February 11, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
What type of nonprofit leadership do you prefer?, asks Phil Cubeta on Gift Hub.
Do you prefer nonprofit organizations run by people educated in the liberal arts, whose focus is “on a vision of human flourishing.” Those leaders then hire people with master’s degrees in business and other experts to carry out that vision.
Or do you like to see MBAs and other technical experts at the helm? “Their vision is one of effective and efficient optimization of numbers on a spreadsheet. They hire liberal-arts graduates to staff public relations, advertising, and to serve as their speech writers,” says Mr. Cubeta.
Mr. Cubeta, an adviser to wealthy donors, is worried that the nonprofit world is drifting toward the second approach.
“We have people of ends reporting to people of means; people of vision reporting to spreadsheet or managerial people. I do not think this is a good way to run our society, but it is the increasingly well-accepted norm,” he says.
What do you think? Is the nonprofit world placing too much value on the MBA? Is there a downside to technical experts running charities? Should nonprofit groups be more open to “visionary” leaders who may lack quantitative skills?
