Why Would Anyone Want to Be An Executive Director?

It’s Day 2 of my write every day for a month challenge, and I’m running into a very familiar problem….there’s too much to write about.

There was yet another mass shooting yesterday…
I met with a great group of colleagues this morning to talk about 21st century leadership…
I received a call the other day where a guy wanted his 11 year old to start a nonprofit…

There’s so much going on and I see management lessons just about everywhere. This is a problem that keeps me from writing a lot. I have a huge list of blogs I’d like to get to someday. Where do I start? Today, I’m just going to pick one and go for it. The topic is…why on earth would anyone want to be an Executive Director of a nonprofit?

Having recently finished up a master’s program, a lot of people ask me what’s next. It usually comes out like this: “So what’s next for you? You gonna be an ED?” I usually respond that I’m working on what I want to do next, but it will probably not be an ED role.

Because from all accounts I’ve heard, it sucks. There’s constant discussion about burnout, little support, low pay, and the weight of the world on your shoulders. And I won’t even go into board management.

So why do it? Or perhaps the better question is…how do we make it better?

Vetting

A lot of Executive Directors are in that position because they are smart, know the sector and/or the cause, and have experience performing the duties that an existing organization needs. But a lot of people are EDs because they started the organization from scratch and they either wanted to be in charge or there was no one else to do it. These people often come into the system at a disadvantage. Not all, but many of these people come in with no real idea of what they’re getting into (see comment above about the guy wanting his 11 year old to be ED!). This is bad for the sector, but also for these people who quickly get tired of chasing money and volunteers.

This is controversial, and I’m not saying I have the right answer, but one way of preventing this is making it a bit harder to start a nonprofit. And if the government doesn’t want to get in the business of being the decider (or if we don’t want them to), I have said before that it might make sense for funders to say you won’t get grants from us until you can prove that your board has gone through training and that the ED has as well. There are all sorts of problems with that, for sure, but creating a system where it becomes very well known that you need to know what you’re doing would be helpful.

Support

There are very few grants out there for professional development. There are plenty of programs, but most are expensive. According to Talent Philanthropy, there are only 9 foundations that are “deeply committed to the art of talent-focused grantmaking.” Nine? Everyone likes to huff and puff about leadership and its importance but only nine grantmakers can be bothered with funding it? No wonder EDs are burned out.

For-profit companies often have explicit professional development guidelines and processes. The same can’t be said for nonprofit organizations. The under development is just creating a long pipeline of people who are not fully prepared to be an Executive Director.

Compensation

Tupac once said:

You gotta operate the easy way
“I made a G today” but you made it in a sleazy way
Selling crack to the kids, “I gotta get paid!”
Well hey, but that’s the way it is.

Well said, Pac. That is the way it is. For some reason that I can’t figure out, the general public seems to be against the idea of getting paid to do “good” things. Sell guns to anyone and everyone? Sure, you deserve whatever high profits come at you. But if you work to take guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, then suddenly you should be doing that for free? I will never understand that.

It probably comes, at least in part, because of where the funding comes from. If I buy a fancy new laptop, I’m happy to pay and don’t care what happens inside the company, as long as I get my cool, new computer. Even though everyone knows the parts are made cheaply in China and the thing itself doesn’t cost nearly what we paid for, we got what we wanted out of it, right? But you’re paying not only for the computer, you’re paying for the employees, you’re paying for the fancy engineers that dream up new gadgets, you’re paying for the CEO’s crazy high salary, you’re paying for rent and perks and vacations and all sorts of stuff that you would be livid about if a nonprofit was spending that way.

But why should it be any different? You may not receive a new computer for your donation, but you will get that warm-fuzzy “goodwill” that nonprofits always talk about. You get to live your values through your donation. And more importantly, you get things like a soccer league for your child, medical care when you’re sick, concerts to go to on a Friday night with a date, a place for the homeless in your community to go…the list goes on and on and on. You don’t tell Lady Gaga how to spend your concert ticket money, why would you tell the community symphony how they should spend theirs?

I’m getting myself all worked up, so I need to move on. But the point is that there needs to be a whole PR campaign about nonprofit organizations and charitable giving.

Shared Leadership Models

Seeing as how none of the things I mentioned are going to happen anytime soon, the question changes from how do we change the situation? to how do we deal with what we’ve got? One possible answer is shared leadership.

In ancient Roman times, they had a triumvirate. Some organizations have a strong executive team that works in the same way, but too often, all big decisions and duties are the responsibilities of one person. One very human person. And this seems unwise. While shared leadership would have its own difficulties, such as clashing personalities and egos, it makes sense that if there were two or more people in the decision-making role, they could bring a greater degree of effectiveness. When roles are split there is much greater opportunity for work/life balance as well as splitting up duties according to the strengths of each person. Helen De Michiel of NAMAC works in a shared leadership model and now says, “I don’t regularly wake up at 3am anymore worrying about my organization like I used to.”

This model requires a lot of trust, shared goals, and lots of communication, but it sounds like a better deal than throwing all the responsibility at one person.

—————–

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe being an ED is wonderful. But that’s not the message that’s getting spread out into the world, so it’s not suprising that so many of my similar-aged colleagues aren’t interested in the position. Some of them, myself included, aren’t even sure the the nonprofit sector is where they can stay, purely based on the compensation issue alone. We have a very broken leadership pipeline, and the end of the pipeline looks like no fun at all.

Are you an ED? What do you think of all this? Am I full of crap? Do you have suggestions for making things better?