March 25, 1999 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Some scholars and other charity observers believe that the rapidly growing number of academic centers that offer graduate programs in non-profit management and fund raising represent the best training ground for the men and women who will lead the non-profit world into the 21st century.
Largely in response to increased interest in the charitable world, the number of such centers has soared in recent years. More than 70 universities and colleges sponsor graduate-degree programs in non-profit management, usually as part of curricula offered in their schools of business, public administration, or social work, though some programs enjoy independent status. Fifteen years ago, there were but a few.
But what do those centers teach? To a great extent, most are designed to familiarize people with organizational structures and behavior, budgeting and accounting, strategic planning, personnel practices, and fund raising. In other words, they are trying to develop managers and technicians, not organizational leaders — that is, people with vision, a feeling for the dynamics of public policy and politics, and the capacity to inspire their colleagues.
That is not to say that top staff members at non-profit organizations aren’t in need of better management skills. They are, but their training must include courses and hands-on experiences that can insure that they become more than just efficient managers. The independent degree programs, which tend to take an interdisciplinary approach, offer a broader curriculum than do the programs within other university departments, but their instruction still is not as broad as it could be.
In a paper prepared for the 1998 annual conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Roseanne M. Mirabella and Naomi B. Wish, professors at Seton Hall University’s Center for Public Service, wrote that only a small number of the top management programs offered courses that dealt with “the non-profit manager’s ‘outside function’ as entrepreneur, fund raiser, or community leader.” What’s more, they found that few programs required courses in ethics, philanthropy, or the history of the non-profit world; that few stressed the interrelationships between business, government, and the non-profit world; and that only a small number focused on such critical non-profit activities as building coalitions, organizing, and public-policy advocacy.
The authors wrote that their data showed that “even though there is significant emphasis on advocacy and community organizing within Master of Social Work degree programs, very few of our postgraduate programs have even begun to systematically address these issues.”
They concluded: “As educators, we must ask ourselves if the centrality of values in the non-profit sector is appropriately reflected in our curriculum.”
Yet while academics may debate curricula and the location of non-profit management programs within universities, they continue to miss a key issue: who is teaching.
The absence of outstanding non-profit executives, either in residence or as adjunct faculty members, is one of the major reasons that non-profit management programs are not as productive or as rooted in reality as they should be. While it is true that a number of academics who teach in these programs have worked as executives of charities or foundations in the past, that is not the same as having had a long and recent full-time involvement at a non-profit organization. Some programs use local charity executives to teach a course or two, but many of those executives lack the very qualities that are necessary for non-profit leadership.
Recruiting top-notch non-profit officials to teach in academic centers of non-profit management should not be difficult. Many charity executives would like the opportunity to take time off to reflect, do research, and teach — and, in doing so, communicate to students what the real world of non-profit work is like. And those executives could do what most of their academic counterparts cannot do — inspire students to devote their careers to public-service and non-profit careers.
But even with more non-profit staff members as instructors, non-profit management centers will not become — nor should they become — the primary training ground for the leaders of charitable organizations.
Before the academic non-profit centers came into vogue, the non-profit world recruited its future leadership from government-financed programs like the Peace Corps and VISTA, from post-college internships, and from nonacademic leadership-development programs. Those sources were every bit as productive — and possibly superior — to those we have today. If we as a country want to invest money in leadership development, we should put it into those kinds of efforts, which have served us well in the past, are rooted in reality and practice, and produce enormous returns over time.
What, then, should be the proper role of the burgeoning number of academic centers?
Clearly the centers can play an important role in conducting research on the non-profit world and philanthropy, in improving the management skills of some charity workers, and in stimulating the interest of graduate students in non-profit careers. With the help of good teachers, the centers can broaden their curricula and vision and help teach students about the “real” non-profit world.
But the academic centers should not be expected to serve as adequate preparation for the dynamic new leadership that the non-profit world needs to meet the challenges ahead. Internships, fellowships, and subsidized entry-level jobs are wiser investments.
Nor is there any reason why the centers should continue to proliferate at the rate they are. Better to have a limited number of competent degree programs than an amplitude of mediocre ones.
Pablo Eisenberg is senior fellow at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and vice-chair of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. He is a regular contributor to these pages.
