Will Grassroots Nonprofits Survive When Boomers Retire?

By Vanja Petrovic, AlterNet. Posted August 7, 2007.

In Illinois, a boy named Kevin found himself homeless at age 18 in one of Chicago's dangerous neighborhoods. He was thrown out of his home. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see himself living past 20; his surroundings were just too violent.

But Kevin, who prefers that his real name not be used, received help from Teen Living Programs, a nonprofit organization working to end teenage homelessness in the Chicago area, and turned his life around. He left his neighborhood and has a steady job with full benefits at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He is now 20 years old and keeps coming back to volunteer at TLP.

In adjacent Missouri, Tom, who also prefers a pseudonym, experienced seven years of on-and-off homelessness caused by chronic mental health problems and drug and alcohol abuse. Tom spent years sleeping on back porches and in his van, getting apartments and losing apartments, getting jobs and then losing them. He stayed in Missouri the whole time, but because he moved around so much, he was ineligible for disability benefits.

Eventually, Tom got in touch with Phoenix Programs, Inc., a Columbia, Mo., nonprofit that provides treatment for those suffering from addiction. He stayed with Phoenix for nine months. Today Tom has successfully battled his addiction problems, has a car and an apartment, and is pursuing a serious love interest.

In California, Els Cooperrider wanted to keep Mendocino County, which has a long and proud tradition of organic farming, free from genetically modified seeds. To preserve her county's tradition (which stretched back to the 1970s), Cooperrider, and 200 other volunteers, mobilized the nonprofit Mendocino Organic Network and successfully pushed through a countywide ordinance prohibiting the growing of genetically modified organisms. This initiative made Mendocino County the first GMO-free zone in the United States. Soon after, several other counties followed suit.

Nonprofit organizations like these are often referred to as the conscience of our society. They devote time to work that businesses and the government do not. They also protect us from the dangers of the two. But nonprofits may be facing a leadership shortage, now and in the decades to come, as the baby boomer generation, which heads the nonprofit world, starts to retire. At the same time, the number of nonprofits is expected to increase, leaving many to wonder who will steer their helm in the boomers' absence.

Disturbing data

According to a report called "The Leadership Deficit," written by Thomas Tierney, chairman and co-founder of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit that provides other nonprofits with management consulting services, "For the years spanning 2007 to 2016, these organizations will need to attract and develop a total of 640,000 new senior managers -- or the equivalent of 2.4 times the number currently employed. To put the challenge in perspective, attracting that many managers is the equivalent of recruiting more than 50 percent of every MBA graduating class at every university across the country, every year for the next 10 years."

Even Tierney's more conservative estimate is cause for alarm: 330,000 new senior executives will be needed over the next decade. "Forecasts are always imperfect," Tierney writes. "Nevertheless, the message in these numbers is clear: In the decade ahead, nonprofit organizations will need far more new senior leaders every year than they did in the past. Our leadership needs, it seems, are unprecedented."

Most businesses anticipated this problem and started preparing for it in the early 1990s by hiring individuals they perceived would be strong leaders in the future, writes Tierney. But nonprofits are only beginning to do so. And because they pay less than the corporate world, nonprofits are at a disadvantage when they try to attract new talent.

College students, wracked with ever-increasing amounts of educational debt, aren't as eager or willing to step into the low-paying, often thankless positions. Stephen Bauer, director of the Initiative for Nonprofit Sector Careers and Technology, gives the example of an average law student with $120,000 in educational debt to illustrate the extent of the problem. That law student can't afford to take a job with a nonprofit, he says, because at about $40,000 a year, they just don't pay enough.

Students who do plan to work for a nonprofit right out of school are often the ones who don't need the money. Take Kathleen Bauer, for example. A junior at the University of Dayton, Bauer describes herself as a "trust fund baby." Her college costs are paid by her parents, and when she graduates, she will have no educational debt. She plans to work for a nonprofit after getting her degree and was inspired to do so after a three-month trip to Africa with Operation Crossroads Africa, a cross-cultural exchange program.

Bauer acknowledges that she would probably not work for a nonprofit if she didn't have her parents' financial security as a backup. "The fact that I have the financial luxury of my college being paid for is a big help," Bauer says. "I know my parents are there for me to fall back on."

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Vanja Petrovic is an editorial intern with AlterNet.