Fundamentals of Nonprofit Leadership

Welcome to our collection of articles, tools, and templates designed to provide key tactics to help your organization build a strong and robust leadership structure. These resources focus on leadership development and transitions as well as approaches to increase the effectiveness of your executive teams and board. You can also use the links above to jump to our other foundational content around strategy, organizational effectiveness, and financial sustainability.

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How Nonprofit Leadership Development Sustains Organizations and Their Teams

With a few simple practices, nonprofits and NGOs can turn a talent development process into an employee retention tool, a leadership pipeline strategy, and a step toward a more inclusive workforce—all at the same time. 



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Increasing Nonprofit Executive Team Effectiveness

A nonprofit executive team's effectiveness is essential for an organization's success. Yet often these teams underperform for a variety of reasons. The five steps laid out here can help nonprofit executive teams move from underperforming to high-performing in their work to advance their organizations' missions. 


Relay race baton hand off.

Making Founder Successions Work

Conventional wisdom suggests that a "clean break" is the best way to transition a founder. Bridgespan research, however, shows that many nonprofits actually benefit when they carefully plan an extended role for founders who step down.



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Executive Team Effectiveness Toolkit

Through our research and 20+ years working with nonprofits, we have distilled a sequence of five steps that have helped many executive teams increase their overall effectiveness and move from good to great. This toolkit includes templates and tools in each of the five critical areas for you to tackle in partnership with your leadership team.


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Building the Bench at Indian NGOs

A nonprofit executive team's effectiveness is essential for an organization's success. Yet often these teams underperform for a variety of reasons. The five steps laid out here can help nonprofit executive teams move from underperforming to high-performing in their work to advance their organization's missions. 


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