Breakthrough Nonprofit Leadership

What makes a great nonprofit leader? Are there common traits that are shared among those who are able to set their organizations apart and deliver consistently outstanding results? In a recent Stanford Social Innovation review article a group of researchers say these leaders who deliver breakthrough results have four key principle attributes in common:

PRINCIPLE 1: Costs of Serving Should Always Decline
“…every organization—whether for-profit or nonprofit—that accumulates experience by making the same product, offering the same service, or deploying the same function should be able to reduce the cost per unit (in constant dollars) of its offering.”

PRINCIPLE 2: Market Position Determines Your Options
“A simple yet effective way to measure an organization’s market position is a gauge called relative market share (RMS), which in the nonprofit sector is usually defined as the percentage of potential clients an organization is serving.”

PRINCIPLE 3: Clients and Funding Pools Don’t Stand Still
“A simple yet effective way to measure an organization’s market position is a gauge called relative market share (RMS), which in the nonprofit sector is usually defined as the percentage of potential clients an organization is serving.”

PRINCIPLE 4: Simplicity Gets Results
“As customer needs and profit and funding pools change, organizations often change with them, offering new products and services to new groups of customers or in new geographies. When organizations make these changes they increase the likelihood that they will drift away from their mission or become too complex—potentially costly mistakes for nonprofits and for-profits alike. To avoid this problem, organizations should find ways to simplify their operations and focus.”

These principles seem like good indicators of high performing managers and organizations alike. Donors would be wise to consider such criteria when contemplating their philanthropic strategies. If the donor’s desire is to fund high-performing nonprofits, these may be some of the characteristics to look for.

Caroline Heine