February 10, 2014 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Over the past two decades, Kriss Deiglmeier has helped start some of the biggest trends in the nonprofit world.
In the early 1990s, when she was chief operating officer at Juma Ventures, a youth-development program in San Francisco, she recalls pitching the message to foundations that nonprofits like Juma could become more sustainable by running their own for-profit businesses.
Nine years ago, when she took the helm of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University’s Graduate Business School, she helped define the term “social innovation” as an approach to solving social problems that could involve nonprofits, business, and government.
This month, Ms. Deiglmeier is leaving that post to become chief executive of Tides, also based in San Francisco, which has its own proud record of innovation.
Tides was among the first organizations to create donor-advised funds to help support progressive charities, and was an early supporter of needle-exchange programs to reduce the transmission of HIV. More recently, it has been a leader in encouraging nonprofits to conserve resources by sharing office space and administrative services.
“Tides has a long history of impact, and a strong reputation for being innovative,” Ms. Deiglmeier says. “There’s a robust opportunity to take Tides into the next chapter.”
Fresh Ideas
The past few years have been rocky for Tides, which bills itself as “a one-stop shop for donors, activists, and organizations in the social justice movement.” It has managed projects and grant-making activities totaling more than $2-billion over the past four decades. Ms. Deiglmeier will be the organization’s fourth president in as many years.
Tides was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, who served as president of the organization until 2010.
Melissa Bradley, who founded a venture-capital firm that invests in minority-owned businesses, replaced Mr. Pike, but she stayed on the job only two and a half years before returning to the firm she started.
Gary Schwartz, the interim president of Tides, will return to his earlier post of senior vice president when Ms. Deiglmeier joins the organization later this month.
Tuti Scott, vice chair of the Tides board, says the board chose Ms. Deiglmeier because she has demonstrated that she can capitalize on emerging trends.
“She has good ideas about how to refresh the strategies of Tides,” Ms. Scott says.
Ms. Deiglmeier says Tides will seek out new partners in its work, but that she will wait to share specific plans until she is on the job. She says she will canvass the staff for ideas on how to revamp Tides programs that advise donors and foundations, and assist nonprofits with back-office infrastructure.
“There is more competition,” Ms. Deiglmeier says, with more organizations these days doing some of the things Tides does. “The board and the staff are all aware that they need to adapt.”
James A. Phills, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, and faculty director of the Center for Social Innovation for a number of years, describes Ms. Deiglmeier as “the most effective manager I have ever encountered at Stanford.”
“She is smart, analytical, collaborative, and remarkable at working with and leading other really smart, strong, independent people,” he says.
Progressive Focus
In taking over at Tides, Ms. Deiglmeier is joining an organization closely associated with progressive causes, which makes it a regular focus of conservative critics—and has resulted in one scary incident. In 2010, a convicted felon who later claimed he was headed to Tides to try to kill its executives was shot several times by police after being stopped on a California freeway.
Ms. Deiglmeier says she is aware of that incident, but it didn’t give her pause in taking on the job.
“It’s one incident in 36 years,” she says. “I’m not going to dwell on that.”
She says the progressive agenda in the United States is at an inflection point: The antagonistic approach that may have worked for, say, environmentalists in the 1990s is now giving way to face-to-face negotiations with major corporations.
“Shining light on bad behavior is one thing,” Ms. Deiglmeier says, “but it’s also important to get Walmart to drive sustainability in its supply chain.”
Ms. Deiglmeier will also draw on her own diverse experiences at nonprofits, including her years at Juma Ventures, which in 1993 became one of the first nonprofits to own and operate a commercial franchise—a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop.
“I know what it’s like to drive a social mission and drive a bottom line,” Ms. Deiglmeier says. “You need your values, but you also need a business model that’s going to enable you to thrive.”
Kriss Deiglmeier, chief executive officer, Tides
Education: B.A., finance, University of Washington; MBA, University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
Career highlights: executive director, Stanford University’s Center for Social Innovation; chief operating and strategy officer, Juma Ventures; chief financial officer, Larkin Street Youth Center
Salary: She declined to disclose it.
Book she’s reading: The Solution Revolution: How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises Are Teaming Up to Solve Society’s Toughest Problems, by William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan
