Frankly, our sector is often pathetic when it come to
leadership development. Trustees think this is all about training for staff—and
often chief executives think spending money on themselves is selfish. We need
to get a grip on this. I was fascinated by an article I was sent by a colleague
which had an extract from an article
by Ira Hirschfield of the Evelyn and Walter Haas Foundation based in San
Francisco. I reproduce extracts here:
"Less than 1 percent. That’s the portion of overall
foundation giving that went to leadership development between 1992 and 2011.
Foundations ask a great deal of the organizations we
support—to strengthen community, meet urgent needs for services, solve complex
environmental problems, influence public policy, and build and sustain
movements for change. In short, we hope grantees will deliver transformational
results for the people and places they serve. So it’s striking how seldom we
back that up with funds to help organizations develop and strengthen the
ability of their leaders to meet those high expectations.
People are not born with everything it takes to manage
and motivate a team, build coalitions, and lead change—and are certainly not
born knowing how to be good board members. These are skills that current and
future leaders develop as they are doing actual work. Leaders who have the
opportunity to reflect on their strategies and hone their skills make better
choices, develop innovative solutions and forge stronger collaborations.
This is what leadership development is about—and to the
extent that foundations decide it is important and fund it, then we and our
grantees will be better positioned to achieve our goals for impact.
The private sector allocates billions of dollars to
leadership development because they know that skilled leaders are a powerful
investment. In light of the social sector’s relatively small investment, I
think it’s worth asking whether we are capitalizing leadership effectively.
At the Haas, Jr. Fund, we view investment in leadership
as a core strategy to accelerate our foundation’s impact. An important question
we ask ourselves is: What kind of leadership is needed at the individual, organizational,
or network level to achieve our program priorities, and how can we invest in
that?
For example, to advance the foundation’s goal of
establishing gay marriage rights, we allocate substantial funding specifically
to strengthening the leadership capacity of individuals and organizations
central to the movement. We also partner with the Arcus Foundation and Gil
Foundation to bring more diversity to the LBGT movement, supporting an
initiative to help talented people of color advance into senior leadership
roles—the Pipeline Project.
Given limited grantmaking resources and competing
priorities, it’s reasonable to probe the added value of investing in
leadership. Evaluation is one way to address this; for example, we did a formal
evaluation of our Flexible Leadership Awards that showed how the program
boosted impact.
It’s also important to hear what grantee leaders
themselves have to say to funders on the matter. Rea Carey, executive director
of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, explains: “It’s like adding protein
powder to your other grants. If you want your other grants to be successful—if
you want your grantees to do the best job in meeting their deliverables and
moving the ball forward in their movements—you have to invest in leadership development.”
I hope their reflections will inspire more of us to
explore what lies behind philanthropy’s chronic underinvestment in leadership
and see new possibilities. Investing in leadership doesn’t just deliver higher
performance; it can also deliver a better, more equitable world."
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