Nonprofit CEOs Can’t Afford to Stay Invisible
When leaders don’t show up online, nonprofits miss opportunities to build trust and attract support. That's why every CEO should take these simple steps to start creating a personal brand.
By Michelle Flores Vryn
Contributor
February 10, 2026 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Given all the demands on nonprofit CEOs, it’s hardly surprising that a few responsibilities get less attention than others. Unfortunately, one of the most important — attention itself — is often the most overlooked. Nonprofit leaders who have mastered the art of getting noticed stand out precisely because they’re so rare.
Consider Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits. Shortly after she assumed the role in January 2025, the Trump administration announced a federal funding freeze. Yentel didn’t wait for a news release to get approved before speaking out. Late on a Monday evening she opened LinkedIn, and within hours, her tens of thousands of followers were watching her serve as the sector’s de facto ambassador — interpreting the chaos and rallying a counter response. Within months, she was named “Influencer of the Year” by The Nonprofit Times.
The very fact that Yentel’s actions felt exceptional reveals an uncomfortable truth: The sector hasn’t figured out how to make CEO visibility normal, sustainable, or strategic. While there are a handful of unicorns like Yentel, most leaders are quietly overwhelmed, wondering if they’re supposed to be doing this, too.
Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something and author of When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership, puts it bluntly: “This is a new challenge for leaders that people even five or 10 years ago didn’t have to think about. Your personal brand a decade ago could have meant being highlighted in news articles. But you didn’t have to run your own social media accounts. You didn’t have to make videos. You didn’t have to be constantly yapping on the internet.”
What’s the result of this lack of digital presence? As a fundraiser, I can quickly name one: little if any brand visibility. Nonprofits continually ask why philanthropic donations have dropped but barely touch the question of how people decide to care about their missions in the first place.
When Rockefeller Calls a YouTuber
If there was any doubt that the sector has an attention problem, the Rockefeller Foundation recently offered a confession disguised as a partnership announcement.
In November 2025, the 112-year-old foundation, one of the most storied names in American philanthropy with billions in assets, announced a strategic partnership with MrBeast, the 27-year-old YouTube creator with 900 million followers.
The pairing sounds absurd until you understand the logic. Rajiv Shah, Rockefeller’s president, explained that the philanthropic sector has “failed to capture the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of young people.” A 2024 Morning Consult report found that creators now function as “legitimate thought leaders” for young people on topics ranging from news to health to finance.
What MrBeast has that Rockefeller doesn’t, despite its century of expertise, is a trusted voice and a way of communicating that cuts through because it doesn’t sound like everything else.
This is a damning admission. If the Rockefeller Foundation couldn’t build this capability internally, with all its resources and prestige, what does that tell us? The sector has systematically underinvested in the functions that determine whether anyone cares about the work.
The Trust Paradox
“People don’t trust institutions,” Litman told me. “They trust people. That requires the leader to be present and to have a personality on the internet.”
The research confirms the stakes. According to FTI Consulting, 92 percent of professionals are more likely to trust a company whose senior executives are active on social media. Seventy-four percent of Fortune 500 CEOs now maintain at least one social account.
But here’s the complication. It’s easier for founder-CEOs to show up this way. When you founded the organization, your personal brand and the organization’s brand are naturally symbiotic. You are the origin story. For the majority of nonprofit CEOs — those leading legacy organizations they didn’t create — the calculus is different.
And then there’s the cruelest paradox. According to the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s 2025 report, nearly 90 percent of nonprofit leaders express concern about their own burnout. Fully 76 percent say staff burnout is affecting their ability to achieve their mission.
These leaders are already juggling strategy, fundraising, board management, and the actual work of serving their communities. Now add “thought leadership presence” to the list?
The Cost of Silence
I asked Litman what gets lost when nonprofit leaders stay invisible. She didn’t hesitate: “You’re just missing an opportunity to make your case” and to “generate huge revenue for your mission.”
She described how one of her posts caught the eye of a New York Times columnist, who then wrote a column describing Run for Something as one of the best organizations to support. Donors saw it, were intrigued, and reached out. “To post is to raise money, to build relationships, to build the brand.”
Then she added a final thought that really stuck with me: “Rich people aren’t reading some secret newspaper. They’re reading the same stuff everyone else is reading. They’re looking at the same social media feeds. If you want to be present in their ecosystem, you’ve got to post.”
But posting effectively takes a lot of time, right? Not necessarily.
First, think small — at least to get started. CEOs don’t need to show up on every platform or jump into every news cycle. They should start where it feels natural to the organization’s mission. Post one video every two weeks about an unknown aspect of the nonprofit’s program. Tell a story and invite people to ask questions in the comments. Small experiments compound.
Second, take a hard look at your organizational chart. The for-profit world responded to the attention economy by creating new roles and elevating communications from a support function to a strategic priority. Nonprofits, by and large, handed social media to the intern. Nothing is more honest about your values than where you put your money.
Third, build institutional voice alongside executive presence. CEOs can be powerful messengers, but they shouldn’t be the only ones. The CEO’s visibility should lift the organization’s voice, not replace it.
Fourth, be honest about capacity. If the CEO’s job is already impossible, adding visibility requirements without adding support isn’t a strategy — it’s a setup for failure. Commit to a few weeks of experimentation. See what resonates. Then decide what’s sustainable.
Setting priorities is key. Every hour CEOs spend managing IT infrastructure or chasing grant reports is an hour they’re not spending as the public face of their mission. These roles have been designed around administrative burdens that could be delegated or eliminated.
The CEO is the person the board looks to for vision, donors look to for conviction, and the community looks to for hope. The job, at its core, is carrying the story of why this organization exists. In 2026, where do people find stories? Where do they encounter voices they trust? Online, mostly. Attention leads to trust. Trust leads to support. CEOs who aren’t present in that space haven’t simply opted out of social media. They’ve opted out of being heard.
Look for an expanded version of this piece in the author’s Substack, Nonprofit Futures.
