Nonprofit Leadership Training
Nonprofit boards and executives face some daunting challenges as economies and funding streams ebb and flow. Crucial decisions must be made to effectively manage a nonprofit organization, be they setting strategic priorities, managing board development, framing external communication, directing cash flow, evaluating outcomes or mediating staff conflict. Your organization's leadership must be prepared and proactive to face seen and unseen, making effective leadership training a must.
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The Need for Nonprofit Leadership Training
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Nonprofits have had a very typical line of succession, from within the ranks to hand-picked program managers. However, over time, nonprofits faced two separate challenges. The in-house line staff, who often represented the best and brightest from the nation's higher educational institutions, weren't adequately prepared for leadership. At the same time, nonprofits around the country have continually faced emerging challenges, including newer types of problems---from growing teen pregnancy to more homeless, undocumented immigrants---in the communities they served. Nonprofits have thus seen the need to prepare their next generations of leaders to respond to new community priorities with financial dexterity and to lead organizations through tough changes.
Nonprofit Management Organizations Training
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Common themes running through leadership development programs include mentoring, assessment, learning, instruction and the effective use of internal managers as mentors to staff. A strong undercurrent in leadership training is to help would-be leaders align their work with the organization's culture, strategic direction and the business initiatives.
The Nonprofit Roundtable's Future Executive Directors Fellowship program seeks to graduate a pool of leaders of community organizations and offers each cohort leadership training, modeling, peer networking and a "stretch" program in which fellows take on a personal learning challenge.
Ashoka is a world-renown social entrepreneurship organization that annually inducts fellows who innovate solutions to social problems. The highly competitive program equips people through a rigorous program supporting leadership in global nonprofits working in health, human rights, economic development, civic engagement and the environment.
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Foundation Leadership Training
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Leadership for a Changing World is a Ford Foundation funded program in which communities nominate influential leaders to go through the program. Its mission is strengthen and support leaders and to highlight the importance of community leadership in improving people's lives. Up to 20 leaders and leadership groups are selected annually.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Leadership for Community Change program draws together individuals who are already engaged in the stewardship of their communities around a common theme and enhancing their ability to work as a team. The chosen are taught the foundation's model for mobilizing community action with strategies for individual and collective leadership development.
Executive Coaching
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Increasingly nonprofits are realizing that a vital skill for their leaders is the ability to manage their own learning. They tend to become highly productive, self-motivated individuals. As a result, executive coaching has been a popular method of "continuing education" for nonprofit leaders. Numerous consultants provide one-on-one counseling to leaders to help them develop their abilities, improve their decision-making and directing skills, balance their public and private lives and set goals.
Understanding Leadership
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Nonprofit leadership is not the same as management. To be sure, a core set of universal skills will be required for the job, including planning, decision-making, problem solving, purposefully using power and influence and building trust. But leading a nonprofit is about being a visionary and being nimble, or having the ability to adapt to quickly changing priorities over problems that are entrenched in the human condition.
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- Photo Credit male leadership image by Daniel Wiedemann from Fotolia.com
