The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently ran an article about the Nonprofit Board Leadership Institute, a workshop series for non-profit board leaders in Philadelphia. Board Chairs and CEOs or Executive Directors participate in the program together to improve collaboration and learn together about increasingly difficult issues facing non-profits today. The program is especially useful to board leaders who work in for-profit sectors and may be unfamiliar with the unique decisions and challenges facing Executive Directors of non-profit organizations.
Over 44 non-profits in the region have participated in the Institute, including YouthBuild Philly. Our Board Chair Tim Daniel recently attended the workshops with ED Simran Sidhu, and told The Chronicle of Philanthropy how the experience benefited him as a new board chairman:
When Timothy Daniel went through the course last summer, he was just coming into his role as board chairman of YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School. He had served on the board for a few years and had seen others handle the board-chair duties “with varying degrees of capability.”
The institute gave him much-needed time to think about the school’s direction with its executive director, Simran Sidhu, without the pressure of running a meeting or retreat.
“It was a great crash course for me. We were in a room and had lots of opportunity to talk and compare notes,” Mr. Daniel says.
He adds that it left him with a sharper sense of his role and responsibility to the organization.
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Ms. Sidhu says she went into the initial session with low expectations, thinking, “Oh, another training.”
But she came out of it so energized by the give-and-take with Mr. Daniel and others, she says, that YouthBuild decided to bring presenters from the institute sessions to talk to staff and board members about fundraising and performance evaluation.
“I feel like what it’s led to is shared language between the board and the staff,” she says, “and that’s a wonderful thing.”
