April 24, 2010 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Denver
At least since 2006, when the Bridgespan Group predicted that the nonprofit field would need to hire 640,000 senior managers in the next decade to fill the jobs of retiring baby boomers, an impending leadership void has been the talk of the nonprofit world.
Other studies by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, CompassPoint, and others, have examined reasons why younger people say they don’t want top jobs at charities—namely, long hours and low pay.
But do young charity workers perceive a leadership void at their organizations? Not really, according to participants in a session at the annual meeting of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network here.
“I don’t see a leadership gap,” said Aaron Stiner, vice president of the Phoenix chapter of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. “A lot of people feel like they are getting stuck right now. They don’t see room for growth.”
In an informal discussion, young charity workers talked about some of the factors that affect their desire to stay in the nonprofit world and how they felt charities could do more to encourage a new generation of leaders to accept top roles. Among the topics:
Succession planning. Likening it to “forgetting to pray until it’s close to the end,” one woman in the audience said she felt too many charities were waiting to contemplate a leadership transition until their executive director was headed out the door. The young professionals said that their organizations needed to have conversations about future leadership and how to groom new leaders—but those can sometimes be uncomfortable conversations to have. “I think I got canned because I had that conversation,” said one person in the audience.
Shared leadership. Participants talked about the need for models of shared leadership that allow executive directors to step away from some of the day-to-day management roles and give other people a chance to learn and lead.
Sometimes charities’ policies or structures are getting in the way of bringing in new blood, participants said. Kelsey Horine, a graduate student in marketing at Northwestern University, said she was consulting with one charity that wanted to attract younger board members. But the organization had so many requirements for board membership that it was almost impossible for a young person to advance to the national board, she said.
Josh Solomon, associate director of technical assistance at YouthBuild USA, advised organizations to distribute leadership among staff members and involve more people in management. “It’s really dangerous when you silo succession planning over here and the day-to-day running of the organization over there,” he said.
Performance evaluations. Participants said they wanted more feedback on their work and more support in order to gain skills that would make them effective leaders. But they emphasized that you have to go out and seek such opportunities.
“In corporate America, you have performance appraisals,” said Randi C. Ervin, office and project manager at the Children’s Hospital and Research Center Foundation, in Oakland. “You have professional development built into your performance appraisals.” One woman in the audience said she had asked her boss to set up quarterly reviews of her work and have weekly check-ins. “You have to be the one to set it up,” she said.
Professional development. Young workers said they not only wanted opportunities to learn new skills—but also the chance to apply what they’d learned at their organizations.
“I’ve heard a lot of frustration from people who went to trainings and wanted to do something differently and the organization wasn’t comfortable with it,” said Kimberly Caldwell, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. Participants also complained that many charities won’t invest in their young workers because they’re worried they will leave. They urged charities to think about investments in young leaders as investments in the field.
Other models for doing good. Working at a charity is no longer the only way to have a positive impact on society, participants said. They speculated on whether the rise of L3Cs, corporate-sustainability programs, and other for-profit models might prompt more people to leave traditional charities.
“I was in the corporate sector eight years ago, and it certainly didn’t have the values that made me want to stay,” said Mr. Stiner. “It would be interesting to see it now. Maybe in the eight years since I’ve been in the nonprofit sector, it has transformed.” Added Ms. Horine: “There are different opportunities to have a meaningful role that isn’t within nonprofits so you don’t have the burden of not getting paid well.”
