Joan Garry's Guide to Nonprofit Leadership. Garry Joan

stuff going on. But if it drives you, you are done for. You have various stakeholders and pleasing everyone usually means pleasing no one. And your job isn't about pleasing. It's about serving your mission.

      Okay. So I've given the answer away.

      My vote goes to Kermit, hands down.

      First off, Kermit would have figured out some way to give the founder a big role with no real power. Look how he manages Piggy. He would rally the troops without shaming them. He would find the key strength in each board member and bring out the best in each of them. He would not be overly bossy with the E.D. – he'd offer his support and be more like a coach. And he would help staff and board keep their eyes on the prize, never losing sight of the organization's mission and vision.

      Kermit may not thrive in a hierarchical work environment but he'd be a rock star E.D. or board chair.

      Kermit is not perfect and he knows it. But so key to effective leadership, it makes him a good delegator! He is all about the team and he understands the value each brings to the work. He believes in diversity. He likes to work to reach consensus but never loses sight of the end game – he is always true to the cause. He is fair and listens and he can manage high-maintenance personalities without sacrificing the work. I also think he can disagree and his team ultimately listens and respects the decision (the decision they feel was made with their input).

      He understands what it takes to be a great leader in the nonprofit sector.

      He understands that power comes from all around you.

      He recognizes that developing core leadership attributes is as important as skills building.

You're Not on Top of Anything

      In 1997, the Coors Brewing Company approached me, as the executive director of GLAAD. They were interested in making a $50,000 corporate sponsorship donation to our organization. As our organization was still on a financial respirator, I was interested. Very interested.

      But I knew the history of Coors and the gay community – the Coors family had deep ties to the Heritage Foundation, a significant funder of organizations leading the opposition to LGBT equality. As a result, there had been a longstanding boycott in the gay community. Drink any beer you like but not Coors.

      A discussion with Coors illustrated to me that the company was better on gay issues inside its organization (domestic partner benefits and other nondiscrimination policies) than many other companies that supported GLAAD.

      Should I accept the sponsorship money and in so doing help rebuild the Coors brand in the gay community? The decision was mine to make.

      Or was it?

      In Jim Collins's monograph From Good to Great in the Social Sector, he makes the case that power and decision making in the nonprofit sector is different from (and messier than) how it is in the private sector.

To be a great leader, you must erase your preconceived notions of what it means to be in charge, and this starts with a standard organizational chart (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The basic org chart we all know and understand.

Power and Authority

      You probably have a piece of paper that shows this kind of hierarchy. Time to recycle.

      Is it factually accurate? Yup. Is it how you should look at or exert your power as a nonprofit leader? Absolutely not.

Now take a look at the chart shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 Picture it this way instead. The power comes from around you.

      Using the org chart in Figure 1.1, the Coors decision is easy. I make a statement about the changes at Coors, accept the donation, make payroll, and let the chips fall where they may.

      In the nonprofit sector, a leader is beholden to vast and diverse stakeholders. I was hired to run GLAAD in the service of moving the needle forward on equal rights for the community I served. The bottom line matters, of course, but only to ensure that you have sufficient resources to work in the service of your mission.

      In the org chart in Figure 1.2, the executive director derives power from all around her. This is why former Girl Scout E.D. Frances Hesselbein once told a reporter that she saw herself in the center and that she “was not on top of anything.”

      So what did this mean for the Coors decision? The voices of the stakeholder groups around me were critical. I needed to be well informed, I needed strong input from different groups, and I needed a thought partner in my board chair to kick around the pros and cons. I knew the decision was ultimately mine but I never really thought of it that way. We were all in this together.

      My development director (the one I nearly killed – see the intro) was outraged and feared we would lose more money than we earned by accepting Coors' donation. We did our due diligence and determined that would not be the case. The staff was mixed – some worried I would be eaten alive by the press (given my own corporate background) either way; others thought rejecting the money could be unfair to Coors when in fact, by corporate standards, they were leaders on gay issues.

      This kind of power demands that you meet with the leaders of the Coors Boycott Committee – not to empower them but to ensure their voices are heard. We even invited them to a board meeting.

      And this kind of power demands that you see the decision from all sides. We secured a meeting with the most senior people at Coors and garnered commitments from them to do more than just donate money.

      And this kind of power demanded that I put myself at a national LGBT conference in which several hundred community members could share their distaste with the thought that GLAAD may make this choice. In this setting, you can be sure that I heard them. Many of them were yelling at me.

      In the end, Coors became a corporate sponsor of GLAAD. Not everyone agreed but everyone had a voice. All stakeholder groups were heard and our entire process and strategy was smarter and more effective than any decision I had made on my own. This is what Jim Collins means when he talks about power in the nonprofit sector being “diffuse.” And at its best, it creates a staff that feels valued and heard, a supportive board comfortable with challenging, and a membership that sees a process rich with integrity.