Effective Leadership Development in Nonprofit Organizations

The state of leadership in many nonprofit organizations includes the presence and characteristic of socially popular leaders, who operate in institutional cocoons. These leaders and organizations they lead are stuck in an organizational cycle as an ever-emerging nonprofit organization. An ever-emerging organization life cycle is an organization that is developmentally unevolved. Organizations that mirror that type of characteristic lack the necessary foundational development framework to incubate, effectively. Some examples of unevolved organizations include; nonfunctioning boards, the over-reliance on singular source funding, the lack of a strategic plan, and the absence of a donor development plan.

The presence of ineffective leadership directly affects organizational resilience and sustainability. Many nonprofit organizations have leaders who lack important characteristics like; vision, skills, capacities, and an understanding of organizational development concepts. The absence of these key indicators of organizational leadership success ultimately leads to an organizational death or probable malfeasance. Ultimately, leaders that lack basic functional organizational leadership qualities or competencies are handicaps to effective organizational governance.

Many organizations lack strategic thinking and the capacity to rebuild after the integration of generationally catastrophic ineffective leadership. Status quo leadership is incompatible and a direct threat to healthy organizational development. Status quo leadership reinforces ineffective leadership practices and failures. The larger question surrounding organizational resilience centers on leadership identification, grooming, selection, and institutions’ use and understanding of best practices. Organizational leaders, who through assessment identify these signs and characteristics, are in immediate crisis and need professional help.

How can leaders and stakeholders determine accountability, outcomes, and measure for long-term institutional success? How do Individuals who have talent and passions, but lack the skill capacity, develop the core competencies required for functional success? Can an organization survive this type of leadership incompetence? Franklin (2018) and Schneider (2009) suggested reframing organizational leadership profiles as a tool and strategy to long-term institutional success and sustainability.

Redefining leadership characteristics, ongoing board training, succession planning, and internal and external stakeholder development are effective strategies for leadership development strategies. For stakeholders, this includes assessing your toolkit and determining how best to volunteer your social and intellectual capital. Stakeholders’ voices and their collective social capital can positively affect problematic institutional paradigms. Skilled engaged stakeholder’s support is critical to the healthy life-cycle of every nonprofit organization.

Effective social and political capital use can be measured by examining the;

· Donor support

· Unrestricted financial resources

· Stakeholder engagement and involvement

· Board Member development, and

· Executive leadership growth

Engaged and professionally skilled leaders, who are organization- and stakeholder centric, are critical to the success and evolution of nonprofit organizations. The deployment of their social power and social capital is a strategy and a best practice for emerging organizations. Social capital can be viewed as individuals with personal capital, political capital, or social influence. Has your organizational completed and environmental scan that examines key stakeholder intersections and like-minded cause advocates? The collective use of social power is a foundational tool in an organization’s life cycle.