Young nonprofit workers in Chicago who want to climb the ladder all the way to the top are getting a helping hand from veteran executives through a three-year-old training and mentorship program.
The program—a collaboration between Executive Service Corps of Chicago, a charity that helps veteran executives provide low-cost management consulting for nonprofits, and the local chapter of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network—has helped dozens of people assume nonprofit leadership roles.
“As the boomers retire, we are seeing a turnover in the executive-director suites and have to wonder, Where is the pipeline for the next leaders?” says Bill Cosper, vice president for institutional relations at the Executive Service Corps of Chicago and one of the program’s founders.
The program, called the Leadership Institute, is intended to fill a gap between informal one-on-one conversations aspiring leaders have with mentors and formal academic programs.
“While there are a lot of different ways you can get leadership training through graduate degrees or certification programs, they can be expensive and out of reach for many organizations and young nonprofit professionals,” says Mr. Cosper.
Consulting Work
Aspiring leaders in the eight-month program must work for a nonprofit organization and be under 35 years of age. They are matched with a veteran business or nonprofit executive to serve as their personal mentor and coach. Monthly roundtable discussions feature current executive directors who speak candidly about their jobs; participants are also given some reading assignments.
The last two months of the program are given over to a “capstone project,” in which program participants serve as consultants to a charity facing management or growth challenges.
“We wouldn’t expect them to develop a strategic plan in two months’ time, but they could interview board members and work on a component of a plan,” Mr. Cosper says.
He cites an example: “One past project involved a human-resources study for a local nonprofit that the executive director is now using to build her staff. It’s a real-world chance to think from the corner-office perspective.”
Dan Gould is a board member for the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network who now helps develop and run the Leadership Institute. He was also a member of its first class, in 2009, while he was working as a chapter manager for the National Black MBA Association, in Chicago. While not yet an executive director, Mr. Gould credits the program with helping him assume his current position as associate director of alumni relations at Loyola University Chicago.
“A real benefit of the program is the networking and access to current leaders in the sector that you wouldn’t get through any of the other leadership-training models,” Mr. Gould says. As a result, he says, young program participants are “getting real-world stories while learning that there is no one way to become a leader.”
Hearing those tales from the nonprofit trenches helped Amanda Farrar. While still enrolled in the Leadership Institute’s inaugural class, she was named executive director of Barrel of Monkeys, a Chicago arts charity that turns children’s creative writings into staged plays.
“At the time I was the development director at a theater company,” Ms. Farrar says. “I had gone to grad school in arts management, but I was still looking to find that way to move into the executive-director role. Having all the different executive directors come in and advise us helped me figure out what management styles could work for me and helped me to develop who I was as an executive director.”
Changed Minds
But some program participants ultimately decide they would rather not be an executive director after all.
“There were some people who took the program and asked, ‘Who would sign up for this job?’” says Marissa Filippo, a co-chair of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and another program alumna.
“They talked with executive directors who were very honest about what their jobs were like,” she says. “It’s not always very glamorous.”
Mr. Cosper describes the program to date as having been in a “pilot phase” as its various components were tweaked.
Next year, for instance, the program will be extended past eight months to 10, to better accommodate the capstone project. A two-year version was tried earlier, but some of the working participants had difficulty committing that much time.
Finances present a challenge. The $150 program fee presents a low hurdle for participants but “barely covers the bagels we serve” at training sessions, says Mr. Cosper. While the coaches and speakers are all volunteers, other administrative costs have thus far been borne largely by the Executive Service Corps.
“What I need to do is find some funding so we can sustain the program over time,” Mr. Cosper says.
He estimates that $15,000 to $20,000 would cover the program’s key costs. An ultimate goal, he says, is to spread the concept beyond Chicago.
“To replicate the model would be great,” Mr. Cosper says. “We really want to get the model out there and share the magic.”
More from the 2012 Guide to Managing Nonprofits
What a New Executive Director Needs to Succeed
How to Negotiate for a Bigger Paycheck
Round Out Your Skills Through Mentoring
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