Emerging Leadership Initiative

Leadership for the Common Good: Recommendations to Meet Challenges for the Future of the Independent Sector

“Developing to promote the common good” has been a basic program goal of INDEPENDENT SECTOR since the organization’s inception. This goal is more significant today as we meet difficult challenges affecting the core of traditional nonprofit initiatives. Effective leadership in the future will be even more critical than it is today. Leadership not only shapes effective independent sector  services to people, communities and causes, it also stimulates (or undermines) public confidence and support.

Talent, commitment and passion drive the sector's organizations to succeed. We need leaders who stimulate and inspire staff and volunteers to work in collaboration to fulfill organizational missions, and who engender public confidence and attract resources and support. We need staff who value their work and who in turn are valued by leaders who help them to know that they are valued. And we need board members who take governance seriously and who serve as links between and among sector and community leaders as they work together to share collective visions, to achieve organizational missions, and to serve the common good.

As a sector, in the future even more than today, the sector and its leaders must be diverse and ensure that inclusiveness becomes a fundamental habit of organizational life so that we can bring to bear all of ingenuity and all of our collective strength to serve, educate and lead our society.

INDEPENDENT SECTOR has an important role to play in our quest for effective future leadership, as it meets its immediate challenges for governmental, public and private support and resources.

This report outlines an agenda for the IS Board of Directors that complements the goals of the IS five-year program plan. We have identified three priorities for fostering the development of future leaders:

1. Recruiting talented, dedicated staff, guided by a commitment to inclusiveness as a integral part of organizational life;
2. Supporting and retaining effective staff, with special attention to individual professional development; and
3. Building diverse boards and developing the leadership potential of board members.

Recruitment
Organizations in the independent sector need professionals of the highest caliber who are committed to public service and who have the potential for leadership. Those arriving with diverse perspectives should find an organizational culture in which they can participate fully in the collective pursuit of the organization’s mission. Recruitment lays the groundwork for an inclusive organization that models the best values of society and well saves individuals and society.

Retention and Professional Development
A career of service in the sector brings special personal rewards. But sector staff and leaders also deserve fair and appropriate compensation and benefits, an adaptable work environment that suits multifaceted needs, a system of fair recognition and rewards, and ample opportunities for personal and professional growth and development. When our sector demonstrates sincere value of individual contributions to the whole, we will attract and retain the talent, energy, and ideas that are so important to our work and to our future.

Board Leadership
Board leadership is a key aspect of cultivating strong sector leadership for the future. When organizations make a concerted effort to be inclusive in board composition and to develop board skills and capacities, the results can be more effective governance, more enlightened and effective links to the multiple communities we serve and from which comes our support along with a better view of organizational vision and mission. An independent sector organization's board, like its staff, should model the pluralistic community it serves, while it takes responsibility for the organization's ultimate health and effectiveness.

Excerpted from the Executive Summary of the IS Taskforce on Future Leadership Report

Click here to download the full report (PDF)