Leadership development is an integral component of any work that seeks to address long-standing structural barriers to sustainable change, according to a report last year from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
An analysis of grants from 2003-2012 showed that leadership development funding comprised just 0.9 percent of total dollars granted and 0.8 percent of total grants. By comparison, for-profit businesses routinely invest $129 per employee for leadership development every year, while the civic sector invests only $29 per employee. Grantmaking designed to achieve social justice remains an exception, with 3.9 percent of total grant dollars going to leadership development.
“Unless we can figure out what is behind the nonprofit world’s chronic underinvestment in leadership and turn things around, we will continue to overlook one of the most important ingredients of positive social change,” stated Ira Hirschfield, president of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, one of the report’s funders. “Investing in leadership doesn’t just deliver higher performance; it can also deliver a better, more equitable world.”
Leave a Reply