All right, everyone, we need to freak out more about nonprofit leadership
During the 17 months of our existence, my start-up organization has been guided by a single profound question: “Whose disgusting leftover salad is this that’s been in the fridge since June?!” That, and also, “What kind of leaders do we need in this time and place?” Both questions have prompted us to do some serious soul-searching. The latter, posed by our partner organization the Center for Ethical Leadership, has been on my mind a lot lately.If you’ve been reading the news, it seems that the world is getting more and more complex, and sometimes scarier, and oftentimes sadder and more confusing. I know there are lots of good things happening too, but as I part with my two-year-old son each morning to go to work, I can’t help but hold him for a few seconds longer. The world is changing, and the nonprofit sector has a significant role to play. A big part of that role is to provide our community with the leaders that it needs. As much as we would like to, we can’t really rely on our corporate friends to be leading social movements, and political leaders have their challenges to wrestle with. It is often up to us to bring balance. Nonprofit leaders are the underappreciated Jedi knights of our world.Considering the importance of leadership—and I define leaders broadly to include program and development staff as well as administrators—I’ve been disappointed with the conversations we’ve been having, or not having. There has been much handwringing about leadership in the nonprofit sector lately, but for the wrong reasons. We have been hearing about the wave of boomers in nonprofit who will soon retire, creating potentially huge gaps. I don’t think this is the problem; there are tons of talented Gen X and Millennial leaders out there waiting for a chance to prove themselves. The leadership problems we need to address in the sector are more nuanced and complex. Here are just a few:Leaders are not reflective of the communities we serve: Only 18% of nonprofit professionals, 10% of EDs, and 5% of foundation CEOs are people of color. I can’t find the exact number, but I would estimate that over half the people we serve in the sector are of color. Also, with such a significant part of our sector and our society comprising women, it should alarm us all that the majority of the largest and most influential nonprofits tend to be led by men. We all need to be engaged in building the community we want to see, and leaders who don’t reflect their constituents also play vital roles, but it will become more and more critical that our leaders reflect the people we serve.Leaders don’t have time to do their jobs: A huge weakness of our sector is that we are turning brilliant leaders into brilliant fundraisers. Development is an
essential element of our work, and some of the smartest and most talented professionals in our sector are fundraisers, but the balance is off. All of us are spending more and more of our time and energy freaking out about money instead of working with our teams to think about systemic issues and collaborating with others to address them.
Leaders are often not equipped to handle the changing landscapes: With funding being so unstable, so much of our time is focused on survival. It frequently leaves little room for us to deeply discuss race, gender, intersectionality, systemic inequity, our values, and how we can work effectively together. These conversations are vital to our work, and yet they are usually the last on our to-do/to-fund list.Leaders are leaving the sector: Perhaps due to the above and other factors, I’ve been seeing more and more leaders packing it up and calling it in. Sometimes they’re crappy, and it’s probably for the best, but most of the time, they are awesome, passionate leaders that we desperately need. Every month at least one of my ED friends quits, and to be honest, I’ve thought about it from time to time. The work of helping people is hard enough, but layered on top of that is all the energy we must spend justifying our work—dealing with restricted funding, coming up with BS answers to the Sustainability Question, fighting to be seen as partners and not supplicants. Some days the challenges feel just so grueling and hopeless and insurmountable. We lose good leaders every day. And while there are always more leaders to take their place, the turnover is a serious problem.Lately, as I talk to people about what my organization does—which is to bring more leaders of color into the nonprofit sector—I hear this expression a lot: “You don’t bet on the horse; you bet on the jockey.” The meaning, of course, is that an organization cannot perform without a strong leader at the helm. I’m not particularly fond of this expression, since it is overly simplistic and representative of an archaic model of leadership that relies on a single influential leader. But it has a point. No matter what issues we tackle—homelessness, climate change, unemployment, education inequity, art and cultural deserts—to do it well, we need strong, effective people.
