The Talent and Diverse Leadership We Need: Developing the Nonprofit Workforce for the 21st Century

By Paul Schmitz and Shelly Cryer

The nonprofit sector comprises more than 1.1 million registered organizations, employs more than 11 million people (and the equivalent of 5.7 million full-time volunteers), and generates annual revenues exceeding $1 trillion dollars. Nonprofit organizations are essential tools for addressing community needs, advocating for community and social change, and engaging citizens in democratic problem solving. Yet as large and critical as the sector is, little infrastructure exists for recruiting, retaining, and developing the skilled, committed, and diverse workforce and leadership the sector needs to succeed in the decades ahead.

To sustain and build on the achievements made by nonprofit organizations in addressing the needs of our communities and civil society, we must invest in the development of the workforce and future leadership of the sector. A group of leaders from national nonprofit organizations, foundations, and academic centers who are united in their commitment to strengthening the sector’s human resources convened in March 2005 to begin developing a research and advocacy agenda that involves reaching out to many more key stakeholders to establish a broad-based, powerful, and formal national coalition.

We anticipate that our coalition will seek a major investment of public and philanthropic resources to build the infrastructure necessary to recruit, retain, and develop the skilled, committed, and diverse workforce that this sector needs in the decades ahead. Some of the sector’s workforce needs might be characterized as follows.

• The nonprofit sector is not effectively recruiting diverse and talented young people to begin careers in public life. We need effective pipelines into the nonprofit sector.
• The nonprofit sector lacks the capacity to effectively support its workforce. The nonprofit sector is not effectively developing diverse young employees to be the next generation of nonprofit sector leaders. We need leadership pipelines within the nonprofit sector.
• The nonprofit sector must balance the growing need for strong nonprofit management with courageous leadership. We must develop effectively prepared, passionate, and diverse leaders for the nonprofit sector. We need greater diversity represented at all levels of the nonprofit sector.
• New research must investigate the sector’s most pressing workforce issues, and existing research needs to be more widely disseminated. We need better and more widely disseminated research on nonprofit sector workforce issues.

Possible strategies to address the workforce needs of the sector may include providing opportunities and incentives for talented and diverse young people to enter the sector; strengthening university pipelines and support for the nonprofit sector; expanding support for nonprofit human resource and leadership development and effective succession planning; holding organizations accountable for the diversity of all levels of staffing and board oversight; among many others.

Download the full white paper.

Paul Schmitz is President and CEO of Public Allies, an Americorps program identifies talented young adults from diverse backgrounds and advances their leadership through a ten month program of full-time, paid apprenticeships in nonprofit organizations, weekly leadership trainings, and team service projects.

Shelly Cryer is Director of Initiative for Nonprofit Sector Careers, a national campaign to recruit, prepare, and retain the next generation of nonprofit sector leadership, and ensure that this leadership reflects the diversity of the populations our sector serves. Initiative for Nonprofit Sector Careers is a program of American Humanics.