Investing in Emerging Leaders

Leadership is the hot topic of the moment in our sector; you’ve seen plenty about it right here, in fact.  Your FLiP editors participated in a roundtable discussion about it.  Our friend Elizabeth Miller wrote about it.  And now I’m going to brief you on a neat event on the subject, held Monday at TheTimesCenter here in New York.  Co-sponsored by NYRAG, The New York Times, and the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, and sponsored by American Express, the two “Investing in Emerging Leaders” panels brought together a true cross-section of thinkers in this area.

The list of speakers will get the point across: Rich Berlin, Executive Director, Harlem RBI; David Birdsell, Dean of School of Public Affairs, Baruch College; Patrick Corvington, Senior Associate, Annie E. Casey Foundation; Cheryl Dorsey, President, Echoing Green; and Timothy McClimon, President, American Express Foundation.

Imagine a direct service nonprofit ED, an academic, a private foundation researcher, a social entrepreneurship guru, and a corporate foundation head all trying to wrap their heads around this big topic, together.  It made for fascinating conversation.  Some highlights:

• Said Patrick Corvington, the Annie E. Casey researcher: the Foundation’s recent “Ready to Lead” report, based on interviews with 6,000 emerging leaders, shows they are a diverse lot – differing in how they come in to the sector, the lifestyles they want, what will keep them in the sector, and what the barriers are.  75% of them love their work in the sector, and are willing to sacrifice something in compensation and lifestyle – but not everything.  “We don’t talk enough about how we treat talent in the sector,” he explained.  That “combination of finance and treatment can be fatal.”

• A challenge his team identified is that a lot of young people are trained as specialists – in marketing, development, programs, etc. – and are thus not given the opportunity to generalize.

• Cheryl Dorsey of Echoing Green, whose organization funds 30 social entrepreneurs each year (she received 1,500 applications from 83 countries last year!) notes that emerging leaders show a tremendous sense of agency – they want to solve problems, not ameliorate them; they maintain truly global perspectives; and they hold very few orthodoxies.    

So how do we get these emerging leaders to stay and become emerged leaders?  Speakers agreed on a few ideas:

• Put more resources toward this area.
• Invest in staff training, professional development, networking, and mentoring.
• Take the issue more seriously.
• Engage in university-based solutions.
• Do more to include corporate leaders.
• Get young people on boards.
• Create organizational cultures where young people don’t feel powerless to or guilty about asking for professional development.
• Teach young people that the answer is not necessarily to leave and start your own organization; there are 1.4 million nonprofits in the US, making many wrought with inefficiencies.  Explained Dorsey, “you can be an intrapreneur instead of an entrepreneur.”

Scattered, messy, challenging…it was everything a preliminary, high-level conversation about an enormous subject should be.  Turning talk into actions?  That’s largely up to you, FLiPs!  What’s your idea to close the leadership gap?  Tell us, and maybe we’ll publish it here!