No Longer Lonely at the Top: A Growing Number of Nonprofits Hire Co-CEOs

The Project for Public Spaces was looking for stability when its interim executive director made plans to depart in early 2022. But the two top internal candidates weren’t sure they wanted the job — unless they could share it.

Kelly Verel, who headed a program supporting local farmers markets, and Nate Storring, then communications director at the Brooklyn-based nonprofit, proposed to the charity’s board that it hire them both — as co-executive directors. The board went for it.

“Kelly and I decided that we wanted to step into this position, but we only wanted to do it together,” Storring says. “Neither one of us would have done it alone.”

The hiring of co-CEOs is increasing at nonprofits, driven by broader trends that have swept the charity world in recent years, including a growing interest in work-life balance and boards seeking more diverse leaders. Some groups say that nonprofit leadership has become so complicated that it’s hard to find the necessary CEO skill set in just one person.

“There’s so much pressure on executive directors to be expert in everything,” Verel says. “When you have a shared model like this, you have to be confident in everything and make decisions, but you don’t have to be expert in everything. Nate and I bring different skill sets — he has more of a communications background; I have more of programs background. Together we create a stronger leadership model than just one person who has climbed the ropes.”

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Bianca Anderson, co-CEO of ProInspire, which helps charities strengthen leadership focused on racial equity, says many of the groups it works with are seeing similar requests: CEO candidates who don’t want to step into the job alone.

Even as charities search for more people of color and women to serve in leadership positions, many of those candidates say they must weigh the prospect of a promotion against other priorities, including caring for children or elderly parents.

“Many Black women are caregivers — they have families and other things outside of work,” says Anderson, who identifies as Black Afro Latina. “These CEO roles, however gratifying, can also be very depleting. People are saying: ‘I want to do this in partnership.’”

Frances Kunreuther, co-executive director of the Building Movement Project, an organization that works to improve social-change leadership, says that as the nonprofit world continues to grapple with the Great Resignation, it needs to explore ways to make top jobs more attractive to prospective leaders — including shared CEO positions.

“I’m not surprised we’re seeing more of it,” Kunreuther says. “If we’re worried about younger people not wanting to take on leadership roles in nonprofits, we need to start thinking about alternatives.”

Kunreuther says she and co-director Sean Thomas-Breitfield often plot strategy over walks to get coffee, but they’re not afraid to disagree in front of staff members — or even donors.

“We had a funny experience when we were disagreeing in front of one funder,” Kunreuther says. “He looked at us and said, ‘It’s so refreshing to see you go back and forth.’ Another opinion helps us do the work — that’s the real motivation.”

A Healthier Way to Work

Shared positions may look attractive to the current crop of CEO candidates who witnessed how exhausted their predecessors were during the pandemic.

Julia Arroyo, co-executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center, a California charity that provides support to low-income young women and trans youth, says she watched the prior executive director “acting almost as Superwoman” — working from 5 a.m. into the night and weekends.

“It seemed like the healthiest way to do this work was to have another person inside of it,” Arroyo says.

Arroyo and Abigail Richards were appointed co-executive directors a year ago. They say their different backgrounds and skill sets result in more effective leadership for the organization than either one of them alone could provide.

Arroyo, whose heritage is Mexican and Filipino, is outgoing, handles statewide policy and advocacy, and runs the Bay Area operations. Richards, a Gambian American, is detail oriented, handles fundraising and finances, and oversees operations in Southern California.

“If I fall short, Abigail comes in strong,” Arroyo says. “Our different styles complement each other so well.”

Richards says that, like Arroyo, she learned how lonely the top job can be from the previous executive director. “You can do everything right, and when one thing goes wrong, it’s on you,” Richards says. “Having that person to lean on and cry with — it’s been a blessing. I can’t imagine having to sit in a dark room by myself.”

Arroyo says the leadership structure was especially helpful last spring, when a friend, a transgender man who had served the charity in San Francisco as a volunteer community organizer, was killed by a Walgreens security officer during an alleged shoplifting. Media calls were pouring in to Arroyo even as she needed to grieve; Richards stepped in to help.

“I felt so held by Abigail even through the hardest pieces of it,’ Arroyo says. “It was just really heavy.”

A Chance to Build Relationships

The evidence for the increasing prevalence of co-CEOs at nonprofits is mostly anecdotal for now, with a few case studies but no in-depth studies to document either its popularity or effectiveness. But the model has worked in the for-profit sector: A 2022 study of 87 for-profit corporations published in the Harvard Business Review found that companies with co-CEOs produced more value for shareholders than peer companies.

TechSoup, which provides technology systems and assistance to charities around the world, is a noteworthy success in the nonprofit world. TechSoup had three co-CEOs from about 2007 to 2012 — a visionary founder, a tech expert, and Rebecca Masisak, who had joined the charity from the corporate world. They supervised a rapid expansion of TechSoup, which went from serving 10 countries in 2007 to nearly 200 by 2012, and a doubling of its budget, to $30 million, over the same period.

“The three of us each brought something important that helped to take the organization to the next stage,” says Masisak, who has been the charity’s sole CEO for the past decade.

Some larger organizations are turning to co-CEOs — often for a transitional period — as they seek more diverse leadership that better reflects their current programming and focus. The shared-leadership approach can help first-time CEOs become more acquainted with board members, important donors, and new responsibilities before stepping out on their own, experts say. Many first-time leaders of color at historically white organizations encounter pushback from boards and fundraising challenges. Starting out as co-CEOs, the thinking goes, could help reduce that.

In the past decade, Greenpeace has increasingly emphasized environmental justice — the fight to ensure that all people have equal access to a healthy and safe environment regardless of race, ethnicity, or income. In 2021, Greenpeace promoted Ebony Twilley Martin, who helped drive that strategy, to co-executive director.

Twilley Martin became the organization’s sole executive director this April after her co-leader, Annie Leonard, stepped down. Greenpeace, which was founded in 1971, says it believes Twilley Martin is the first-ever Black woman leader at one of the nation’s “legacy” environmental organizations — meaning those founded more than a generation ago.

Jakada Imani, chair of Greenpeace’s board, says the move to more diverse leadership has been accompanied by a revamping of the board. Five years ago, most of the board was white and over age 60; now it’s overwhelmingly composed of people of color, and Imani, at age 50, is among its oldest members.

“We’re remaking the organization in the image of the country,” Imani says. “That’s what it’s going to take to win in this country.”

At New Profit, a Boston-based venture-philanthropy organization once known for helping high-performing charities expand to new areas, much of the focus in recent years has shifted to supporting Black and Latine-led organizations in communities of color. Tulaine Montgomery, who is Black and the architect of that strategy, was named co-CEO alongside New Profit founder Vanessa Kirsch, who is white, in 2021. In July, Montgomery became the sole CEO.

The two-year co-CEO stint gave Montgomery a chance to gain experience in some operations she previously hadn’t worked in, including finance, and it also gave Kirsch, New Profit’s founder, the opportunity to help Montgomery forge relationships with donors.

“Whether you’re a person of color or a white person, after a leadership transition, an organization tends to flatline in growth for a period of time,” says Kirsch, who will remain at the charity as a senior partner. “The new leader has to build relationships —relationships are really all you’ve got in the nonprofit sector.”

‘There Is No Perfect Person’

For some charities, improved fundraising is one reason to stick with co-CEOs for the long term. In June, Common Future, a national organization that advances racial and economic equity through community efforts, replaced its departing CEO with three co-CEOs, all women. They come from different backgrounds and bring different strengths — Sandhya Nakhasi, from a second-generation South Asian family, has an investing and finance background; Jennifer Njuguna, a Black woman and lawyer who was part of the first generation of her family to attend college, oversees operations; and Jessica Feingold, a white woman who identifies as queer, handles communications and fundraising.

Common Future

“One person may not resonate with a given funder, but there are three of us,” Nakhasi says. “We use that to our advantage — not in a manipulative way, but in a way that allows our work to move forward. The three of us have different experiences that allow us to ‘show up’ in different conversations.”

Not everyone is convinced that co-CEOs are the best approach. Ericka Miller, president of the executive-search firm Isaacson Miller, says she’s not surprised that charities are having trouble finding ideal candidates, given the high expectations in 2023. She says nonprofits want CEO candidates who are thought leaders and effective fundraisers, able to manage employees in hybrid or remote working environments, adept at using social media, and committed to diversity and inclusion.

But instead of hiring two CEOs to cover all those bases, Miller and her firm suggest hiring the best single candidate and building a strong executive suite around that person.

“There’s a natural desire to find the perfect person,” Miller says. “There is no perfect person — but there will be an excellent person for the role, who then needs to build a team around them to ensure the organization’s success.”

The problem with co-CEOs, Miller says, is that it can be challenging for two or more leaders to be 100 percent aligned both internally and externally. If they’re not, the staff is in the awkward position of trying to figure out whom to listen to, and potential donors may view disagreements at the top of the organization as a reason to stay away.

Miller does see some advantages to the co-CEO approach, however. Co-CEOs are likely to give each other honest feedback — unlike a subordinate who may sugarcoat things to please the CEO. She also points out that the shared-leadership structure builds in a natural successor should one CEO leave.

Potential Confusion

Experts say boards need to be aware of the potential drawbacks of shared leadership before they commit. It’s a given that a co-CEO structure will lead to slower decision making, says Mandi J. Stewart, an associate professor at North Carolina State University who studies nonprofit leadership. The other risk with two chief executives is even worse — bitter leadership disputes that prove difficult to resolve.

“It’s the calamity of doubles tennis — nobody swings or everybody swings,” Stewart says. “That can be the challenge of it.”

Even in transitional situations, having two CEOs can leave employees, donors, and other constituents perplexed. Jed Sundwall, the CEO of Radiant Earth, a nonprofit that works to expand the use of Earth-science data to address climate change and support conservation, served as co-CEO alongside his predecessor for two months after he joined the organization in September 2022.

The outgoing CEO helped Sundwall get settled, but near the end of the transition, Sundwall says, it became increasingly unclear exactly who was in charge. Who should sign agreements? Who should the staff listen to? Employers and funders were also confused.

“It was palpable,” Sundwall says. “It was a thing for a moment.”

He believes any charity appointing permanent co-CEOs is asking for problems. “You want a single leader who is responsible for what’s happening in the organization,” Sundwall says. “Organizations are already prone to politics, and if you have the capacity to do that at the top, that’s no good. That’s the point of having a chief executive.”

Advocates for shared leadership say slower decision making is often better decision making. ProInspire’s two CEOs, Anderson and Monisha Kapila, say they’ll often spend weeks making a decision, consulting not just each other but also additional workers in the office.

“We’ve dealt with difficult decisions,” Kapila says. “We listen, and we talk through options. Our decisions together have been much better than when I was sole CEO.”

Many charities using the co-CEO model also advocate for greater equity and inclusion. For those organizations, the co-CEO structure is a way to demonstrate at the highest level that power should be dispersed.

“We talk about sharing and shifting power,” says Njuguna, one of the three CEOs at Common Future. “This is a way to bring that value to life.”