Independent Sector’s 2009 American Express NGen Fellows (a cohort of 12 under-40 nonprofit leaders) just released the results of its group project, a report that looked at how emerging leaders across sectors can work together to solve society’s most pressing problems. 

The final report is based on a survey distributed to more than 2,000 young leaders in nonprofits, government, and business that examined their perspectives on leadership development, cross-sector collaboration, and how to respond to major community challenges. 

The most shocking part of the report for me was that the majority of respondents could not identify a single under-40 leader who is effectively solving a societal problem. Yes, you heard that right. Nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents were not aware of their own peers who are making a difference in the world every day.

How could this be?

On the one hand, the report findings may be a sign that younger leaders are just not at the forefront of organizations in large numbers. Or it may simply be an indication that younger leaders are not being publicly recognized at the same rate as their older colleagues. Indeed, in the analysis of their primary findings, the NGen fellows assert their belief that there is a “visibility vacuum” with regard to young leaders who work for social change. In other words, it’s not that young leaders aren’t out there. It’s just that they aren’t being “seen,” and instead “remain waiting in the wings and oftentimes working in the shadows, widely unrecognized by their peers.” 

A Different Mold

The report points to a generational leadership issue raised in the book Working Across Generations: Defining the Future of Nonprofit Leadership, by Frances Kunreuther, Helen Kim, and Robby Rodriguez, which illustrates how dominant mental models can shape our view of leadership and prevent us from “seeing” new leaders because they do not look like the current ones.

As the NGen fellows explain: “If we are consistently presented with ‘leaders’ of a particular age, gender, race, and style of leadership, it would be difficult for even the savviest thinkers to recognize leaders who do not fit this dominant mold.”

Asking New Questions

Harvard professor and leadership scholar Ronald Heifetz talks about how “normative issues” in leadership can make it difficult for new leaders to emerge. Basically, the term “normative” means relating to an ideal model or standard for something, i.e. the “norm.”

Heifetz says that we have a normative problem when a community believes collectively that leaders have certain characteristics like age, experience, and pedigree. And when a community believes that leaders come packaged in a particular way, they are more likely to ignore the leaders they already have and wait for the “real” leaders to come along.

Using this frame, we make the mistake of equating leadership with a certain set of personality traits, when in fact, leadership is what you do.

I hope that some different kinds of questions begin to emerge in the nonprofit world as a result of the NGen findings. When organizations search for new leaders or when conference organizers seek new speakers, I hope they will stop asking, “Who are they?” and start asking, “What have they done?”

In the meantime, how can we better highlight the work of young nonprofit leaders?

Yes, it’s 2010. And no, diversity is not dead.

Businesses like PriceWaterhouseCoopers understand that “diversity and inclusion is essential for business success,” especially when it comes to cultivating and supporting their talent. many of my colleagues and I often wish that more nonprofit groups would share this same priority in our work.

So, of course, I was really sad to see that two longstanding leadership-development programs for emerging foundation leaders of color are going away — at least temporarily. The Associated Grant Makers Diversity Fellowship and the ABFE (Association of Black Foundation Executives) Connecting Leaders Fellowship Program list both similar and different reasons for ending or halting their leadership-development program for leaders of color.

Associated Grant Makers Diversity Fellowship

Here’s a recent statement from AGM about discontinuing its diversity fellowship program:

“In 2009, AGM undertook a significant strategic planning process to carefully examine all of our programs and services and to align those services more sharply with both our members’ needs as well as the current economic reality.

“While the board and staff of AGM remain deeply committed to diversity, inclusion and equity, we are not able to continue the program in its current form. Thus, we will be ending the Diversity Fellowship after this current class of Fellows completes their term, and will not be accepting a fourth class of Fellows. As our new strategic plan is implemented, we will be developing other programs to support diversity and equity in the philanthropic field.”

ABFE (Association of Black Foundation Executives) Connecting Leaders Fellowship Program 

That’s right, I said it.

It’s not the economy or the lack of funding available for leadership development. It’s the fact that many older nonprofit professionals don’t see younger generations as viable candidates for leadership.

Look, I’ll prove it to you. A recent BoardSource report highlighted several disincentives for nonprofit boards to actively seek out younger members, including skepticism about the need to have younger generations on boards.

Why the skepticism? One reason may be because there are a bunch of myths out there that need to be debunked about what young people can and cannot contribute. Those myths are especially strong when it comes to Generation Y. Let’s pull back the curtain on some of the other myths that limit the possibilities for future leaders.

1. Generation Y doesn’t have any experience.

This myth is pretty ridiculous when you look at the numbers. Generation Y refers to young people born between 1980 and 2000, which means that the oldest Generation Y-er is already 30 years old. This also means that the oldest Generation Y nonprofit leader has about 12 years of work experience. 

2. All Generation Y does is tweet and Facebook all day. 

Yes, Generation Y is overwhelmingly more comfortable and proficient with technology as a generation, just because we grew up with it more than other generations did. But here’s a news flash: Many young people are not even familiar with Twitter or Facebook. According to Pingdom, 64 percent of Twitter users and 61 percent of Facebook users are 35 or older. What bothers many young leaders about this technology myth is that their youth is only valued when social media comes up and the CEO wants to know how to use Twitter. For everything else, younger leaders are relegated to supportive roles.

3. Generation Y just wants to come in, take over, and change everything. 

Not at all. Unfortunately, most Generation Y nonprofit leaders are not even thinking about changing anything in your organization. My generation is pretty much still emulating the older generations, afraid to fail, and trying not to rock the boat for fear we won’t ever get a chance to sit at the big kid’s table. We’re out here trying to get the right education so we can learn how to do all the right things at the right time so we can get the right jobs so we can move up into the right positions so someone can bestow upon us the right kind of power that will allow us to finally make a difference and make things right in the world. For the most part, Generation Y just wants to learn from older leaders and get the opportunity to contribute something to your organization. So you can chill out and stop worrying about The Big Takeover. Because as much as I’d like to say otherwise, it ain’t happening.

If you’re scratching your head right about now, here’s how it ends a recent job ad for a program administrator. Brookings tacks this puzzling statement on the end of all of its advertisements:

We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply. (Only applicants meeting minimum qualifications for the position will be considered. No phone calls please.) EOE M/F/H/V

I had a nice fuzzy feeling about telling my friends to go work at Brookings until I saw this statement. Now, I would assume that anyone applying to a job at Brookings would think themselves to be qualified. So, as a woman of color, I was taken aback by the language that makes it sound as if women and minorities are not usually qualified. Therefore, Brookings felt the need to reiterate that if you are woman or a minority, you had better have your stuff together. 

It raised the question in my mind: so then it must be OK for unqualified white men to apply? If the intent was to discourage unqualified applicants from submitting their résumés, I get that.

But Brookings could have simply said, “We strongly encourage qualified professionals to apply” or something like that. The fact that this statement preceded what is usually a warm invitation for diverse candidates was what rubbed me the wrong way. I would never apply to work for an organization that appears to doubt my qualifications as a woman and a person of color.

It rubbed me so wrong that I felt compelled to call Brookings and ask why in the world they used that particular language.

Zarina Durrani, its director of human resources, responded that Brookings has “had this wording for quite a while now and no one has ever questioned it.”

But she said that she could see how someone might take it the wrong way. After a lengthy conversation, it was clear that Brookings’s legal counsel had a lot to do with the wording of its job descriptions, to the point where the organization would have to consult with its legal team to change the wording to something more amenable to potential applicants.

That has not yet happened. And I wonder if the group ever stops to consider whether the language it is using is actually what’s preventing it from attracting the diverse work force it apparently desires.

While I hold Brookings up as an example of what not to do, it’s clear that it is not the only nonprofit organization that struggles with finding diverse talent, in particular people of color. 

Indeed, a 2007 Johns Hopkins University study showed that more than half of nonprofit groups report having a hard time recruiting candidates of color. But that’s mainly because only about a third of the organizations implemented strategies specifically designed to attract people of color.

So, therein lies the problem. If nonprofit groups want a more diverse work force, we definitely have to do something a little extra to attract new leaders.

But in implementing those efforts, we really have to make sure we avoid offending the very people we want to engage.

Reports like Daring to Lead looked at the “gap” that’s feared to occur when baby boomer CEO’s begin leaving their jobs in droves, while Ready to Lead? focused on supporting the “next generation” of young nonprofit leaders who would be needed to take their place. Yet once we realized that baby boomers were not, in fact, retiring in great numbers, books like Working Across Generations began to expand the conversation to help us think about how all generations can lead side by side in organizations.

But something about all the research bugged me. As a young leader, I didn’t like how the “next generation” moniker implied that we have to wait for some undetermined time before we can lead. And until then, we have to sit quietly with the other kids and try to catch the crumbs of wisdom and power that fall from the big kid’s table. If that’s what we meant by saying next-generation leaders, I sure didn’t want to be one.

So, earlier this year, I began using the term “now generation leaders” because the reality is that young nonprofit leaders who are typically referenced as the next generation are not as young as people think. We’re not all college kids anymore.

This year the oldest of Generation Y will be 30 years old. We’re no longer the “baby” in the workplace; we’re managers and directors and CEO’s of great organizations.

Then a funny thing happened this weekend in Denver. In an inspirational set of speeches during the Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) national conference, two baby-boomer philanthropy executives urged young leaders to think of ourselves in a completely different way. They told us to stop calling ourselves next-generation leaders.

First, Council on Foundations President Steve Gunderson opened the Saturday morning plenary with a strong suggestion for young grant makers.

“EPIP needs to change their tagline from the next generation of grant makers to the now generation of grant makers,” he said. “The future is now.”

Then on Sunday, Gara LaMarche, President of Atlantic Philanthropies, offered this sentiment after being asked to give advice for emerging leaders:

“I don’t look at it that way. I was running things when I was 24. It’s only in the philanthropic sector that we think you have to be older to lead.”

In addition, Mr. LaMarche dismissed the word “emerging.”

“It’s a misconception,” he said. “Young people are already where they need to be, and older people are emerging in every stage of their lives.”

With these two endorsements by respected leaders in philanthropy, I’m hoping that the nonprofit world will do away with the term next generation as it relates to younger leaders.

Although we will certainly be the ones leading tomorrow, we’re also the ones who are already leading today.

Shocking? Probably not.

Newsworthy? Absolutely.

A related Baltimore Sun story declares as a matter of fact: “Minority leadership lagging at nonprofits.” This fact is of course well-known within the nonprofit sector and has been for quite some time. Now, it’s just becoming even more well-documented with similar studies in New York and California published recently as well.

In a time when the face of America is rapidly changing, the face of nonprofit leadership on the whole is certainly not changing at the same pace. For a sector that is known for serving, and in many cases, “empowering” racially diverse communities, we have not made much progress when it comes to seeking out leaders that actually look like those in the communities we serve.

Even though we know that in this country, the minority is fast becoming the majority. As the New York Times has reported: “The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites.” Despite this trend, 82 percent of all nonprofits are led by whites.

Yet with all of the lip service being paid to racial diversity in the last few years (some longtime nonprofit leaders might say decades), you would think we’d have gotten a lot further than we have. Which kind of makes you wonder, do nonprofits still care about having inclusive leadership? 

While it’s encouraging to see how many nonprofit diversity studies have been commissioned in the last few years, it does beg a familiar set of questions.

When, if ever, will nonprofits quit paying lip service to racial diversity and actually do something about it? When will organizations make it a priority to ensure that their leadership reflects the racial diversity of the people they serve?

It’s 2010. By now, we know it’s a problem and we know it’s important for organizational effectiveness. By now, we’ve had more than enough time to think about it, study it, and hire consultants to tell us how to do it.

Now is the time for the nonprofit sector to either put up or shut up about diversity already. Because if these numbers don’t start getting any better, it’s fair to assume that we really just don’t care.

But Ms. Heard’s post sparked another, more pressing question for me. Do nonprofit boards really want younger members? If you go by the numbers, the answer is a resounding “no.” BoardSource’s 2007 Nonprofit Governance Index found that only 2 percent of board members were under 30 years old.

The “under 30″ focus is really important to note because that age bracket encompasses all of Generation Y, the largest generational demographic behind the Baby Boomers at 80 million strong. Which means that there are a lot of young people out there who can be recruited for board service. But just because there are a lot of Gen Y’ers out there, doesn’t mean nonprofit boards are looking for them. The numbers don’t lie. According to Boardsource, 62 percent of board members are age 50 and over. 

A follow-up report shed more light on the lack of age diversity on nonprofit boards. Boardsource’s Next Generation and Governance Report on Findings showed that nonprofit boards understand the many benefits of having younger members:

• Passion for the mission
• Results-oriented thinking
• Access to new networks and donors
• Fresh perspective on old problems

Yet, the report also highlights several disincentives for nonprofit boards to actively seek out younger members:

• Skepticism about the need to have younger generations on boards
• Uncertainty of where to find younger board members
• Preference for a “C-Suite” or corporate officer type profile on the board
• Concerns of isolation (of being the only young person on the board)

Boardsource is slated to release a 2010 Nonprofit Governance Index soon. Do you think the numbers of young people on nonprofit boards will be higher this time around? Or will nonprofit boards continue to allow the disincentives to keep them from reaping the benefits of having more age diversity in their leadership?

According to The Chronicle, “Four Republican senators have asked Boys & Girls Clubs of America to provide details about what it spends on executive compensation, lobbying, perks, travel, and other items” and have said that “they wanted the answers so they could consider changes to Senate legislation that would provide $425-million to the youth organization over five years.”

The senators’ biggest beef with the Boys & Girls Clubs is that chief executive officer Roxanne Spillett earned more than $900,000 in compensation in 2008, amidst a backdrop of a tough economic climate in which “local Boys & Girls Clubs nationwide close their doors due to budget shortfalls.”

You would think that large nonprofit groups like the Boys & Girls Clubs would know by now that paying out near-million-dollar salaries would bring about public concern. Just two years ago, controversy broke out over the salary of Gloria Pace King, President of United Way of Central Carolinas. After a significant increase to her retirement plan, Ms. King’s total compensation topped out at $1.2-million, to the dismay of some in the nonprofit field.

Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, called Ms. King’s pay ”outrageous.” “Why do people believe that we can retain the trust of the public when we pay people at outrageous levels like this?”

Not surprisingly, Uncharitable author Dan Pallotta defends Ms. Spillett’s  paycheck, which falls in line with the ideas he shares about nonprofit salaries and business models on his Harvard Business Review blog. While I disagree with him, it doesn’t surprise me that a man who comes from the for-profit world — where he earned six figures helping nonprofit groups raise money through AIDS rides — would defend high salaries. But Pallotta Teamworks was a for-profit business, and the Boys & Girls Clubs is not.

There are a number of reasons why we should view the Boys & Girls Clubs case as being problematic for the entire nonprofit sector.

Good Pay Does Not Mean Excessive Pay

I absolutely believe that nonprofit CEO’s should earn good pay. But there’s a big difference between good pay and excessive pay. While an organization can use any number of formulas to set compensation, it’s clear that many a reasonable person would deem Ms. Spillett’s salary excessive. I’m certainly not saying that nonprofit CEO’s should take a vow of poverty but that it may be problematic to have leaders in our sector who could be deemed “rich.”

Million-Dollar Salaries Are Not Sustainable for the Sector

I have heard many nonprofit folks say things along the lines of, “Oh wouldn’t it be great if all nonprofit CEO’s could earn salaries comparable to those in the for-profit world?” But just think about that for a moment. If all nonprofit organizations paid their CEO’s or executive directors extremely high salaries, little would be left over for programming. Just take a look at the Boys & Girls Clubs, which is actually closing down some of its programs around the country. My question to those folks is always, Where is all this extra money going to come from?

High Salaries Do Not Equal Effective Leaders 

Mr. Pallotta often makes the argument that we need to pay people well to stay in the sector. On it’s face, that is true, but he and others take that premise a step further in implying that we can’t attract good leaders without giving them for-profit salaries. I disagree with the idea that we need to pay nonprofit CEO’s high six figures to do a good job. It’s just not true. There are great nonprofit CEO’s and bad ones at both ends of the salary spectrum, and many ineffective leaders have been paid well. So it’s not a given that we will “lose out” on talented leaders if we don’t pay them excessive salaries. It’s also not a given that we need to be able to attract talent from the business world or from outside of our organizations. We should really be developing the amazingly talented people we already have within our organizations, who are passionate about the work even if it doesn’t come with a million-dollar salary.

Excessive Salaries Turn Donors Away

For me, this is one of the main reasons not to pay nonprofit CEO’s so much money. Sen. Charles Grassley notwithstanding, public perception is incredibly important if you want to keep donations coming into the door. In a time when donors themselves are being laid off and struggling to contribute to nonprofit causes due to the recession, hearing that the head of the Boys & Girls Clubs earns nearly $1-million a year is just not going to sit well with them. I don’t care what the board says or what the executive-compensation consultant says. Nonprofit organizations have to pay attention to how donors feel about certain salary decisions.

We Need to Be More Concerned With Paying All Nonprofit Staff Better, Not Just CEO’s

Have you noticed how so many people in the sector always come to the defense of the highly paid nonprofit CEO? Part of it is self-motivation. They rush to defend partly out of fear that their earning potential will be affected by arbitrary salary caps, but the truth of the matter is that most of us will never be put into a position of even coming close to earning a salary that would need to be capped.

Now if we defended increasing the salaries of other nonprofit staff members as much as we do for CEO’s, the sector would be in much better shape. I know that while many CEO’s get paid extremely well, their staff members still make pennies on the dollar. No matter how great they are, no successful nonprofit CEO raises millions singlehandedly. It takes great staff members to do this, and they deserve decent pay, too. And common sense tells us that if you pay nonprofit CEO’s a little less, you can pay the nonprofit staff a little more.

While the kids that the Boys & Girls Clubs serves are worth a million dollars, I can’t say the same for its CEO.

Rosetta Thurman: When and why did NP Connect start the Job Club? What was the catalyst?

Michelle Davis: There are about 30 job clubs in the metropolitan Kansas City area. I was receiving requests to speak at multiple clubs about working in the nonprofit sector, which spurred me to question whether or not job seekers would come to a job club dedicated solely to the nonprofit sector. Our staff was also getting lots of calls from job seekers who wanted to meet with us individually for career advice. We felt the Job Club would also allow us to tackle multiple appointments in one setting. We had 85 in attendance at our first meeting last August. We now hold our meetings on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month and have 20 to 40 attendees at each meeting.

RT: What happens in the Job Club meetings? Do people share job openings, experiences, etc.? How long do the meetings last?

MD: We meet for 90 minutes. We spend about 10 minutes talking about Nonprofit Connect programs and services that could help them build skills and network. The next 40 minutes is spent in a “program.” A program is either someone speaking on a job-seeking skill (e.g., interviewing, resumes, etc) or a motivational topic (e.g., emotional resiliency during the job search) or we have nonprofit professionals talking about their position, career path, and advice to job seekers. In the last scenario, these nonprofit professionals are at four or five stations around the room and attendees get to spend 30 minutes with two professionals. We try and have professionals representing nonprofit management (ED/CEO), fundraising, marketing, program management and volunteer management. The last 40 minutes is spent networking around the room. Attendees have the opportunity to give a 30-second pitch about them, their skills, what they are looking for, the organizations they are hoping to interview with, etc.

RT: How do people find out about the Job Club?

MD: There is a directory of Kansas City area job clubs where we are listed. We also list info about it on our website. Lots of word-of-mouth referrals.

RT: Why are there so many sector switchers? Is it due to companies making layoffs in KC?

MD: It is partly due to layoffs – Sprint, Hallmark, American Century are the big ones where we see job clubbers coming from. I think that people feel “burnt” by the corporate sector and think if they have to work they want to do something good. We spend time in Job Club dispelling myths about working in the sector making sure that job clubbers understand you are required to do more with less, have more “politics” to deal with, that application of business principles is a must, etc. We also bring a copy of the Greater Kansas City Nonprofit Salary and Benefits Survey so they can get a sense of what to expect in this area. We also promote Shelly Cryer’s book, The Nonprofit Career Guide as a great resource!

RT: Do participants pay to attend the Job Club? If so, how much?

MD: No, it’s free to all. We consider it a part of our “suite” of Career Services – JobLink, InternLink, Nonprofit Shadow Day and Nonprofit Job Fair.

RT: What have the outcomes been so far for participants in the Job Club? Have any of them found jobs as a result of their involvement?

MD: We have about five that have found jobs. While that’s not an overwhelming number, the thing that I think is great is that they (primarily the sector switchers) are doing a variety of things to prepare themselves to work in the sector – coming to training, volunteering, etc.

Thanks to Michelle Davis for sharing the inside story about NP Connect’s work with us! Find out more about their Job Club here. Do you think Job Clubs are a good idea to bring new leaders into the nonprofit sector? Are there any Job Clubs or similar programs in your community?

But let’s just run the numbers for a minute here. Ms. Brock is hardly “new” leadership for the NAACP board, having been vice chair for the past nine years. And if all the hoopla seems like déjà vu, that’s because it is.

A year and a half ago, I wrote about Mr. Bond’s announcement that he was stepping down as chairman of the NAACP’s board after 10 years, although he would still remain on the board. Back then, he said the time was right to “let a new generation of leaders” take over the NAACP. I said myself that Ms. Brock would be the perfect choice to succeed him, as she was already the vice chair and had been for years, not to mention the whole being a young female thing.

We heard the same promise of “young, new leadership” from the NAACP at the hiring of Benjamin T. Jealous, who at 35, was the youngest NAACP president ever elected. It’s still not totally clear, however, that the organization is truly engaging young people in any real way, as questions of relevancy still plague the organization 100 years after its inception. In particular, the NAACP has not yet fully ignited the potential of Generation Y, a major force for social change in America at 80 million strong.

What is clear, though, is that since Mr. Jealous took the helm, the “NAACP is fiscally solid and has proved its staying power, having recovered from crippling scandals and layoffs in the 1990s,” according to a report in The Washington Post. The Post reports that Mr. Bond says that the civil-rights group “is now increasing its staff, raising money and planning for the future. . . .  It claims 500,000 members, including nonpaying members and sometime donors who have signed up online.”

Perhaps what we’re supposed to read between the lines is that the NAACP has finally gotten its financial act together and now has the capacity to increase its relevancy and impact for today’s generation of African Americans, who are just as in need of help now as we were during the civil-rights movement 40 years ago. If that’s the case, I hope to see Ms. Brock shaking things up and trying out some bold new ideas as she steps into her “new” role as board chair.