"For justice-centered leaders, there is a stubborn dichotomy between our genuine commitment to equity, inclusion, and alignment in our organizations on the one hand, and our continuing self-diagnosis of high levels of misalignment, conflict, and turnover on the other. Three years after Maurice Mitchell's seminal piece, " Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis," rang the alarm of "urgent concerns about the internal workings of progressive spaces," the current discourse suggests that the needle has not moved much."
"Building Movement Project's report, The Push and Pull: Declining Interest in Nonprofit Leadership found not only a decline in interest in executive leadership but also that those who are interested in leadership are motivated by fixing what they see as not working: "These trends suggest a 'push' into leadership roles to ameliorate the issues nonprofit staff have experienced, rather than a 'pull' into these roles on their merit.""
"Even more visceral is writing by leaders themselves. In "Three Patterns Disrupting Nonprofit Culture and Sustainability," veteran fundraising and organizational executive Sonya Shields recently wrote: "We are in a time where modern tribalism, empathy without discernment, and cancel culture are shaping nonprofit workplaces more than values. Nonprofits are using language of equity and justice while replicating dynamics that silence truth, punish leadership, fracture trust, and dehumanize people who have helped to build nonprofits for years.""
Justice-centered leaders consistently confront a gap between stated commitments to equity, inclusion, and organizational alignment and persistent internal problems like misalignment, conflict, and turnover. Data from Building Movement Project shows declining interest in executive nonprofit leadership, with many prospective leaders motivated by a desire to fix dysfunctional systems rather than being attracted by the roles themselves. Leaders report damaging workplace dynamics such as modern tribalism, uncritical empathy, and cancel culture that undermine values, silence truth, punish leadership, fracture trust, and dehumanize long-term contributors. Leadership remains strained despite adoption of shared leadership models, hybrid work, and other wellbeing-focused practices.
Read at Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]