Citing Conflict With the Board, the Head of the NAACP Steps Down

When Bruce Gordon, a former high-ranking Verizon Communications executive, was tapped to lead the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 2005, some charity leaders thought it was an odd fit, but one that suggested the nation’s oldest civil-rights charity was striving to modernize its operations.

The erstwhile corporate leader, however, frequently found himself at odds with the culture, board structure, and goals of the Baltimore charity. After just 19 months on the job, Mr. Gordon announced his resignation as president of the NAACP.

The charity’s board chairman, Julian Bond, acknowledges there was some “disconnect” between the board and the president over their respective roles and responsibilities.

“It was our expectation that he knew that the board of directors generally ran organizations and hired a president to do the actual day-to-day running,” Mr. Bond says. “That seemed to us to be a universal understanding, but apparently not so with him.”

Mr. Gordon could not be reached for comment.

In a recent interview on Tavis Smiley’s show on Public Radio International, Mr. Gordon spoke of his frequent “misalignment” with the NAACP’s 64-member board and his difficulties in working with trustees.

“The size of the board is absolutely cumbersome,” Mr. Gordon said. “You cannot run an organization effectively, responsibly, with a board of that size.”

Some observers of the situation said the NAACP board may, indeed, be too big, and suggested that it might need to follow a move the American Red Cross took last fall to improve its governance by reducing the size of its board from 50 trustees to less than 20.

“I have long been a proponent of reducing the size of the board,” Mr. Bond says, noting that talk of doing so predates Mr. Gordon’s tenure. “It’s something we are going to try be more serious about in the future than we have been in the past.”

Service or Advocacy?

One area of contention between Mr. Gordon and the board concerned the 98-year-old civil-rights group’s current and future role. The former business executive expressed interest in creating more service-oriented programs, including efforts aimed at helping black people with financial literacy, debt management, and home buying.

Some trustees objected to what they saw as a shift from the group’s established role as a social-justice and civil-rights advocacy group. The NAACP has largely worked to improve the lives of minorities through the court system, the promotion of public policy efforts, and organized protests.

“We already have fine social-service organizations, such as the National Urban League,” says Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland at College Park, and a close observer of the NAACP. “For this president to try and take the NAACP in the service direction just would not stand.”

Mr. Bond, however, says that the service-versus-advocacy rift has been “exaggerated,” noting that the NAACP does not shy away from social-service work. That said, he adds: “We don’t want this to become a major focus. We are one of the very, very few groups that provide social-justice work.”

Mr. Gordon has said he believed broadening the organization’s mission would reinvigorate the organization. “If we found the right balance between advocacy and service, I think we could do more for our communities.” Mr. Gordon said during the radio interview. “People would be more inclined to value us and become members of the organization.”

“The NAACP leadership is, on average, aged,” he added, while expressing a need to “pass the baton” to a “younger generation.”

Mr. Gordon had set a goal to raise the NAACP’s membership from less than 300,000 to one million by the group’s centennial in 2009.

Operating Deficit

It is unclear what role, if any, the organization’s financial situation played in the leadership rifts and Mr. Gordon’s subsequent departure. Financial figures for 2005, the latest available, show that the NAACP operated at a deficit of more than $2-million for the year.

Mr. Walters believes Mr. Gordon was viewed by the board as someone who could help lift the group’s bottom line through his business connections. “The expectation of the board was that he would be able to raise considerable corporate funds,” he says.

While declining to comment on whether any fund-raising expectations from Mr. Gordon were met, Mr. Bond notes that it was anticipated that Mr. Gordon “would have a high degree of entrée to people in the corporate world.”

Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director at the NAACP, says corporations and social-justice organizations can make for odd bedfellows.

“The mission of the NAACP knocks up against big corporations,” Mr. Meyers says. “When you’re in social-advocacy work, you end up suing big corporations. You don’t then have one hand out asking for big donations.”

He adds that he had doubts about the selection of Mr. Gordon from the start. “I don’t think you can bring someone into the NAACP at the top who did not have sufficient familiarity with the culture of the organization,” he says.

After Mr. Gordon announced his departure, Mr. Bond said the charity quickly began “reaching out to donors, contributors, foundations” with the message that “just because one of the sailors has abandoned ship does not mean the ship is sinking.”

He says he anticipates little negative fallout from the resignation.

The charity has not set a schedule for when it will appoint a president. The organization’s general counsel, Dennis Hayes, is serving as interim president.

The search for a new president coincides with the NAACP’s plans to move its headquarters from Baltimore to Washington, a move that will put the group in closer proximity to lawmakers, but could prove expensive.

As for the next leader, “we are going to look as widely as we can,” Mr. Bond says. “We are just beginning this process and interviewing potential search firms and naming board members and outsiders to be on the search committee.”

Mr. Meyers goes so far as to suggest that Mr. Bond take over the presidency himself. “He has the name, he has the reputation, he has the civil-rights credentials — he should have been appointed eons ago,” Mr. Meyers says.

“I already have a job that I enjoy very much and am not looking for another one,” Mr. Bond responds.