Dan Cardinali feels ready to modernize Independent Sector.
During the dozen years he’s led Communities in Schools, he transformed the nonprofit with a multiyear effort to improve programs using data and a new philosophy that rejected restricted grants that didn’t fully meet its needs.
And now he’s ready to bring that kind of big-picture thinking to Independent Sector.
“I’m excited to engage in that process again,” he says. “I see there are immense opportunities to promote the common good.”
Mr. Cardinali, age 50, was named Tuesday to lead the coalition of charities and foundations. He will have big shoes to fill when he takes over in July. He follows Diana Aviv, an icon whose 12-year tenure was marked by her passionate defense of charitable tax deductions and her efforts to thwart greater regulatory control over nonprofits. Ms. Aviv also launched a series of conversations with nonprofits and foundations designed to help discern the future of nonprofits.
“The Independent Sector board has wisely selected a great innovator, skilled communicator, and all around superb leader,” Ms. Aviv said through a spokesman. “With Dan at the helm, Independent Sector will soar.”
Many nonprofit leaders expressed enthusiasm — and some surprise — at Independent Sector’s decision to hire Mr. Cardinali. Irv Katz, interim chief executive of National Human Services Assembly, believes the association has found a worthy successor and someone who “represents a new generation.”
He encouraged Mr. Cardinali to expand the scope of the organization beyond hosting its annual conference and protecting charitable tax-deduction legislation.
And he would like to see Mr. Cardinali broaden Independent Sector’s role to encompass civic society more generally.
International Perspective
After earning a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a master’s degree in philosophy from Fordham University, Mr. Cardinali ran an international leadership-development program for the nonprofit Partners of the Americas.
A former community organizer in Mexico and one-time fellow at a Jesuit research institute, he serves on the boards of Independent Sector, America’s Promise Alliance, and Child Trends. He was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics in 2011 and was an Annie E. Casey Children and Family Fellow in 2007.
Mr. Cardinali said he sought the top job at Independent Sector because he was moved by the strategic-planning process it recently undertook, which resulted in the “Threads” conversations in 10 cities, where nonprofits and foundations aired their concerns, offered ideas, and learned about nine trends Independent Sector identified as shaping the future of their work.
“It was thoughtful and honest and asked the really difficult strategic questions,” he said. “What was really enticing to me was that the Independent Sector board and staff made a commitment to being engaged with local communities, grounding their own thinking in ongoing connectedness to diverse leaders.”
Legacy of Evaluation
Communities In Schools is a federated network of 161 independently run nonprofits in 25 states and Washington, D.C. Mr. Cardinali, who joined the organization in 1999 and assumed the top job in 2004, earned $392,310 in total compensation during its fiscal year 2013-14, according to its most recently available Form 990.
Mr. Cardinali’s deepest imprint on the nonprofit was the use of data to improve its programs, says Debra Montanino, chief strategy officer. She says her boss is driven by the conviction that at-risk children deserve nothing less than the best.
“His biggest legacy is taking a network of passionate people who love kids and turning that into a network of passionate people who love kids and do it in an evidence-based and impactful way,” she says.
During the 2000s, Mr. Cardinali spearheaded a seven-year campaign to improve the quality of the nonprofit’s programs, pouring nearly $50 million into research, technology, and training. He commissioned studies from third-party evaluators, which showed that the nonprofit’s work was “good, but we needed to get a lot better,” Mr. Cardinali says.
“I will say that that took courage,” Ms. Montanino says. “When you put yourself out there to a third-party evaluation, you have to deal with whatever you get as a result.”
The reforms enacted after the evaluations made Communities in Schools more effective, expanded its reach to serve more students, and improved their graduation rates, Mr. Cardinali says.
And the process turned the nonprofit into a “learning organization,” where “it’s okay to fail if you’re learning and growing and being as impact-oriented as we can be,” Ms. Montanino says.
Under Mr. Cardinali’s leadership, Communities in Schools also shifted away from restricted grants that didn’t fully align with its mission. Now its leaders work more closely with donors to design gifts that suit both parties. In 2015, almost 40 percent of the nonprofit’s $19 million in private support came from unrestricted grants.
New Tone
In addition to his devotion to data, another of Mr. Cardinali’s hallmarks is his commitment to collaboration, says Jatrice Martel Gaiter, executive vice president of Volunteers of America.
“Given the political trends in this election, the nonprofit sector is in for a fight: a fight for money, a fight for relevance, and a fight for contracts,” says Ms. Gaiter, who is also chair of the National Human Services Assembly board, where she has worked alongside Mr. Cardinali, a former board member. “In this kind of environment, there can be no lead standing alone. It has to be a team effort.”
Ms. Gaiter hopes that Mr. Cardinali will set a new tone for Independent Sector by building deep relationships with member nonprofits.
“The first thing Dan has to do, which Dan is very good at, is show he’s open to listen, collaborate, and allow other people to have good ideas,” she says. “He can’t just send pronouncements from the office. Get out, talk face-to-face, and listen.”
For his part, Mr. Cardinali says being “real partners” to nonprofits and the communities they serve is one of his top priorities.
Hopes for the Future
Nonprofit leaders already have plenty of other advice for Mr. Cardinali.
He should be both an enforcer who encourages best practices and a defender who combats unfair criticism of the sector, says Daniel Borochoff, president of nonprofit watchdog CharityWatch.
“There needs to be some leadership and a public voice to challenge bad actors or challenge reporting that doesn’t reflect an understanding of what is happening in the nonprofit sector,” Mr. Borochoff says.
He should speak for service providers and not “just genuflect to all of the donors,” Ms. Gaiter says.
He should cut through the clutter of buzzwords and promote the “distinctive values” of the charity world, said Elizabeth Boris, founding director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute.
Derrick Feldmann, president of the research and “social good” consulting firm Achieve, echoed Mr. Katz’s sentiments about the importance of expanding Independent Sector’s reach beyond its traditional bounds: “We live in a society today where there are so many options to do good, a lot of people besides 501(c)(3)s are working on complex social issues.”
Perhaps most pressing, said Jacob Harold, chief executive of GuideStar, is for Mr. Cardinali to address the questions raised by Independent Sector’s recent soul searching, the very process that encouraged Mr. Cardinali to take the reins.
“I think Dan’s challenge in this next phase is to start answering these questions and to begin putting forward a pretty proactive hypothesis,” Mr. Harold said. “It is quite a profound leadership challenge for Dan, but I feel like he is well positioned. Diana has positioned him well.”