Nonprofit University Blog

Trust.  It is such a huge word for the nonprofit sector yet one we spend little time talking about.  Our whole currency, if you will, is based on trust:  our clients, donors, collaborators, and others trust that we will do a good job, deliver a valuable product, protect and steward our dollars, fulfill our mission promises, etc.  If these stakeholders stop trusting us, we are doomed.

Yet, when was the last time the staff and board of your organization talked about trust? What does it means to be a trustworthy organization? How do we execute and demonstrate that trust to all of our various stakeholders, from ourselves to donors to clients to competitors?

The issue of trust is one that I think about a lot, but particularly this time of year when every nonprofit is asking for those end of year gifts and so many individuals are thinking about where to give their precious dollars.  But two events coincided with the time of year to raise this question even higher on my list of “internal dialogues.”  First, I recently had to visit the nuclear medicine department at my local hospital for a test.  I trusted that this injection of nuclear compound into my system was safe; I trusted the nurse’s response to my question of how long the compound would remain in my system.  Why?  Not simply because the hospital is ranked as one of the top 100 in the country (and has been there for a good number of years), but because I can look up the research that demonstrates the overall risk and addresses the ratio of risk of the injection to benefit of medical diagnoses and any consequent needed corrective action.  In other words, I can read for myself—the basis for the ranking, the research—and determine if the trust is warranted.  I am not taking anyone’s word, no slick advertisements, no leaps of faith.

Second, I receive daily Google alerts for nonprofits, which can include links to anywhere between five  and 25 headlines.  On an alert last week, 1/3 of the headlines had to do with an employee—executive director or chief financial officer—or board member “misappropriating” funds.  Not a behavior that instills trust in people, but a behavior that is, unfortunately, increasingly all too common in the sector.   Hope those organizations are talking about trust now!

But the time to talk about being a trustworthy organization, like so many other things, is not when the negative spotlight is focused on you.  The time to talk and, more importantly, the reason to talk about being a trustworthy organization is so that the negative light never shines on you.’

The new year is right around the corner.  People will make personal new year resolutions, most of which, statistics show, are short-lived.   You would serve your nonprofit well, however, if you make a new year resolution to make being a trustworthy organization front and center—and stick to it.  Have those discussions at the board and staff level of what it looks like for your organization to be trustworthy. Where is our evidence of that trustworthiness, from our own impact evaluation data to our testimonials to our board-developed policies that protect our money to our Form 990 that paints a truthful and positive picture?  What do we do to ensure that all individuals associated with us understand and value integrity? How do we demonstrate our commitment to honesty?

Trust is not something to which any nonprofit can afford to give lip service.  We must embrace it and demonstrate our constant commitment to it.

Last month, Newsweek printed excerpts of an interview with William Powers, current President of the University of Texas.

And while not belittling either the title or responsibilities of a president of a large university (as both are huge), what is important about Mr. Powers in the context of this blog is that prior to becoming university president, he was asked by the Board of Enron to head a special investigation into the company’s collapse in order to uncover what went wrong—and why.

The focus of Newsweek’s excerpted conversation is those “lasting lessons” that Powers believes we should take from the Enron collapse.  Enron was—or at least it should have been—a learning opportunity for every nonprofit, as well as every for-profit.

Nonprofits had the opportunity, especially with the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley that, with the exception of two provisions applied only to for-profits, to affirm what it was already doing very well and to take note of areas where they, too, needed to ensure independent oversight.  (And, as an aside, and kudos for the nonprofit sector, a good number of for-profits looked to the nonprofit sector to learn its best practices of board governance.)  And reading Powers’ conclusions, Enron’s collapse should continue to teach the nonprofit sector.  His identified lessons, eight years later, are equally applicable to nonprofits as they are for for-profits.

Here are some of his lessons that are equally applicable to nonprofits.

1. “The good times do end.”  Thus, nonprofits, instead of relaxing in those good times, we need to enjoy the good while simultaneously preparing for the bad times that are coming.
2. “You need to surround yourself with good people who are competent, honest—and are not going to take shortcuts.”  Which means that we must hire good, qualified, honest people and not hesitate to release those who are not.  And this applies equally to board members as it does to staff and other volunteers.  Powers adds that we must evaluate “…the people, not just their talent, but their culture—including how they conduct the rest of their lives.  Are they honest?  Are they trustworthy?”
3. He has several pertinent observations for boards.  In responding to the question of how he would be a different board member today than pre-Enron, he says that he would not succumb to the fear of making “…a fool of myself by asking a stupid question.”  He would ask that question and push to understand.  He observes that at Enron many of the board members has been there “for a long time.  They had grown up with the company; they had come to trust the company and had disengaged a bit.”
4. “…it is likely that each generation is going to forget its values.”
5. We must instill “in young people the idea that they should do honest, hard work for a fair return, whether that’s a financial return or the other kinds of returns we get.  ….  We can teach students that earning rewards fairly is the way to live your life, rather than a get-rich-quick mentality.”

The sad part about these lessons to which Mr. Powers rightfully points is that none is earth shattering; all seem to be basic common sense.  But apparently these days, we need to remind people just what common sense entails.

News Alert:  An estimated 111 million people plan to use the web to donate to nonprofits this holiday season (Nonprofit Times).

A Minnesota nonprofit fundraising campaign, GiveMN, raised a remarkable $14 million via the Internet with its 24-hour “Give to the Max Day” event on November 17. The money, donated by 39,000 people, will support 3,400 Minnesota nonprofits, reports the Foundation Center.

Between now and the end of the year, we will be asked by every charity we know—and many we don’t—for our gifts—or investments, as I prefer to think of them.  (After all, there is no quid pro quo with gifts; we send a thank you and nothing more is expected to the giver.  But with an investment, the giver expects to see a return and the charities should be expected to demonstrate that return.)

According to Convio, preliminary results from their research on people’s plans for holiday giving show that “61% of online consumers plan to give online this year, up from 51% last year—that’s more than 106 million Americans giving online in the last 4 weeks of the year.”  (Connection Café, Posted by Tad Druart)  To many nonprofits, this will sound like good news.  So, to put some parameters on that potential good news, Convio’s 2008 eNonprofits Benchmarks Study found that the average online donation in 2007 was $57.

I know this all sounds wonderful—and it is.  But I wonder and I worry about the influence of technology on what has always been a high-touch task for nonprofits.  Will technology advance philanthropy the way it has politics (think of the role texting, tweeting and photo sharing played in the days after the most recent Iranian election;  the Dean and Obama presidential campaigns;  and the most recent Afghan election where a candidate had James Carville as his political consultant and created an “Obama-like” website)?  And despite the proliferation of sites like boardnet.org and volunteermatch.org, being successful at finding and keeping good board members and other volunteers remains, in the end, a high-touch, face-to-face activity.  Technology can definitely make the introductions, but it cannot make the assessment of the match and it should not make the ask.

At this juncture, the same must be said of technology’s role in philanthropy:  it can make the introductions—as Give to the Max Day surely did for many—but it cannot do the cultivation, the relationship building or the big ask.  Nor should it.

So, let’s get excited about what the end-of-the year flurry of giving—on-line and off—might bring for many nonprofits.  But when the new year starts, let’s return to the basics and build those relationships that will perpetuate and sustain continued—and we would hope growing—investments in the important work of our nonprofits.

We’ll be back on 12/4/09.  (Guess we could have tweeted that. )

My intent was to write about L3Cs—low-profit limited liability companies.    Five states already allow them, several more have legislation pending, and many are encouraging the congress to create such legislation.  Ever heard of them?

So I went looking for a simple, yet clear, definition of just what an L3C is.  In the process, I got sidetracked by a table comparing an LLC, an L3C and a nonprofit.

According to the design and intent of an L3C, it is a cross between a for-profit and nonprofit organization:  it is supposed to work for social good, but it can make a small profit, provide a return to investors AND apply for philanthropic dollars.  Funny, it sounds like a nonprofit!  You’ll get my drift in a minute, if you don’t already.

Take a look at this chart, provided by the Americans for Community Development, an L3C created to work “working with legislators across the country to enact the legal framework necessary to permit the formation of the L³C.”

If you are smart  (a given with my blog readers), then you see the slight of hand these self-promoters have used to create this new organization that will compete with nonprofits.  Too bad they, as so many others do, like to spin things on an ignorant public, preferring slight of hand to truth and honestly. Too bad that these self-promoters didn’t understand, as so many people don’t, what a nonprofit is and how it operates.  If they had, they would have understood that there is no need for L3Cs, as nonprofits already are a better model for achieving the same ends.

Let’s begin with the second column of the chart:  organizational purpose.  I’m going to ignore the row for LLCs, because we get them:  they are all about making money, the more the merrier, for most.  But looking at the stated difference in that box for an L3C and a nonprofit, there really is no difference.  Every executive director, other staff member and board member of a nonprofit that wishes to survive knows that if the nonprofit is going to be able to deliver its mission purpose, it has to have a financial purpose.  Thus, nonprofits are financial and mission driven.  We know that we have to pay attention to our bottom line, run like that LLC, while always making sure that that bottom line allows us to fulfill our mission promises.  If not, how and why should we exist?  So, you tell me:  how do an L3C and a nonprofit differ?

Column three:  potential rate of financial return.  This is what really caused my ire.  For the L3C, it has 0%-5% ROI; for the nonprofit, it has “0% to negative 100%.”  Excuse me?  Those who believe enough in a social mission to invest in it—not make a gift, not a donation, but invest in an organization’s ability to deliver on its mission—understand that returns on investment are not always monetary, and that intrinsic rewards are just as valuable, if not more so, than financial returns.  And where does this minus 100% come from.  Do these managers of an L3C not understand the basics of operating a business?  If a company cannot provide a good enough product—be it a pair of sneakers, a washing machine, moving the homeless to homeownership, improving literacy in children, etc.—then that business will fail?  Because then, truly, the investor will see no return and will not continue to invest.

The return nonprofits offer is enormous.  Ask anyone why they volunteer with a nonprofit in helping to deliver the service or on the board, and the first thing out of their mouths will be something to the equivalent of “to give back” or “to help others.”  The return on this investment means more to them than a %5 financial return.  As anyone why they make a financial investment in a nonprofit, and one of the last things out of their mouth will be “to make money.”  They aren’t doing it for a financial return; most aren’t even looking for the tax deduction, though for some that doesn’t hurt, and may effect how much they invest.  Nonprofits are about helping—others, ourselves, our communities.  Not about making money for ourselves.

Why must this society sully things by seeing good only happening if it comes with a financial reward?  Nonprofits do a more than admirable jobs at serving the social good.  Why dilute that work by feeding America’s greed and creating an entity where mission takes a back seat to financial reward?  Haven’t we had enough lessons already what greed does to America’s economic system?

There is so much chatter these days about what needs to be done for nonprofits do to get the resources to survive these tough economic times, from what organizations should organizations do; to what should funders do; to what individuals should do.  But from what I’ve seen, with the only exception possibly being social networking, nothing is new.  But that’s not necessarily bad.

Pablo Eisenberg, who I have always deeply respected, but do so even more when he plays the role of “irascible critic,” had an article in the November 9 Wall Street Journal in which he identifies nine ways to “fix” charitable giving.  His suggestions range from increasing the mandatory foundation minimum distribution percentage to increasing general operating support and funding the government watchdog agencies to simplifying the application and reporting processes.  You won’t get any argument from me on any of these.  And yet, with the possible exception of funding the watchdog agencies, none of his nine points is new.

One of the old mantras of tough economic is “the board needs to step up and fulfill its fundraising responsibilities.”  And yet, apparently many are not.  Our economic impact survey done in May, 2009, found only 25% of responding organizations had individual board members stepping up the fundraising plate, making larger gifts, bringing in more donors, selling more tickets.  Six months later, and lots of layoffs and cutbacks later, our follow-up survey, still in the collection stage, shows that has only inched up to 28%.

So, I tell you a tale of one, albeit very cautiously.  As a lapsed statistician, I know how skewed one can be and the dangers of generalizing from one.  So, do not take this story and generalize, but take it as a demonstration of how old advice still works today.

We just held the third annual meeting of the organization on whose board I sit.    This is NOT and never was intended to be a fundraising event; it is, totally and completely, a friend-raiser.  This year, I, stupidly, agreed to chair this event.  Last year, we had 350 people register for the event.  That means they bought or were given a ticket to attend.  That was before everyone realized just how much the economy had really tanked.  Notwithstanding the economy, our goal this year was to match that goal, despite having raised ticket prices by $10.  Well, we saw it and raised it by more than 25 additional attendees.

Why? How? Bulldogs!  The board president, vice president/board of advisors chair and I constantly hounded our fellow board members to send out invitations, buy tickets to give to the right people (nonprofit leaders and people with money), follow-up with individuals, etc.  All members of the board and board of advisors had to buy and give away 10 tickets; many bought twice that many, gave them away, and continued to send invitations.  Two members of the board of advisors approached every chapter in our geographic region of a particular service organization, even making visits to meetings, encouraging members to attend.

As for my own tickets, I did what fundraising experts always tell us to do.  I began cultivating relationships—though perhaps with a little twist.  I can claim all of the same things that board members trying to duck out of their fundraising responsibilities always throw at me:

• I don’t know people with money
• don’t know people in high places
• don’t belong to the posh country clubs, etc.

But I do know how to read.  I’d been collecting names of people I’d read about that I thought should know about this organization.  I wrote each a personal note (not in my usual illegible scribble either), and invited these eight people I’ve never met to attend this event as my guest.  Six responded positively!  I can’t wait to meet them, put a face to a name, a description to the causes that matter to them.

What this board did truly should not be considered exceptional, but the mandatory minimum of what boards of directors and the other supporting boards of a nonprofit should do.  Forgot the cutesy slogans that people like to throw at you:  board members should bring time, treasure and talent; no, they should bring work, wealth, wallop (as in clout), and wisdom.

Regardless of the economic times, board members need to bring to their board service expertise of use to the organization, a willingness to do the work and go the extra mile and an evangelical fervor for the mission.  That’s how you get to push 400 guests, even in tough economic times.

I understand that sometimes people just aren’t ready to hear things.  A couple of years ago, received a card from a student that I’d had in class a good 15 plus years before.  She was writing to thank me for something that I had, apparently, repeated multiple times throughout the courses she took with me.  She finally understood why I had stressed it as I had.   Why I then repeated—and continue to do so today—the important messages in hopes that someday, they will stick.

But sometimes, even with colleagues and others repeating the same messages, it just doesn’t seem to get heard.

To wit:  I receive Google alerts for “nonprofits.”  A recent alert contained what is becoming all too common:  two articles about questionable finances of nonprofits.  (For the record, the bulk of the items on these alerts are generally positive.)  And to make it to a Google alert means the scandal has hit the media and Google has picked it up.

The first one I came across grabbed my attention with the headline “Nonprofit Company Makes its Owners Wealthy.”  “No,” I scream, “this can’t be; no one owns a nonprofit!”  But despite this message being sent repeatedly, by lawyers, consultants, the IRS, etc., this message hasn’t taken.  And in particular, it seems never to have even made it to the ears of boards with founders as executive directors.   The “company” to which Los Angeles Times’ article refers is Social Vocational Services, a $63 million, state-wide organization that provides vocational and life skills assistance, as well as housing, to the disabled.

Over the course of the last five years, the CEO and his wife, who is the CFO, have made over $7 million, along with millions of dollars in real estate holdings.  And the dealings—renting property they own back to the nonprofit, starting a for-profit company that just leases vans to the nonprofit, etc.—are your standard conflict-of-interest practices that allow senior managers of the nonprofit to gain financially through dealings with the nonprofit.

Come on.  That lesson should have been learned by now by every board member and every executive director, her sister, his mother, etc.  What is the problem?

The other headline that caught my eye was from The Washington Post and read “FBI examines spending by Md. nonprofit.”  Here the deal was that the organization apparently couldn’t account for approximately $900,000 over two years.  It gets worse:  the organization’s annual budget is $700,000.  The organization claims that the disputed amount is a mere $61,000.

What don’t people get?

I read these newspaper articles today after earlier starting to read the main articles from the November 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review:  “The Drucker Centennial:  What Would Peter Do?  How his wisdom can help you navigate turbulent times.”  I’ve read Drucker, attended lectures and read books by his disciples (unfortunately, though, I was never able to hear him), use some of his ideas, but I am not a flag waving Druckerite.  Nevertheless, as I was reading these two articles, and another about ACORN, revealing horrendous mismanagement and mis-governance of nonprofits, two things that I had read earlier in the Drucker articles sprang to mind.

First, in talking about Drucker’s early warnings about excessive executive compensation, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in the article of “What Would Peter Say?” says, “More than 20 years ago, Drucker pointed to a top-to-bottom ratio that was then rushing past 40 to 1.  Just before his death [November 2005], the ratio was greater than 400 to 1.”  Is a nonprofit CEO salary of $872,311 excessive?

Second, there was a Drucker quote from an article he wrote for the July-August 1989 issue of the Harvard Business Review:  “Nonprofits need management even more than business does, precisely because they lack the discipline of the bottom line.”

Perhaps it is time to become that flag-waving Druckerite.

Editor’s Note:  And if two examples were not enough, Laura was interviewed for an article about a nonprofit in Arizona with some interesting practices.  Read the article in the Arizona Star.

So how’s that recovery treating you?     I am NOT a crepe hanger, trust me.  But I am concerned that nonprofits aren’t being so smart smart about this “Great Recession.”  While economics experts  tell us that the recession has begun to recede, they are also telling us something even more important for nonprofits.    Economists are now calling this a “double-dip recession”—meaning that the recession “technically ends” but then, before we get into true and real sustained recovery, there is another economic downturn.

According to CNNMoney.com, the 1980 “minor” recession was followed by “a more pronounced downturn that lasted from the middle of 1981 throughout the end of 1982.”    This phenomenon of a double-dip recession only magnifies the recovery difficulties facing the nonprofit sector.  I and others have been saying since the beginning, that nonprofit recovery will lag behind recovery of the rest of the economic engine of the country.  Thus, if recovery starts in 2010 for the rest of the country, it will take until 2012 or even 2013 for the nonprofit sector to really begin recovery.  Now with these pronouncements of being in a double-dip recession, recovery could be even further out than 2013.

In the 9/14/09 issue of Newsweek, Robert Samuelson called the recently past Labor Day “the bleakest since at least the 1980s”—and unemployment hadn’t yet topped 10%.  He shares other little tidbits that don’t bode well for the nonprofit sector.  For instance:  in 2014, unemployment will average 7.6%; over borrowed households will first look to repay debt, making any other spending “sluggish”; and, the one I find the most scary for already tapped social service and education nonprofits—“the child poverty rate could jump from 18 percent in 2007 to 27 percent.”

Switching to an equally potent set of data points, “The Chronicle of Philanthropy” (6/18/09) had the following sub-header to an article titled “When Will It End?”:  “If this recession turns out to be like the one in the mid-1970s, donations won’t rebound until at least (emphasis added) 2012.”  The article points out two other key points of information which nonprofits must heed.  First, it took three full years for giving to nonprofits to bounce back after the recession of the 1970s (which, by the way, is not one I’ve seen flagged as a double-dip recession), which means it took three years for giving to reach the level at which it had been when the recession started.  Three years to get us back to three years ago!  And second, “[e]very 100-point drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index causes contributions to fall by $1.85 billion….”

Add this all up and what do we have?  An important warning for nonprofits:  do NOT breathe a big sigh of relief when announcements are made that the recession is over.  We’ve got years to go before we recover to where we were when the whole thing started, and years after that to move beyond.  During this time, many in our sector will likely see the demand for their services explode.  Organizations—from boards to staff—cannot proceed with “business as usual,” as usual is no longer.  We must work smarter than we ever have if we want to be here serving our clients in 2020.

When I started blogging, I was told it was ok to be provocative and controversial and I was prepared for flak and feedback. But I am not going for controversy or provocation here; here, I’m venting. Numerous recent experiences have led me to conclude that the nonprofit sector that I truly love has become down-right rude. I’ve got a collection of experiences to whine about, but I’ll share two recent ones with you that painfully contrast our sector with the for-profit world.

I was invited to give a talk—for free—to a group of executive directors of nonprofits located in a specific geographic region. Not a problem. So what if when they first invited me I was told the event was at a location that was no more than a 40 minute round-trip for me but in the end they held the event at a location that was a 40 minute drive—each way. No biggie! I’m used to driving. And I was being a good collaborator.

No problem that despite sending me directions to the location three times, not one of them indicated that the one road leading to the location was under construction and there was a massive detour. Ok, it was a little bit of a problem, and a little bit more when once I got to the physical location there was only one sign at the entrance to the parking lot and it pointed at three different buildings. After that, no signage. So, I had to keep asking and asking, but eventually I got there.

But once I arrived at my destination, I assumed all would be good. Hah! I was warmly greeted at the “registration” desk. That was nice. But the executive director of the organization who invited me to speak NEVER came over and said hello, pleased you are here, thank you, etc. NOTHING! He was too busy yucking it up with his board member who he was introducing to this group of executive directors of his member organizations. (I won’t even go into the HUGE conflict of interest this presented, as I’ve only touched on the tip of the iceberg. Besides, I am talking about rudeness here, not conflicts of interest.) I follow his board member’s little talk; I’m nicely introduced by the leader of the meeting, and I start talking. I’m in the middle of a sentence when the executive director and his buddy get up, walk behind me and the executive director says, in booming voice, to the audience, not to me, “Got to leave. Have another appointment to get to.”

Could it get any worse? You bet. At any given time, of the approximately 25 people in the room, there were at least two people texting on their phones (and frequently there were more than two). And those two people were texting fairly consistently throughout my talk. Now, let me be clear: there was not one executive director in that room who worked at an organization with a life and death mission. Not one executive director texted and immediately left the room because s/he had just been informed of some emergency situation that had developed back at his/her organization or in her/his personal life. No, life went on as usual: phone would go down for a few minutes, then be picked back up, text/email sent, down, back up, etc. A few did try to “hide” it under the table, but come on! Others made no pretext of hiding.

Yesterday was not a first or only occurrence. What I experienced yesterday is all too commonplace at meetings—formal, informal, big, small, etc. And, quite honestly, I think it among the rudest things people can do. But I was comforting myself by thinking that this was not a phenomenon unique to the nonprofit sector; it crosses the sector.

And then I attended a meeting of 15 leaders, where I was the only nonprofit person at the table. The other 14, of whom all but one was male, were CEOs, vice-presidents and managing partners of some of the biggest, well-known companies, banks and law firms in this region. And you know what? Only one even put his phone on the table, and he had it in the flip-case, so he couldn’t even see the screen. Not one of them pulled a phone out once during the 90 minute program. Not one text or email was sent.

My bet is that if I asked the group of executive directors at the meeting if they have a core value at their organization that addresses the concept of “respect,” 100% of those who have explicit core values would say yes. Being respectful of all is important to them, they would say. But as I know all too well, too many organizations reserve their core values for their clients, failing to apply them to their entire community of stakeholders—including invited guests.

I have had a song swirling in my head for a couple of days now.  It is a song from “Bye Bye Birdie” which the parents, and one younger brother, sing when they believe their teenagers are off doing the kinds of nefarious things teenagers might have done in the days (1958) of “Bye, Bye Birdie.”  It is titled “Kids!” and the lines in my head are (and be glad you can’t hear me singing):  “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way? What’s the matter with kids today?”

Fast forward to late 2009 and my song is a bit different.  “Why can’t they be like other regions, perfect in every way?  What’s the matter with Delaware Valley executive directors today?”

When we talk to our sister organizations in other parts of the country, or read what is happening in their service areas, we see innovative, exciting offerings to help executive directors—and other senior managers—stay fresh, supported, inspired, and work as effectively and as efficiently as possible.  So, why don’t things like that work in the greater Delaware Valley?  Surely, our executive directors and other senior managers are just as smart as those elsewhere?  surely, they are as interested in capacity building—both their own and that of their organizations—as those elsewhere?  So, what gives?

We offer CLEAR (Cultivating Leadership Excellence and Responsibility) Circles, small groups of executive directors who meet once a month for two hours of facilitated, peer-to-peer problem solving.  Over the last six years, we’ve gone from having eight circles to two.  We listen to what executive directors want—ways to learn in groups of just other executive directors about things that we as executive directors really need to know, understand and about which we should be thinking.  So, we created EDU—Executive Director University—and end up cancelling the vast majority of sessions because we had one or fewer people registered.  So, what gives?  In our  follow-up research, where we probed what we should have done differently, we were repeatedly told, “It sounded great.  You didn’t do anything wrong. “

We frequently hear a couple of things.  First, “Oh, I couldn’t ask the board to pay for that and I can’t afford it on my own.”  Say what?  Of course you can ask the board to pay for the executive director’s professional development.  What develops the executive director develops the organization.  Does the board provide for professional development for other staff?  (Meaning, is there a line for professional development in the budget?  And I certainly hope the answer is yes, though we know it is the first line in the budget to disappear during tough economic times, though it should be the last.) And do you use that line when you—or another supervisor—identifies an individual who could benefit from—and/or be rewarded  with—professional growth opportunities?  I certainly hope so, as that only makes good management sense.  So, why not the executive director?

And we hear, “I couldn’t ask the board; it would reveal my weaknesses!”  Well, who thinks you are perfect anyway?  Human, yes; perfect, probably not.  Besides, seeking out professional growth and stretch opportunities is a sign of strength, not weakness.  For one, it shows that you are an evolving leader, open to new ideas and opportunities, which is what boards should want of their organization and, therefore, of their leader.  And they should be willing to support that evolution.  (After all, my bet is that many, if not all, on your board have taken/are taking advantage of professional growth opportunities at their day jobs.  At least I hope so.)  Does it increase the chances that the newly enlightened and evolved leader may move on?  Perhaps.  But for the time that s/he remains in the organization, the organization will benefit.  For another, it models the correct and best behavior for staff.  By engaging in growth behavior, the executive director says:  stretch; move; evolve.  And for another, it says to the board “I’m worth investing in.”  That is a message antithetical to the opening fear of exposing weaknesses.

Finally, they will say that they simply don’t have the time.  This speaks volumes about why executive directors burn out and why the millennial generation doesn’t want to become executive directors.  How can executive directors think they are effective leaders if they don’t invest in their own capacity?   

Logic absolutely points to executive directors seeking out growth opportunities right and left.  Yet, that is not what we are seeing.  Now, I recognize that not everyone finds evolutionary and growth opportunities in the same format.  Just as some people are visual learners and others verbal, some people like group experiences while others prefer the solitude of reading. But with few exceptions, I’m not hearing executive directors chatting up their latest great professional read anymore than we are seeing them storm the halls of organized professional development opportunities.

And yet, we know that happens elsewhere.  So, I remain stumped:  what are Delaware Valley executive directors doing for support, rejuvenation and stretching?