By Nick Grono, CEO of The Freedom Fund and author of ‘How to Lead Nonprofits: Turning Purpose Into Impact to Change the World’.
Stepping into the CEO role for the first time is daunting, whether at a start-up nonprofit or a big, well-established charity. The job becomes only marginally less daunting after you have been leading for a while. You are always hugely aware of all the responsibility that comes with leadership: to inspire staff and other key stakeholders with your vision for the organisation; raise enough funding to keep the doors open and, hopefully, grow; manage sometimes tricky board and staff dynamics; design and implement the strategy; and deliver impact. For me, the heaviest burden is the recognition that if I fail, those we serve—for the Freedom Fund, some of the world’s most vulnerable people—will likely not get the support they desperately need, and staff may be out of a job. The buck always stops with the CEO.
So, let’s assume you are a recently appointed CEO. You have a torrent of questions rushing through your mind about how to be the best leader you can be—and an overflowing inbox. What should you prioritise?
The key priorities in my experience, and arising from my discussions with other leaders, are as follows.
Hold the vision
You should start with purpose. As the CEO, you have the responsibility to articulate the purpose and aspirations of your organisation and to inspire and motivate all your key stakeholders—from staff to donors to peer organisations. You have the advantage (and responsibility) to look over the horizon in a way that other staff—focused more on the day-to-day activities—do not. As the lead spokesperson for the organisation, you can convey clearly and powerfully the change you wish to see and how your organization will contribute to that change through its programs and activities. You can inspire your team by showing them how their jobs fit into the shared vision of change. Of course, others in the organisation can also and should speak powerfully to that vision, as it is counterproductive for the CEO to not make room for other colleagues to be public representatives for your cause.
Done well, your clear-eyed and principled commitment to this vision is a powerful tool for motivating staff, a key element of building culture, and a compelling way to engage those who are funding the organisation, or who may wish to, given their desire to ensure they are contributing their resources to something that matters.
Lead on strategy
In addition to holding the vision, the CEO needs to oversee the organisation’s strategy, as it is the template that determines how your nonprofit achieves its mission and impact. Ultimately, strategy requires decisions on critical issues like your organization’s impact goals, the trade-offs to achieve them, and the theory of change, so the CEO needs to be closely involved. The CEO is best placed to assess the consequences of these decisions on the nonprofit’s work and carries responsibility for them.
Invest in culture
Next comes people. The CEO must focus on the organisation’s culture, particularly in building an inclusive and impact-focused culture. The starting point is to model the behaviors that help create that culture. As CEO, you need to be conscious that everyone closely observes what you say and do. You should use this to reinforce the behaviors you want to see. For example, if you admit mistakes, it makes it much easier for others to do so; if you repeatedly articulate the importance of focusing on the needs of those you serve, others will internalize this; and so on. It’s particularly important for nonprofit CEOs to facilitate a culture of psychological safety across the organisation and within internal teams. “Psychological safety” here means a culture that encourages candor and openness. You also need to ensure that the individuals and communities you serve are centered in your work. This can be best done by building these behaviors (i.e, psychological safety and centering those you serve) into your culture.
Focus on the team
You can’t do it all alone, and you shouldn’t try. This can be a difficult lesson for new CEOs to internalize. Yet, the most effective leaders work closely with their teams. Doing this well is a superpower. The team can be your senior leadership team or, if you are a small nonprofit, the team of all your staff—or some other formulation. Other members of the team will know more about many things than you do. Given the space and encouragement, they will challenge your views and assumptions, and the end result will be better decisions.
Recruit and retain the right people
Another key leadership responsibility is ensuring you have the right people in the organisation. This requires effective recruitment and, perhaps more importantly, letting go of staff who do not perform or work effectively with colleagues despite support. New CEOs, and even experienced ones, spend inordinate amounts of time trying to decide whether to fire problematic staff and, almost invariably, when they finally do let go of those staff they will wonder why they didn’t act earlier, not least because of the burden placed by problematic staff on their colleagues and the culture.
Work effectively with your board
Boards have the responsibility to hire and fire the CEO and, more broadly, to govern the organisation, so, by definition, the board should be a priority for the CEO. A good board will provide high-level support for the CEO while holding them accountable for the organisation’s performance. A dysfunctional board will meddle in issues of management, perhaps fight within itself, and demand an undue amount of the CEO’s time. The CEO’s objective is to cultivate an effective and functional board. While the board itself will ensure whether it operates effectively, all CEOs should prioritize investing in relationships with individual board members. The potential consequences of board dysfunction cannot be overstated.
Commit to fundraising
CEOs need to lean into fundraising. Many CEOs, and particularly new ones, struggle with this. But funding won’t flow if the CEO doesn’t prioritize mobilizing it. To my mind, fundraising is one of the most important priorities of the CEO because, without the requisite funding, your organisation won’t be nearly as impactful as it should be, regardless of the power of its cause and people.
