Andrew Simon, the Chronicle’s editor-in-chief, offers a sneak peek at what’s in each new issue. Available exclusively to subscribers, this newsletter gives you perspective on the most important trends and developments we’re following — as well as background on how we report and analyze key issues in the nonprofit world. Delivered once a month. (Subscribers only.)
Subject: Loving but Leaving Nonprofit Leadership Jobs: An Exclusive Chronicle Survey
Dear Subscriber,
Watching college presidents deal with campus protests over the Israel-Hamas War, it’s hard not to think about the bigger questions of nonprofit leadership. What does it mean these days to provide moral and emotional support to people who hold widely divergent views — and protect an institution and the people it serves from threats to physical and financial security?
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Dear Subscriber,
As college presidents deal with campus protests over the Israel-Hamas War, it’s hard not to think about the bigger questions of nonprofit leadership. What does it mean these days to provide moral and emotional support to people who hold widely divergent views — and protect an institution and the people it serves from threats to physical and financial security?
Nearly every CEO has had to grapple with some variation of those concerns, albeit usually away from the glare of television cameras and members of Congress.
That doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. That’s what CEOs told the Chronicle in our first-ever survey of nonprofit leaders.
While nearly all CEOs said they loved their jobs, they also made clear the relentless demands take a toll. While CEOs have long stressed out over fundraising and working with their boards, they now say they must increasingly contend with another issue: how to deal with the country’s divisions over politics, race, and culture.
Chong-Hao Fu, head of Leading Educators, a nonprofit focused on helping schools rethink their approach to professional development, told our senior editor, Ben Gose, “The nonprofit CEO job is strange. We effectively have to be able to walk and talk with teachers and students and understand the pressures that teachers are facing. And we also have to walk and talk with billionaires and help them make the best possible investments for social impact.”
As Fu juggles an array of duties, he said, “I am constantly asking myself whether I’m still the right person for the job. It’s a demanding job, and it’s also a job where you have to have the fire for it.”
Fu is not the only one who regularly thinks about whether he’s the right person for the top job. One third of leaders told us they plan to leave their jobs in the next two years — and more than one fifth say they will probably leave the nonprofit world altogether.
What’s keeping more people from fleeing, though, are smart coping strategies. Jordan Shenker, head of the Peninsula Community Center, is making staff retention a major priority — because the search for talent has become so draining.
He now leads regular staff-development sessions for midlevel executives at his organization, teaching them to set goals and delegate. “When I can say to somebody, ‘Look, we’re a place that really invests in the development of our people,’ that matters.”
Learn More
Ben will lead a discussion to follow up on all the ideas we uncovered in the survey. He’ll be joined by Fu and Shenker, plus Tara Huffman, a top official of BoardSource. Sign up now so you can join them on May 14 at 2 p.m. Eastern.
Plus, we are holding a webinar on Thursday that focuses on one of the biggest pain points the survey uncovered: the challenge of enlisting boards in fundraising. We’ll show you how savvy nonprofits have mastered that skill May 9 at 2 p.m. Eastern.
SaraHerschander visited a New York Girl Scout troop that serves a Manhattan shelter for asylum-seeking families. It is one of many nonprofits that have eagerly jumped in to aid the massive wave of immigrants in New York and beyond. The troop has its origins in helping girls from families that lack housing — it was founded by a mother who was living in a shelter. Still, it knew it was taking a risk, including a potential backlash from donors, but so far it has not encountered resistance. What’s more, the work to help immigrant girls has attracted substantial support from grant makers.
Alex Daniels profiles Brenda Solórzano, the new head of the California Endowment, who will take over for Robert Ross, who has headed the endowment since 2000. Solórzano brings her history as an early architect of trust-based philanthropy and a veteran of health-care grant making.
Gerry Roll, founder-in-residence of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, offers an innovative approach to regulating donor-advised funds. Her goal is to create a separate policy for community foundations, one that would offer incentives that reward them — and the donors who support them — for distributing dollars to meet local needs and also give them preferences for government funding. Too much of the talk about DAF regulation, she says, has failed to recognize that local funds are very different from national commercial funds like those created by Fidelity and Schwab.
Craig Kennedy, a Chronicle columnist and former foundation CEO, examined the salaries of leaders of the biggest philanthropies and wonders why so few regulators and journalists are raising questions about pay that in many cases exceeds $1 million annually.
Learn More From the Chronicle
The best way to keep up with all the offerings from the Chronicle is to sign up for our Philanthropy Todaynewsletter. You’ll get updates every day about new items we have posted, plus a guide to what else you need to know fromreporting by other news organizations.
And we have just added a new edition of Philanthropy Today, delivered to your inbox every Thursday afternoon, that will include updates about the Commons, our new project that examines how philanthropy and nonprofits can best bring Americans together in a time of hyperpolarization.
Among the latest items we’ve highlighted in the Commons are essays from three people critiquing the work philanthropy has done with the aim of uniting people:
Sam Daley-Harris on how nonprofits embrace a faux advocacy that robs them of influence
Daniel Stid on grant makers as “shadow partisans” who push our politics to the extremes
Plus, we looked at the challenges of the campus protests as commencement season is upon us — all while donor recruitment at universities is at a high.
A Leadership Shift at the Chronicle
I was probably the closest reader of the results of our CEO survey because with this issue, I am handing the editor-in-chief role to Andrew Simon — and that move allows me to fully focus on leading the Chronicle as it embarks on its second year as an independent nonprofit journalism organization.
Let me take this opportunity to thank you for being a loyal subscriber. You enable members of our newsroom to devote their days to uncovering news, insights, solutions, and ideas that can help you do your job — and to help thousands and thousands of other changemakers like you across the United States.
Andrew and I — along with others on our team — will do all we can to ensure the Chronicle expands its work to serve you well, and we always welcome your ideas and feedback.
Stacy Palmer is chief executive of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and has overseen the organization’s transition as it became an independent nonprofit in April 2023.