Departure of Nonprofit Coalition’s Leader Raises Questions About Future

Sara E. Meléndez, the sometimes-controversial president of the nonprofit membership group Independent Sector, has announced that she will leave the coalition at year’s end.

The organization, which is the chief representative of the interests of the nation’s biggest and most influential nonprofit groups, now faces the task of finding a new leader at a crucial time, when many federal and state policies important to charities are being shaped and may affect the course of philanthropy over the next decade.

In an unusual arrangement, Ms. Meléndez, 61, who joined Independent Sector in 1994, will take a job that was arranged in part by the coalition’s board chairman and several foundations as a professor of nonprofit management at George Washington University’s School of Business and Public Management, in Washington, where she will teach and do research.

Independent Sector — which consists of more than 700 nonprofit groups, foundations, and corporate grant makers — said it will soon announce the names of members of a search committee that will help find a successor to Ms. Meléndez.

“It’s always difficult to say goodbye to strong leaders, but we have much to celebrate in the legacy that Sara has built,” said John R. Seffrin, chair of the Independent Sector board and chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

Mr. Seffrin praised Ms. Meléndez for leading Independent Sector to many accomplishments. Among them: helping to defeat Congressional efforts to prohibit nonprofit groups that receive federal money from conducting advocacy campaigns. Mr. Seffrin also commended Ms. Meléndez for taking the coalition through a major makeover of its internal structure two years ago aimed at strengthening its role as a public-policy advocate.

Concerns Over Leadership

Yet some coalition board members and people close to the organization said privately over the years that they were never fully satisfied with her performance.

Some thought that the organization long ago needed a new president with a higher profile who would enable it to wield more influence.

Ms. Meléndez and Independent Sector were criticized when she stood by President Bush’s side last year as he signed executive orders to promote philanthropy and encourage religiously oriented organizations to play a big role in the delivery of social services. Some members of the organization wanted the coalition to steer clear of the president’s “faith-based” agenda.

Others said that they were unhappy with Ms. Meléndez and the coalition for being too slow to take a position against the repeal of the federal estate tax.

And many thought that Independent Sector devoted too much time and energy on its key legislative goal of persuading Congress to allow people who do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns to write off some of their charitable gifts. Legislation to do that, supported by President Bush, is stalled in Congress.

Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, which monitors government spending, said that Independent Sector “has become more insular in dealing with its own members rather than representing the sector. It’s become more like a trade association and less like an association of nonprofits.”

“I am critical of Independent Sector, although I am less critical of Sara, because the strength or weakness of an organization like this does not really come from a single individual,” said Mr. Bass.

But, he said, “the fact that she is leaving creates an opportunity for new leadership to come in and bring the energy to revitalize and strengthen Independent Sector — in a way that is not critical of the past but looks at the potential for the future.”

No Regrets

Ms. Meléndez defended her record on the issues and her performance, and said she had no regrets.

She said that she had always felt she had the full support of her board. “Never in my time at IS has anyone, to my face, made me feel anything except respect,” she said. “Have people talked behind my back? Maybe. But those they talked to were gracious enough not to tell me.”

H. Art Taylor, vice chair of the Independent Sector board, said that every nonprofit leader has critics from within and without. “But you are not going to find any serious detractors of Sara’s on the board, and there hasn’t been any pressure of any kind to see Sara leave,” said Mr. Taylor, who is chief executive officer of the charity watchdog group BBB Wise Giving Alliance.

“She could have easily finished out her career with IS and the board would have been completely happy and encouraging of her to stay,” he said.

Mr. Taylor said that Ms. Meléndez “represented bold new leadership at a time when IS needed to take a risk and make itself open to organizations that may not have seen themselves as part of it,” including groups of minorities and young people.

Ms. Meléndez said that she decided to leave Independent Sector partly because “it’s important for people to move on before they start to go stale. I don’t think I have, but I don’t know whether one ever really knows that.”

Most experienced people in the nonprofit world “would understand that eight years is really a pretty good long time, and that it might be a good time for someone else to come in and take the reins,” she said.

Ms. Meléndez added that her decision was influenced by events in her personal life. In the past few years, nearly a dozen people close to her have died of, or are suffering from, cancer or strokes. “I’ve been passionate about Independent Sector,” said Ms. Meléndez, “but none of us knows how much time we have left. I probably have just one job left in my life and I wanted to take on a challenge like that while I’m still healthy.”

Early in her thinking about pursuing a new job, Ms. Meléndez, who has a doctorate in education from Harvard University, said she spoke with the president of George Washington University, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, who encouraged her interest. (She has known Mr. Trachtenberg since he was president of the University of Hartford, in Connecticut, and she was an assistant professor and director of bilingual programs there.)

Ms. Meléndez said she also talked with officials of two nonprofit groups in New York that she wanted to assist with research.

She then told Mr. Seffrin of her intention to leave the coalition and of her interest in George Washington University, which has a nonprofit-management program.

Mr. Seffrin said he contacted several foundations that are supporters of Independent Sector. “When it was clear what she was hoping to bring about, there were multiple foundations that were willing to help that happen,” said Mr. Seffrin, and provide funds to George Washington University to make a position available for Ms. Meléndez.

Mr. Seffrin declined to identify the foundations because “they are not interested in any credit.”

Ms. Meléndez said she does not know the names of the foundations. “Sometimes foundations like to do these things anonymously,” she said. “That’s something that you respect. If people want to give anonymously, that’s their right.”

The foundations clearly want to help her and Independent Sector, she said, “because I will be taking with me, and sharing with the rest of the world, what has come out of the work that we — Independent Sector and I — did together.”

Searching for Next Leader

Independent Sector soon will start focusing on what experience and skills it wants on the résumé of its next president. Some say a high-profile nonprofit official would be ideal, while others think experience in the nation’s capital is most important.

“They would be wise to look for someone with Washington political experience, along with a feeling for the nonprofit world,” said Sheldon E. Steinbach, vice president and general counsel of the American Council on Education. “There might be some former members of Congress who would do an excellent job.”

David Bergholz, an Independent Sector board member, said that the president of the coalition must understand the needs of the complex membership of charities, foundations, and corporate grant makers.

“The trick for the leader of a membership organization with a variety of constituencies is to generate a high degree of respect for the person’s vision and mission,” said Mr. Bergholz, who is executive director of the George Gund Foundation, in Cleveland.

Mr. Seffrin said that Independent Sector will move as quickly as possible to name a new president.

“We need to find someone who is dynamic and visionary, who is both familiar with the nonprofit sector and is comfortable inside the Beltway,” said Mr. Seffrin. “It has to be someone with gravitas — someone who can help us.”