year.

Campus. The Seeing Eye's school and training grounds occupy a campus of almost 70 acres nestled in the historic Washington Valley, 35 miles west of New York City and about 30 minutes by car from Newark Liberty International Airport. The main building contains the dormitory (24 private rooms with private baths), the dining room, an exercise room, library/technology center, and administrative offices. The Walker Dillard Kirby Canine Center, built in 1993, houses 120 dogs in training. The Vincent A. Stabile Canine Health Center, which opened in 1997, is a state-of-the-art canine hospital, library, and veterinary medical facility. It accommodates 192 dogs. Jenks House, renovated in 1998, contains a conference room, business offices, and space for the puppy-raising coordinators. The Seeing Eye's facilities also include a Downtown Training Lounge and an innovatively designed Breeding Station, built in 2001, in Chester, NJ - ten pavilions housing adult breeding dogs and puppies up to the age of 8 weeks, including administrative offices, a clinic, an observation room, and exercise areas.

Budget and Staff. The Seeing Eye's annual operating budget is about $22 million. Its revenue comes from annual gifts from individuals, corporations, and foundations (20%), bequests (40%), and a draw on its $200 million endowment (40%). The Seeing Eye neither seeks nor receives government funding of any kind.

The paid staff of The Seeing Eye numbers about 190 employees. The chief staff member is the President, who reports to a 21-member Board of Trustees. Reporting to the President is a nine-member executive team of Directors who lead the areas of Programs, Student Services, Canine Health Management, Canine Genetics (The Jane H. Booker Chair), Administration and Finance, Buildings & Grounds, Development, Human Resources, and Communications. The faculty, which numbers about 35 instructors and their supervisors, includes Community Instructors based in Arizona, Virginia, Michigan, and Texas for more efficient access to graduates and applicants remote from New Jersey. Volunteers play a vital role in the Seeing Eye program. Over 700 volunteer puppy-raising families provide socialization and basic obedience training to puppies until they are old enough to be trained as guides. About 150 others volunteer on campus, walking dogs, conducting tours, and serving in other jobs. In addition, The Seeing Eye is served by a Chairman's National Advisory Council, comprising 13 distinguished volunteers from the United States and Canada.

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Competitors. The Seeing Eye is the pioneer dog guide school in the world and all other schools have modeled their programs after it. There are ten other accredited dog guide schools in the United States, three in Canada, and about 70 accredited schools in more than 25 countries worldwide. The Seeing Eye is one of the four largest dog guide schools. The other three are Guide Dogs for the Blind (CA), Leader Dogs for the Blind (MI), and Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in Great Britain. Though in some ways competitors, the various dog guide schools are collaborators in the larger effort to promote and support the breeding, health, and training of dogs and the instruction of blind people. The Seeing Eye is a founding member of the Council of U.S. Dog Guide Schools and a member of the International Guide Dog Federation, Assistance Dogs International, and the National Council of Private Agencies for the Blind and Visually Impaired. It works closely with the Morris Animal Foundation and other organizations that involve working with people who are blind, and with assistance animals.

Leadership. The Seeing Eye has been led since 1995 by Kenneth Rosenthal, who will retire in 2006 following the selection of a successor and a suitable leadership transition. Under Mr. Rosenthal's leadership The Seeing Eye designed and constructed many of its campus buildings, developed vibrant collaborative ties with other blindness and dog guide organizations both domestic and international, strengthened its governance and finances, and lowered its student-teacher ratio from 6-1 to 4-1. The high quality environment and family-like nature of the school have been preserved even as its staff and budget have grown and its reach has expanded.

Tasks and Challenges
The Seeing Eye has been distinguished by the clarity of its purpose, the excellence of its program, the strength of its finances, and the stability of its leadership for over 75 years. This is an exceptional organization, proud of its history and determined to preserve the culture of respect and dignity for which it is known. A recent strategic planning exercise reaffirmed the mission and fundamental program of The Seeing Eye (after considering and rejecting options such as an expansion into orientation and mobility training or the creation of job development programs). This is not an organization aspiring to significant change. Nevertheless, The Seeing Eye faces challenges; among them are:

Enrollment. The Seeing Eye and other dog guide schools reach only a small minority of blind adults. Dog guide users believe they have much greater independence with a dog guide than with the familiar white cane, but a dog is not for everyone. Partnership with a dog guide requires training, the dog requires care, and a certain degree of strength, mobility, and determination is necessary for a blind person to succeed. So it has always been necessary to get the word out among the blindness community and to identify and educate potential users about the benefits of training with a dog guide. But now there is more.

For a variety of reasons, the blind population in the United States is changing. Greater attention to occupational safety has reduced the number of otherwise healthy young people who become blind through injury. Improvements in technology (computers that convert text to speech, for

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example) and public transportation for the disabled have coincided with the generally more sedentary lifestyle of adults to reduce the independent mobility requirements of blind people. Blindness on the whole is becoming more an accompanying aspect of other illnesses or a degenerative impairment of vision (rather than total blindness), both of which make it difficult to team successfully with a dog guide.

Consequently, The Seeing Eye and other dog guide schools face the challenge of maintaining their enrollment. The Seeing Eye will need to expand its marketing and outreach efforts to educate the public in general about the advantages of traveling with a dog guide and to identify and recruit suitable students, though it is confident that such students are available.
Strengthen the financial foundation. The Seeing Eye benefits from a healthy and well-managed endowment. Nevertheless, it is dependent upon annual giving and bequests to cover its costs; it is not independently wealthy. It aspires to continue its tradition of charging students but only nominally. Therefore, an expansion of its traditionally modest fund-raising efforts is planned, in particular the increased solicitation of major gifts.

Sustain leadership in the field. The Seeing Eye is the original, and still the best known, of the dog guide schools in the world. This history and name recognition, coupled with The Seeing Eye's careful attention to everything from the science of dog breeding to the nuances of the school's physical environment, has kept The Seeing Eye in a leadership position in the field. Such a position can invite complacency. The Seeing Eye hopes to avoid this by focusing continuing attention on new developments and best practices. For example, a Global Positioning System is available that is small and portable enough to be carried on the shoulder of a blind person, assisting in navigation of unfamiliar territory. Or again, through continuing collaboration with other schools in the sharing of germ plasm, The Seeing Eye helps to strengthen the overall pool of dogs in the available breeding population. Staff, graduates, and Trustees want The Seeing Eye to remain vibrant and innovative and the new President will be expected to lead this effort.

Facilitate organizational evolution. The Seeing Eye expanded its staff and budget significantly over the last ten years, while adding new buildings and establishing new relationships with other similar programs. As a result, the organization needs now to attend consciously to functions such as internal communication, functional coordination, team building, and the development of shared organizational goals - things that formerly happened of themselves. As The Seeing Eye moves into new competitive/collaborative spaces with other dog guide schools, faces emerging enrollment challenges, evaluates changing markets, and embraces available technological innovation, its President will be called upon to balance innovation and preservation, keeping The Seeing Eye true to its mission and values while adapting its structures and programs.

Qualifications
Although the Trustees and staff are open to a variety of professional backgrounds in candidates, a significant track record of successful organizational leadership and senior level management in

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a nonprofit organization or business is required. In addition, the following skills, experience, and personal qualities will be especially helpful.

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