Beside every well-organized nonprofit is an outstanding nonprofit leader. Our class collectively agreed that the Southern Tier Alternative Therapies (STAT) is a well-organized nonprofit organization. Last class, a classmate delivered a heartfelt testimony of her experience with STAT. Within her testimony, she stated that Catherine Markosky’s (STAT president) salary is around $35,000. She proclaimed that Markosky’s managerial skills could equate to a lucrative salary as a manager in the for-profit sector. This statement is the reality that most MPA students have come to know very well.
While we have chosen this field of ‘greater good’, Thomas J. Tierny’s The Nonprofit Sector’s Leadership Deficit suggests that this is not enough. Nonprofit managers are in high demand and the supply is low. Tierny stated that the nonprofit sector should attempt to expand their recruitment pool. Is this suggestion practical? How can the nonprofit sector recruit the Catherine Markoskys of the world from the for-profit sector? Markosky and other social entrepreneurs tend to credit a ‘personal-calling’ that led them to serve as leaders in their nonprofit organizations. As MPA students, we have made a similar personal and professional choice to serve as leaders in public service. Most of us are aware that the public service sector is not lucrative. In general, many people who enter the profession are forced to live a humble life. Therefore, how can the nonprofit sector persuade a business senior executive to consider a life of public service?
You raise some very important points, especially the salary comparison between for-profits and NPOs.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your question “how can the nonprofit sector persuade a business senior executive to consider a life of public service?” I wonder if the for-profit sector is the right place to look for leaders to persuade. With resurgent popularity of New Public Service, do for-profit leaders have the kind of personal values and tools necessary for the non-profit sector? During my studies for my undergraduate degree in Arts Management I (and my classmates) looked at how many arts organizations (both for profit and not-for profit) had leaders with art and art history backgrounds. They lacked some of the tools used by MBA’s to run an efficient business or organization, but they had a lot of experience with arts/culture and with artists. I think professionals from the for-profit business sector would have the same issues – lack of certain skills that would be useful in the world of NPOs.
I think the best place to look for future non-profit leaders is the non-profit sector itself, and especially those coming out of programs like ours where we have had to learn about issues affecting NPOs and the inter-connectedness of all three sectors and the community at large. Many of us have also had more experience serving the community directly.
With some individuals running NPOs earning six-figure incomes (and getting attention with that fact), I think the non-profit sector may have hard time convincing funders and the public of the importance of keeping good leaders through offering an appropriate salary. I think it’s very strange that in our society people are expected to do good for free, but are allowed to earn exorbitant sums through business practices that are not beneficial to the public at large in the long term. Finding out what an appropriate NPO CEO salary is what may be the challenge. Very few people are angered if they read that the CEO of Johnson and Johnson received over $23 million in 2010*, yet many of us in class were taken aback to learn that the Director of the New Hope Community received over $600,000. Whose job is harder? Who is more deserving?
*http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/03/johnson_johnson_lowered_ceo_wi.html