Originally posted November 2006.

For nearly 100 years, the Boys & Girls Club movement has been serving youth from disadvantaged circumstances in communities across the nation, and more recently in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and on international military bases. Although one of the most successful youth-serving organizations anywhere in the world, Boys & Girls Clubs is anything but content to sit on its laurels. The organization regularly makes a concerted effort to improve operations and take steps to ensure it is delivering high quality programs to the more than 4.4 million youngsters whose lives are touched each year.

As an example, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BCGA) recently unveiled its new Executive Leadership Development Program, an ambitious project to assess and enhance the leadership and management skills of local organizations’ chief professional officers. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation is supporting this project as part of an $8 million grant it made to BCGA in December. In the interview that follows, Roxanne Spillett , BGCA president, discusses the importance of finding and developing quality leaders and the role of the organization’s Executive Leadership Development Program in helping BCGA achieve its long-term vision and goals.

What prompted Boys & Girls Clubs of America to undertake this leadership development effort?

Roxanne Spillett : BGCA has grown very rapidly over the past 10 years. Since 1995, we have added almost 300 new non-military member organizations. We want these organizations to be as well run as possible, and to do that we have to be sure we have the right people in place, and that they receive ongoing training and support. We believe that strong executive leadership is essential for strong organizations.

Is it harder today than in past years to find qualified leaders for your clubs?

Roxanne: Recruiting, hiring, and developing talented people to lead an organization (no matter the size) is always a challenge. But over the past decade, we have also found that the skills and capabilities of leading a nonprofit have changed, becoming more complex than ever before. The leadership model has changed.

For instance, for many years the job of executive director for our Clubs typically was very narrowly focused–he or she had to make sure the club’s programs and activities were well run. Now that same job is much more complex and more challenging. Today’s executive director is running a business as much as he or she is running a club. That person is responsible for fund-raising, board development, strategic planning, financial management, and human resource development, among other things. And that means the people running our clubs will need to be skilled in establishing and cultivating relationships, recognizing future opportunities through strategic thinking, motivating others through integrity and enthusiasm, recruiting and developing staff, and employing sound financial management. This phenomenon just does not apply to our clubs, but all nonprofit organizations–large and small–in general.

Why do you think it takes more specialized skills to run a nonprofit these days?

Roxanne: There are a couple reasons. As the number of nonprofits grows, so does the competition for funding and other resources. Also, donors are more demanding and they want assurances that their money will produce results. In turn, that means we have to run our organizations more like businesses with an eye our own specialized bottom-line. And then there are issues of public trust and accountability.

What do you think are the most important skills a nonprofit leader needs today?

Roxanne: I’d say a good understanding of strategy, human resource and board development, fundraising, and good financial instincts are essential. Unfortunately a lot of nonprofit leaders don’t have that kind of background, and that’s what makes training and development so important.

Has the increased focus on governance of for-profit companies spilled over to the nonprofits?

Roxanne: Definitely. The more people talk about what constitutes good governance for a for-profit company, the more that nonprofits are expected to adhere to our own standards of good governance.

Do you think there are enough qualified people already working in or available to be recruited to fill these more demanding nonprofit jobs?

Roxanne: I don’t think so. For Boys & Girls Clubs alone, we have a lot of clubs led by individuals nearing retirement age. Between the demands of our growth and the increasing number of nonprofits out there, we’re all going to be competing for the best talent we can find—and not enough of it at that.

Do nonprofits pay enough to attract good talent?

Roxanne: We all know that the nonprofit sector does not pay as well as the for-profit sector, but we need to pay our executives well if we’re going to expect a lot.

It’s hard to believe but some think that people who work for nonprofits don’t expect to be well paid, that they are just taking these jobs because they really believe in the mission. It’s true that they believe in the mission of their organizations, but they also expect to be paid fairly. If nonprofits can’t properly compensate, it's going to make it even more difficult to recruit and retain the right people. Also, in the end it's a lot better to pay competitive wages and salaries and avoid turnover than it is to have constant churn, which isn't good for any organization.

So, if there are not enough leaders to recruit, what can an organization do?

Roxanne: For us, that’s the reason we decided to focus on building talent and leadership from within–we want to develop a pool of professionals that we can tap into who have developed the skills and knowledge necessary to be the leaders we want and need.

How are you approaching this project?

Roxanne: Before jumping into developing training, we first want to know what kinds of skills, capabilities, and characteristics our leaders need in order to execute a vision for the future. To help us answer that question we have been holding focus groups with our board volunteers and executive directors, meeting with quite a number of outside experts, and mining our own data from all of our 1,165 organizations to identify key characteristics of our highest performing organizations and their leadership. We also have been talking to the executive leadership and boards at our best-run clubs to find out the qualities they have that are helping them achieve.

Once we identify the skills and capabilities our leaders will need, we are going to invest a lot of resources in developing them. We are going to be developing a 360-degree survey and training programs, including some that will be available online, and coaching and mentoring relationships. We will also develop a uniform performance management system that will measure key performance metrics linked to the strategic direction of the Boys & Girls Club movement.

What have you been learning so far from this process?

Roxanne: Our findings are preliminary, but we have found that ethics and integrity have to be part of our leadership for the future alongside business and management skills. After that comes vision and the ability to develop external relationships.

Have you given thought to how you will track performance?

Roxanne: Yes, along with developing training, we will also develop a performance management system that boards can use to measure the effectiveness of their executives.

Are performance management systems used much in the nonprofit sector?

Roxanne: Performance appraisals are not as routine as they should be for professionals at nonprofits. However, we believe they are important. Knowing what’s expected of a leader and being measured on how well he or she is delivering against those objectives is key to running an effective club.