July 14, 2013 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Nonprofits aren’t family businesses, but it’s hard to tell that from the way Susan G. Komen, the breast-cancer charity, is operating.
And that isn’t going to make things easy for Judith Salerno, who was just appointed chief executive of the organization.
What we are seeing with Komen’s founder, Nancy Brinker, and the nonprofit’s board is an all-too-familiar malady: founder’s dilemma.
Though many nonprofit experts have long talked about “founder’s syndrome,” it is not a suffering founder that is the problem but rather a debilitating phenomenon for organizations driven by dilemmas a founder must resolve.
Evidence of the problems facing Komen started accumulating after Ms. Brinker was urged to step aside from her role as chief executive after many of Komen’s donors and staff members were infuriated by the organization’s effort to cut off aid to Planned Parenthood.
When Elizabeth Thompson, president of the organization, resigned in August of 2012, Ms. Brinker said she would leave the CEO post when a new senior leader was named. With the appointment of Dr. Salerno, Ms. Brinker resigned the CEO job in June and moved into her new role. [Editor’s note: The previous two paragraphs have been revised to correct an error that suggested Ms. Brinker had stepped aside earlier.]
While we don’t know whose decision this was, in the long run it doesn’t matter.
At the same time, news broke that two board members had left: Brenda Lauderback and Linda Law. Both women appear to have been the most independent members of the board (translation: not personally connected to Nancy Brinker). Its remaining board members allowed the founder to hunker down in both an executive role and as a “lifetime” board trustee.
Two months ago, a new firestorm erupted after The Dallas Morning News reported that Ms. Brinker collected a salary of $684,171 last year.
While I understand why that bothers some critics of Ms. Brinker, that’s not the real problem. Far more troubling is the fact that she is a lifetime trustee and that yet another title was bestowed last week: She is now the new chair of global strategy.
If founders do not leave when there’s every indication to suggest it is time, or they create an ambiguous path of succession and decision-making when they do, the most talented new executives are hobbled.
The founder continues to influence the vision, strategy, and even day-to-day tactical decisions. Ms. Brinker’s new strategy role confirms just how serious a case of “founder’s dilemma” Komen must work its way out of.
As head of the New School’s Tenenbaum Leadership Initiative, I’ve explored founder’s dilemma through both research and direct experiences with nonprofit founders and the CEOs who follow them. I have seen how precarious a dynamic this becomes. It invariably creates new organizational problems: internecine warfare among colleagues, conflicting decision protocols, cultural degradation, and false starts on strategic imperatives. It can harm the long-term viability of the organization.
We have identified a number of “dilemmas” relevant to all founder-led nonprofits, and it’s important that board members, executives, and donors of all nonprofit groups run by a founder understand the dimensions of the problem and seek out ways to resolve them.
First, the founder’s identity and perceptions of the organization’s identity become fused.
The dilemma emerges when the needs of the organization and the founder’s needs diverge. A profound dilemma for the founder occurs as he or she tries to create a new identity that is distinct from the organization. The founder must wrestle with how to reshape his or her identity; but the anxiety or fear that often keeps founders in place, preventing them from this identity-reshaping process, is rooted in an assumption that supporters and others will be unable able to shift their perceptions and still see the significance of the founder as an individual. Donors, volunteers, and others all need to adjust their perceptions—of both the founder and the organization.
Second, as the reality of imminent loss of power sets in, a founder can feel a drop in self-esteem. The inherent dilemma evokes difficult questions: “How do I let go? How do I manage myself as a lame-duck leader?”
Most founders are not accustomed to struggling with the challenge of how to let go of power. The anxiety surrounding power loss requires dealing with new questions that arise from within the founder or from others.
Perhaps just as vexing is the third dilemma: The need for personal change. But this is fraught with lack of clarity about what direction that must take. Founders face the big question: “What am I going to do with my life now?” In his or her mind, nothing can replace the current role.
Another internal dilemma founders often struggle with intensely and alone is based on their close psychological attachment to the organization. “Can my organization survive without me?” They question, even struggle with, issues of the organization’s existence. “Will it potentially collapse or encounter a rough patch after I leave?” Or, counterintuitively, “Will I be humiliated if the organization flourishes without me?”
Emotions related to separation are strong and may seem counterintuitive. But separation can be painful and the feelings seemingly irrational.
At its most severe, when founders cannot resolve the intrapsychic dilemma of whether the nonprofit is sustainable without them, we have seen founders find ways to sabotage the success of their replacements, even if it means putting the organization at risk.
Another dilemma, typically for heads of small nonprofits, is centered as much on personal finances as about anything else. If salaries are low and retirement programs inadequate, a founder may want to leave, yet ends up staying too long and developing a sense of entitlement that the organization “owes me.”
Boards in these cases must see that providing stronger retirement benefits would help those who really want to step down but are held back by a fear—or the reality—that they can’t afford to leave.
It’s not just the founders who face dilemmas. Boards of the organizations they govern often have theirs. They may fall into a “loyalty trap,” resisting the idea of acting independently, regardless of their fiduciary responsibilities. Legacy board members close to the founder struggle mightily with making the right judgments that effectively remove the founder from strategic and operational influence. But the dilemma becomes doing right for the organization versus “right” for their friend and colleague, the founder.
Nonprofit founders essentially “conceive” of a way to change some part of the world—in Ms. Brinker’s case, the promise to eradicate breast cancer as a result of losing her sister to the disease. They “give birth” to the organization that will bring this closer to reality, then shepherd it through “adolescent growth.” Often, however, they cannot make a clean break even as their “child” matures and truly no longer needs them. It doesn’t take a Freudian to see why so many founders struggle with attachment issues.
Nancy Brinker built Susan G. Komen into a charity that has been a formidable warrior in the battle against breast cancer. But now many of its loyal donors are angry and holding back.
While I don’t know the founder dilemmas Nancy Brinker may be facing, now is the time to ratchet up the odds for Judith Salerno’s success.
A new leader—absent the shackles of the founder looking over her shoulder in a still-prominent role—must rearticulate the vision, re-engage contributors and volunteers, and let the “child” grow up, independent of its “mother.
