10 principles of transformational nonprofit leadership

Earlier this year I was invited to provide inspirational remarks for a virtual fundraising skillshare organized by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, for all colleagues in the Americas, including the team at USA for UNHCR where I’m CEO. 

I prepared a talk that would meet the needs of a very diverse and high-performing group of colleagues — fundraisers, by and large, from across the Americas. A group where multiple languages are spoken. Where approaches to resource mobilization are as unique as the contexts in which they’re applied. Where leadership is practiced and modeled at all different levels — government, religious, cultural, professional —in all different ways and manners. 

I felt good about the talk I delivered (and the incredible team at USA for UNHCR showed up, had my back and supported me throughout my remarks!) and I wanted to turn it into a set of leadership ideas for all of you, my LinkedIn community.  

Now, what follows are not mandates, rules or edicts — they’re ideas, concepts and reflections that have served me well in my own leadership journey, and I hope they will do the same for you.

1. Talk about meeting their needs, not yours.

Your stakeholders are not motivated by your budget crisis. Your supporters want to understand how you are going to connect their values and their philanthropy with needs “on the ground” — the needs that you are meeting. Hat tip to Kay Sprinkel Grace for teaching me this one very early in my career.

2. Know your values and describe how they guide you.  

Think about the values that guide you most in your work. Choose three to five of them and be able to tell a story of how they show up in your day-to-day life and how they help guide the choices that you make. In my case, I talk a lot about curiosity, agility and optimism, and how they guide my leadership; for example, last year I wrote about getting curious about providing refugees hope away from home. 

By the way, you don't have to be at a leadership level to have leadership values. You are exerting and exercising leadership all the time, whether it's on a small project, vis-a-vis the budget you have authority over, or in the donor relationship that you're managing. It’s never too early in your career to start practicing this one.

3. Develop future and fellow leaders.

Great leaders don’t just develop strategies and plans and products; they develop people. Again, you don’t need to be a leader at the most senior levels of the organization to make a commitment to helping others grow. As a leader at any level, you strengthen your own leadership when you cultivate a habit of looking around and thinking about how you can help develop, invest in and mentor fellow and future leader colleagues around you.

4. Make expectations hyper-clear.

Make the giving and receiving of feedback in real time a normal part of everyday life in your organization. There’s no magic formula for this; the only way you get better at it is by doing it. And you have to really walk the walk: After my last performance review with the USA for UNHCR board, for example, I shared the top lines with the full staff in an email; I wanted to model that no one is above receiving feedback.

Giving feedback in real time means that instead of saying, “Six months ago, you missed this deadline, and I'm just now deciding to tell you about it,” try to build a habit of saying something in the moment. For example, you might say, “You know, you missed a deadline this week in a way that really threw us off. What do we need to do to make that not happen next time?” 

5. Prioritize and model effective communication. 

If you don't practice being in consistent and open communication with people, then when the hard stuff comes, you don't have the well-grooved pathways that allow you to address difficult things smoothly. Practicing communication as a leader includes how you communicate online.

Several years ago I decided to start sharing leadership reflections on LinkedIn. Full disclosure, I get help with this!  But it’s still an effort. Sometimes I'm nervous about what I post. Sometimes I'm not sure my video reflections will resonate with people — but it's nice to jump off the high dive every once in a while and see if your ideas are landing where you want them to.

So when you see me on LinkedIn, what you’re seeing is me practicing and modeling communication. And as a result, others in my organization have gotten more interested in LinkedIn, which means more people amplifying our work and their own leadership insights through their networks. 

6. Find reasons to celebrate.

Look for things team members are doing well, good news from the field, signs of hope — and amplify them on purpose. I don't mean that being constructive and critical is a bad thing or that you shouldn't do it. But I do urge you, as part of your leadership, to maintain a balance between the two — and lean toward authentic celebration.

7. Try new things.

It’s your responsibility as a leader to meet the moment and, in our fast-changing world, that means having the imagination and vision to find new ways of navigating ever-emerging complexities. At USA for UNHCR, for example, we just finished a strategic planning process with really bold ambitions (more on the Plan soon!). We’ve never done this before, but we believe it’s what’s needed to face the increasing number of crises around the world that are forcing people to flee their homes.

In other words: Be courageous and live with the consequences.  

8. Build in pockets of stillness.

These pockets of stillness are going to look really different for each of you. But I want you to do them. I want you to do them as part of your work day. I want you to think about once a week, building in a 30-minute block of time for reflection and writing some big ideas down. When we create this space in our schedules, we connect to ourselves, and only through a strong connection to self can we connect effectively with others.

I have all sorts of ways that I create these pockets. One is to put blocks on my calendar that say “desk time” or “read time.” I also take walks with my dog — and I don't mean early morning, vigorous exercise walks; I mean evening walks where I'm kind of ambling a bit, and maybe listening to music or a podcast and trying to reflect on the day and the week.

9. Cultivate optimism.

I recently heard someone observe that people in our sector are lucky, because we get to spend our daylight hours addressing the injustice and suffering we encounter in the news. I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but I think it’s true. Feel proud of the work you do — and remember the unique position you’re in to share impact stories offering hope, and to offer people pathways to help.

10. Remember that gifts flow through you, not to you.

To bring things full circle, I’ll end with another piece of (fundraising and leadership) wisdom from Kay Sprinkel Grace: When it comes to the money we raise for our organizations, we are "custodians" of that wealth for a short period of time before we channel it in ways that improve and even save people’s lives. 

I like this idea of being a channel. As leaders, so much of our role is about holding space for money and strategies and interpersonal support to flow through, in service of a shared mission. At the end of the day, it’s not about us, though of course, paradoxically, it’s all about us, and our ability to be of service.