Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership

Episode 393: What Surprised Me Most as a New Nonprofit CEO (Sarah Norris) Episode Summary Plenty of capable people rule themselves out of the corner office because they are introverted, never planned to lead, or assume the job demands a personality they do not have. Sarah Norris, Chief Executive Officer of Crossnore Communities for Children in Crossnore, North Carolina, never set out to be a CEO, yet she has just completed her first year leading a century-old child welfare and mental health...

392: What Funders Are Seeing, Funding & Prioritizing Right Now (Clark Casteel, Hal Cato, Darrin Goss, Sr., Rhett Mabry) Episode Summary Most nonprofit leaders guess at a funder's real priorities until the rejection letter arrives. Recorded live from the Across State Lines webinar Patton moderated, this episode brings four voices at once: Clark Casteel (Danville Regional Foundation), Hal Cato (Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee), Darrin Goss, Sr. (Coastal Community Foundation), and Rhett M

Episode 391: Deeper, Not Bigger: How to Make the Case for Capacity (Jimmy McQuilkin) Episode Summary Most capital campaigns fund something new, a building, a wing, more seats. Jimmy McQuilkin, Founder and Executive Director of UrbanPromise Charlotte, built a six-million-dollar campaign to fund something nonprofit leaders rarely ask for: getting better. McQuilkin traces his path from a Teach For America classroom to a summer running UrbanPromise Honduras, and the 2013 leap that became UrbanP...

Episode 390: How People Work: 4 Things Every Nonprofit Leader Should Know (Nancy Bacon) Episode Summary Most nonprofit leaders assume that passion is enough, that a motivated team is simply a team that cares, and that a performance problem is a training problem. Nancy Bacon, Founder of Nancy Bacon Consulting and co-founder of the Nonprofit Learning Center in Seattle, spent this conversation taking that apart, one piece of research at a time. She walks through self-determination theory’s thr...

Episode 389: How to Stop Being the Invisible Sector (Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle) Episode Summary Ask a nonprofit leader about advocacy and you will usually hear one of two things: there is no time for it, or it is lobbying and therefore off limits. Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle, Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Charlottesville, Virginia, takes both apart. Advocacy, she argues, is simply legislative education, and the line that actually matters is a bill. If you are pushing ...

Episode 388: Why Half of Your Week Isn't in Your Job Description (Cyril Jefferson) Episode Summary Most nonprofit leaders can feel that the week has gotten away from them, but very few can prove it, which makes the conversation with a board sound like complaining rather than evidence. Cyril Jefferson, Mayor of High Point, North Carolina, spent years on the other side of that problem as a consultant, and his fix is a four-week time audit: log every task in a spreadsheet as you do it, add a r...