Guest post by MacArthur Antigua, director of national recruitment and expansion, Public Allies, and a 2010 NGen Fellow

Find out what happens when a group of stellar young nonprofit professionals spend six months studying how this new generation can best work across sectors…
 
The 2009 American Express NGen Fellow class presented the findings from their group project, a survey of more than 2,000 NGeners (people under age 40) in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors. The survey asked their perspectives on leadership development, cross-sector collaboration, and how to respond to major challenges facing our communities.

The driving questions for this project were:

• How much perceived impact does a particular sector have on solving problems?
• Do cross-over collaborations exist?
• What does leadership look like?

The survey of over 2,000 NGeners was distributed through their own mailing lists and networks. It resulted in over 1,218 nonprofit respondents, 268 for profit respondents, 226 government respondents, and 320 "others" (students, unemployed, etc).  Approximately 77 percent of the respondents were women.

To foster an interactive dimension to the standard "dog and pony show" vibe, the '09ers utilized the Turning Technologies audience response tools to do "real-time" polling of the session participants, and compared those responses to their actual findings. Fascinatingly, the room (while it included some over-40 folks) produced results very close to the findings of the actual survey. 

Here the key findings of the report, along with the live polling of the room (all responses were on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being highest):

• NGeners mostly agree on the top issues facing communities and the nation.  Both the survey and the room indentified educational attainment and poverty as most important.
• NGeners believe that cross-sector collaborations are important (4.5 out of 5), but don't know people, leaders, or methods for collaboration.
• The majority (64 percent) of NGeners could not identify a leader under 40 who is effectively solving a social problem. When prompted, the room only named two under-40 leaders, NAACP's Ben Jealous and cancer research activist Lance Armstrong.
• The majority of respondents believed that the nonprofit sector is best positioned to lead the charge to solve problems, compared to other sectors.
• NGeners in the survey reported that they wanted more organized leadership development opportunities. The room (dominated by nonprofiteers) did differ in its response, with more reporting that they had training opportunities.

The '09 NGEN fellows offered two points of analysis: 1) There is a "visibility vacuum" with regard to young leaders who work to solve society's problems, and 2) we need more established opportunities for cross-sector collaboration.

To address the first question, the room asked how could we highlight more NGen leadership in our organizations? Responses ("our organizations need to") included:

• Provide opportunities for emerging leaders to share knowledge and present at conferences.
• Provide opportunities for emerging leaders to accept awards or gain more visibility.
• Listen to NGeners on how they can craft a path for their development and increased visibility within an organization.
• Educate managers on how to foster that conversation/exchange.

Even with these suggestions, NGeners still need to self-promote!

The '09 fellows offered their insights from their report: NGeners need to be more proactive in pursuing leadership opportunities, and all three sectors need to raise the profile of younger professionals.

Then the audience was invited to share their insights on whether or not there is cross-sector collaboration:

• NGen '10 Fellow Tine Hansen shared the story of how her organization is fostering public-private partnerships to increase health care access in urban communities.  Her insights were that there needs to be "win-win" for all sectors, and that roles are clearly defined ahead of time.
• Rusty Stahl (Emerging Partners in Philanthropy) offered a provocative question -- "What if the nonprofit work is intended to address the failures of the government to effectively serve its residents, or to repair the fallout from market failure?"  In turn, this sparked a reflection on "what is collaboration?"
  
  If collaboration is treated like it's "checking off a box" or starting from a place of "assigning blame on a sector," then it's likely not to succeed.
  
  NGen '10 Fellow Jennifer Ford Reedy offered, "Does collaboration mean the same thing across sectors?" Her experience with a roundtable of Twin Cities CEOs committed to improving communities taught her that those CEOs didn't work well sitting around a table trying to hash a decision -- they were not used to that kind of collaborative decision-making. She learned that she needed to translate that process into CEO-speak/framework, to which they could effectively respond and address.
  
  Perhaps cross-sector collaborations will need savvy translators so that all sectors can better bring their talents to solving a problem.

The '09 fellows shared recommendations from their report: that all sectors should move leadership development out of a "sector-centered" focus, as well as increase leadership opportunities across all sectors.

To close out this session, participants reflected that the nonprofit sector needs to improve its "celebration skill" -- namely when it comes to individuals. Perhaps we can start changing the 'dominant mental model' of nonprofit sector leadership -- the charismatic, older, white, male in titled positions -- and shift it towards a more diverse, younger, “un”-positioned individual.

Finally, NGen '10 Fellow, Lynsey Jeffries shared with the room the prospective plans of this current Fellows' project -- which is to build off of the recommendation of this year's class to foster a series of live and virtual cross-sector, cross-cultural "problem-solving" circles. The hope is that through this we can learn better how to involve cross-sector participants, and perhaps foster connections for more robust problem solving in the future. They will also put out a call to the Independent Sector membership (NGen and beyond) to participate in this endeavor in the coming year.