Meeting Leadership Challenges

Charity leaders often find themselves walking a tightrope, struggling to carry out their social missions while grappling with the growing competition for contributions, high turnover among top staff members, and a dearth of the detailed performance data they need to make timely management decisions about their operations.

But a growing number of nonprofit executives are finding ways to overcome those challenges, often with the help of organizations that seek to strengthen the management of charities around the country. Among the approaches:

• Top executives of charities are increasingly forming support groups that meet regularly to help nonprofit leaders learn new management techniques, discuss common problems, share ideas that work — and battle the isolation that so often comes with the job.

• As the demand for nonprofit workers outstrips the supply, many charities are honing their recruitment strategies. In Indiana, a local children’s museum attracted no qualified applicants for four months, so it overhauled its approach and its new chief fund raiser starts work this month.

• Charities are increasingly borrowing a tool used in the corporate world: They are designing “dashboards” that show at a glance key information about how efficiently and effectively an organization is managing its programs and performance. In Washington, a fast-growing charity that builds play spaces for children has designed a dashboard that helps it move more nimbly to make decisions.