Columnist Didn’t Do His Homework on Academic Centers

To the Editor:

In his March 25 column (“Academic Centers Don’t Develop Charity Leaders,” Opinion), Pablo Eisenberg is correct to point out the increasing role of non-profit academic centers in preparing managers for non-profit organizations, but he seriously mischaracterizes the programs those centers offer.

He writes that the centers “are trying to develop managers and technicians, not organizational leaders” because they focus on classic managerial functions such as strategic planning, organizational behavior, and personnel rather than developing “vision, a feeling for the dynamics of public policy and politics, and the capacity to inspire their colleagues.”

In fact, any good management-education program tries to do both. The vast literature on management and leadership makes it quite clear that a good manager/leader must, like Plato’s ideal philosopher king, articulate the vision of the organization internally and externally, and relate the organization effectively to its larger environment, but also meet the payroll.

Mr. Eisenberg quotes a recent paper by Seton Hall University’s Roseanne Mirabella and Naomi Wish concluding that non-profit management-education courses are too inward-looking, insufficiently related to the organization’s outside world. As I suggested to those two colleagues when they first presented their paper last fall, they need to look beyond course titles to actual course content.

Courses like marketing, fund raising, and strategic planning are all about relating the organization to its external environment, and some of this happens in courses on financial management, human-resource management, and law. Courses in management and organization theory are very much concerned with the organization-environment relationship, as any text or syllabus of such a course would make clear. Foundation courses like “Introduction to the Non-Profit Sector” deal extensively with the interaction of non-profit groups with government and business.

Mr. Eisenberg also suggests that “outstanding non-profit executives” are absent from the faculty of such programs. This also is simply inaccurate. As I reported in a recent book on non-profit-management education, virtually all such programs use some adjunct faculty members, typically non-profit executives or consultants; the percentage of courses taught by adjuncts ranges from 10 per cent to 75 per cent at various institutions. On the whole, non- profit-management programs use adjunct faculty members significantly more than do, e.g., M.B.A. programs. And I cannot imagine where Mr. Eisenberg gets his evidence for such statements as, “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.”

As alternatives, Mr. Eisenberg recommends experiences like the Peace Corps and VISTA, internships, and non-academic leadership-development programs. But this mixes apples and oranges. I personally think the Peace Corps would be an outstanding preparation for work in the business, government, or non-profit worlds, but the Peace Corps will not replace Master’s of Business Administration, Master’s of Public Administration, or Master’s of Non-Profit Administration programs, which give a far more extensive and intensive introduction to management and leadership knowledge and skills to people seriously interested in those roles.

No one I know thinks that all future non-profit managers should be trained in specific education programs in non-profit management. After all, even after a century of business schools, there are countless business leaders, like Bill Gates, who don’t have an M.B.A. But programs in non-profit-management education, like business and public-administration programs, have an important role in preparing managers — and leaders.

Michael O’Neill
Director Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management
University of San Francisco
San Francisco

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To the Editor:

I am trying to decide which one of Pablo Eisenberg’s assertions is most troubling:

Is it that he is so dismissive of a curriculum that a growing number of students and schools find valuable? The increasing enrollment in, and demand for, instruction in the management of non-profit organizations should be evidence enough of its value.

Or is it that I find the application of his argument a bit illogical? Would Mr. Eisenberg eliminate all M.B.A. programs simply because they do not all produce senior-level executives of Fortune 500 companies?

Or is it his apparent attitude toward the teaching profession — that “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach”? As one who has turned down more-lucrative managerial and consulting opportunities in order to teach the next generation of non-profit-sector leaders, I am saddened by his comments. I thought we had moved beyond such outdated attitudes.

Pamela Leland
Assistant Professor
Center for Public Service
Seton Hall University
South Orange, N.J.

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To the Editor:

I didn’t read the research by Professors Roseanne Mirabella and Naomi Wish that Pablo Eisenberg referenced in his March 25 column, but I can promise that his concluding recommendation — that, somehow, we should reduce the proliferation of academic programs in non-profit administration — is way off the logical mark. Degree-granting and certificate programs in non-profit administration are essential to the professional development of the third sector, just as M.B.A. and M.P.A. programs are essential to the professional development of their sectors.

Here’s where we all agree: first, that academic non-profit centers need to routinely assess and strengthen the connections between what and how they teach and the central values and principles that characterize our sector; and second, that we can ill afford to have these programs treat their subject matter as either a series of theoretical exercises or a collection of compartmentalized management skills. The significance of these programs is their contribution to the practical development of competent non-profit leaders with emphasis on mission-driven leadership, entrepreneurism, and collaboration. Certainly, none of these programs is perfect, but neither is any one of the hundreds of M.B.A. or M.P.A. programs scattered across the nation.

Several years ago I played a small role in the Clarion Initiative — which convened scholars and practitioners at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to develop target competencies and lay the groundwork for curricular models in non-profit administration — and in the decision of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration to incorporate the non-profit sector (along with government) in its accreditation standards. The Clarion Initiative outlined core values and principles of non-profit leadership that practitioners and academicians alike would do well to review periodically. The N.A.S.P.A.A. decision established an academic home and accountability mechanism for the teaching of non-profit administration. Nearly all of us involved in these and other efforts during the 1980s saw ourselves as pioneers in the professionalization of our sector.

Enough time has passed so that Mr. Eisenberg is right to encourage us to evaluate the utility of the growing number of non-profit degree programs out there. But he is wrong to suggest that our money might be better spent by investing in government-financed programs like the Peace Corps, VISTA, and other non-academic leadership-development programs.

Non-profit leadership is not an art that some people have and others will never comprehend that can only (or even best) be learned via some extended internship. It is a teachable and learnable body of principles, skills, world views, and commitments. Programs like the Peace Corps and VISTA stoke the passionate fires of practitioners who commit large portions of their lives to making a significant public difference. But the development of leaders is a systematic and comprehensive enterprise. Toward this end, the best investment of our time, money, and energy is to develop and upgrade the capacity of academic centers (in graduate schools, undergraduate schools, and community colleges) to offer cutting-edge programs that develop sector leaders.

It certainly is time to evaluate what we have wrought in these academic programs. The values and principles we outlined in the ‘80s may have been broadly misconstrued. If practitioners are not in the classrooms, if the classrooms are not inspired by practice, if the energy of creative entrepreneurism, the values of mission-driven leadership, and the skills of collaboration are not at the center of our academic programs, then we warrant more attacks like Mr. Eisenberg’s.

Hank Rubin
President
Institute for Collaborative Leadership
Chicago

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To the Editor:

Mr. Eisenberg’s recent opine on academic centers that offer programs in non-profit management made sweeping statements about the supposed lack of leadership courses in such curricula. Mr. Eisenberg would have better served these growing centers of non-profit influence had he made a thorough check of those programs prior to writing his article.

The most intensive non-credit certificate program in non-profit management in the country, when based on the number of course hours required, is Arizona State University’s Nonprofit Management Institute, founded in 1993. One of the six required core courses is “Leadership and Ethics in the Non-Profit Sector,” taught by Jack Pfister, a former chief executive officer of the Salt River Project, one of Arizona’s largest utility companies. Professor Pfister brings to his class a wonderful blend of the interrelationships between business, government, and the non-profit sector.

Second, A.S.U. was recently awarded a $1-million grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to help launch the Center for Nonprofit Leadership. This new center is an outgrowth of A.S.U.’s long-time commitment to the American Humanics Program, which helps place students as interns in the non-profit sector.

Third, the Nonprofit Management Institute is at the cutting edge of research, having just completed the first known nationwide on-line salary and issues survey of today’s non-profit executive directors. This is the first of a planned array of surveys of non-profit-management issues based exclusively on “answers on demand” Web technology.

Mr. Eisenberg says that he wishes today’s academic centers of non-profit management would focus on leadership, hire the appropriate instructors, focus on internships and fellowships, and conduct appropriate research. However, he is at a loss to name one. Clearly, Arizona State University’s two non-profit-management programs meet and exceed the criteria Mr. Eisenberg believes are lacking in such centers.

K. Scott Sheldon
Director of Development
College of Extended Education
The Nonprofit Management Institute
Arizona State University
Phoenix