Management Development & Leadership

Over the past decade, enhancing leadership has become a key concern for the charitable sector. Sector leaders have called for investments in leadership development that will enable charitable organizations to better fulfill their missions and build their capacity to play a more fulsome role in policy discussions that relate to the sector. The calls for these investments have heightened given the increasingly complex environments in which many charities operate allied with concerns that a large-scale leadership transition is pending as many long-term executive staff approach retirement age.

The Foundation sees leadership development as one strategy to build the capacity of charitable organizations. At present, however, there remains considerable uncertainly as to how best approach this important work. There are competing arguments and a lack of reliable information on how charitable organizations consider and approach leadership development and limited data on staff’s access to and use of existing education and training programs.

To address some of these areas of uncertainty, in what is widely considered to be a key area for sector investment, the Foundation has contracted the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector to undertake an exploratory study that considers how social service charities in the Foundation’s funding area approach leadership development.

The study, which commences in Fall 2009, will examine how organizations support leadership development for senior staff, will consider the barriers senior staff members face in accessing training and development, and will seek preliminary answers for how organizations and senior staff within these organizations might better support leadership development.

The Foundation anticipates that the findings from this exploratory study will inform its own future work in the area of leadership development while providing important insights for the broader charitable sector.

The Foundation anticipates that the study findings will be available in late Spring 2010.