By Erika Orsulak
Managing Director
Sustainable Path Foundation

Next generation leadership was the focus at a recent Northwest Environmental Grantmakers meeting in Seattle. Sustainable Path Foundation as well as Philanthropy Northwest members Social Justice Fund Northwest, The Bullitt Foundation and The Russell Family Foundation heard about exciting and effective ways local environmental organizations engage and encourage young leaders.

Resource Media, a nonprofit communications organization, shared a project proposal called A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Harnessing the Power of Visuals for Effective Advocacy, in which they included data that people between the ages of 18 and 32 are typically drawn and responsive to visuals and video more than any other generation. Washington Bus, focusing on civic engagement among 16- to 44-year-olds, actively taps their audience members for skills and expertise. They recommend that messages be tailored to youth—be it including more photos or videos, or having young people make campaign calls—to be more successful in advancing an organization’s work.

Oregon Environmental Council’s approach is to recruit and actively support a young adult board, working parallel to and in tandem with the organization’s board of directors. Hanford Challenge, working on the Hanford nuclear site in Washington, recognizes that their work will be inherited by generations to come. They recently launched Inheriting Hanford, a project focused on the participation of young adults through a mentoring program, which will develop inter-generational relationships in order to transfer knowledge and gain an understanding of Hanford Challenge’s work.

Each organization shared important lessons. Whatever their focus, funders should ask applicants and grantees how they are engaging young people in their work. Be in conversation with nonprofits about strategies to increase meaningful participation by and the leadership development of this burgeoning population. After all, young people will soon be stepping up and stepping into important leadership roles.

By Richard Woo
CEO
The Russell Family Foundation

I recently attended a two-day seminar for CEOs & Trustees entitled: Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis. The presenter was Marty Linsky, of the Harvard Kennedy School faculty and co-author, with Ron Heifetz, of Leadership on the Line.

Linsky was calling us all to be the transformative “flame” of leadership without regard to whether we might be reborn as the Phoenix on the other side. We might not. This was an appeal to facing perceived danger and finding courage.

Here are some memorable though stark comments from the session:

Stand in your purpose. If not, then certainly you will be standing in the purpose of someone else.

In organizational life, when you meet resistance then you are on the right track. It’s a sign of addressing really important work. Often we think that resistance is a sign of being on the wrong track – and we ease off to avoid conflict and keep the peace.

Leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate that they can absorb. When you are pushing against what people expect, they can only absorb so much.

If it’s a win-win situation, it’s a sign that nothing important is at stake. Leadership is about the distribution of losses. The push-back comes not because people don’t get it, it’s because they DO get it and they don’t like it.

The comfort of the status quo lives in people’s hearts and guts, not in their heads. You’re not appealing to their logic, you’re not trying to change their minds. You’re trying to find what matters to them, place it in some order of importance and begin to negotiate the wins, losses and trade-offs with the matters of importance to others. This is particularly true in a crisis or the “new normal” wherein the status quo has proven to be irrelevant, unjust or non-existent.

The word “leadership” is derived from the Greek or Latin root “leit” which means “to go forth and die.” It referred to the advancing army’s flag bearer who was out ahead of the troops and would eventually be killed. The location of the flag indicated where the enemy was and the kinds of weapons they had. Although a bleak metaphor, it does capture the notions of foresight, courage, sacrifice  and service inherent in “leadership in a permanent crisis.”

When you push people out of their comfort zone, make sure you’ve built enough social and political capital so that it is more difficult for people to fire you than it is to listen to you.

Originally published on Philanthropy 411.

Philanthropy Northwest members Richard Woo of The Russell Family Foundation and Aleesha Towns-Bain of the Rasmuson Foundation are on the Philanthropy 411 blog team covering the 2010 COF conference in Denver this week. You can read all the posts from the conference here.

In a post about the Pre-Conference Institute for Trustees & CEOs, Richard wrote:

“Over time I learned the value of creative disruption. I used to approach board meetings using a corporate model of efficiency. I tried to gain alignment among trustees on issues before the actual board meeting through individual phone calls with trustees. The goal was to conduct a smooth, seamless board meeting in which all decisions were actually decided beforehand. That’s not really governance, that’s theater.

Now I believe it is more important to break trustees out of alignment in those pre-meeting phone calls and encourage them to express their divergent views in the actual meeting so we can have a deeper discussion of the issues. Hopefully this generates decisions that are more durable.”

Prior to the conference, Aleesha attended the Native Philanthropy Institute, hosted by Native Americans in Philanthropy. She wrote:

“Over and over again at the Native Philanthropy Institute, Native leaders and grantmakers said we must trust Tribal and Native organizations to come up with solutions for themselves–and then accept ways of doing that may not align to typical ways of doing business for Western-based organizations. Several Native American leaders pointed out that foundation and governmental funding can come with restrictions that are designed to be helpful, but end up representing an attempt to acculturate native organizations to a Western system of working.”

Keep checking the Philanthropy 411 blog this week for more from Aleesha, Richard and the COF conference.