HOT TOPICS

SPOTLIGHT on what's hot, what's happening and what's new in nonprofit governance, board and executive leadership.

The Leadership Deficit in the nonprofit sector.

One of the biggest challenges facing nonprofits today is their dearth of strong leaders – a problem that’s only going to get worse as the sector expands and baby boom executives retire. Recent research undertaken by the Bridgespan group has shown an estimated annual growth in the number of nonprofits of 6%. Over the next decade nonprofits will need to find some 640,000 new executives, nearly two and a half times the number currently employed.

This article has a number of calls to action:
* Budget for leadership succession training and recruitment, and develop greater emphasis by existing leaders to train up others
* Look at payment options, and keep track of leadership costs rather than lump them in overheads
* Focus more on performance goals and reviews for accountability and also outcomes
* Look to the retiring baby boomers as a source of talent
* Attract those in the middle of their careers
* Attract young managers in training
* Change assumptions about recruiting. What value can be had from mothers wishing to reenter the workforce, from the public sector, from the business world generally. What needs to change for these sectors to add value to the nonprofit sector?

Read a full review at Stanford Center for Innovation Read more

---

Nonprofit Board Governance

Stanford Discussions with William Ryan - The nonprofit board governance literature has suggested that boards are unclear about their roles and responsibilities. In response to this issue, boards have been presented with more and more detailed and restrictive job descriptions. For William Ryan, a consultant to foundations and nonprofit organizations and research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, the lack of clarity isn't the only culprit for the rampant lack of enthusiasm for governance among board members. Ryan suggests that boards find their work neither personally meaningful to them nor consequential for the organization and analyzes board disengagement as a problem of purpose.

To remedy this situation Ryan offers a new conceptual framework for helping nonprofit organizations maximize the effectiveness of their boards called Governance as Leadership. The Stanford discussions with Willian Ryan can be downloaded by clicking the link or right click and "Save target as" [audio clip mp3]

---