The Dearth of Female Nonprofit CEOs Requires Sweeping Changes in Culture and Training

Sheryl Sandberg, Mary Barra, and Indra Nooyi are some of the well-known top women executives in corporate America. Prominent as they are, the reality is that the number of women at the top of Fortune 500 companies is dropping. At the start of this year, just 25 of the CEOs of the biggest companies were women, a number that dropped when Nooyi left Pepsi.

The situation in the nonprofit world is not much brighter. The last time the Chronicle did a study, not even a quarter of the executive leadership positions in the 400 organizations that raise the most money were held by women.

Where they do hold top leadership roles, women are more likely to be in smaller organizations and paid less than their male counterparts. I know this not only from data but also from what I have observed throughout my career in the nonprofit world.

As absurd as it may seem in 2018, women at nonprofits are less valued than their male counterparts. Look no further than the chronic underinvestment in the development and advancement of women professionals. Training conferences for women leaders in business are plentiful, albeit expensive. Nonprofits have no counterparts.

Many large nonprofit conferences offer motivational sessions for women designed to lift spirits en masse by beating the drum for all women through a few inspirational role models. But this is not the kind of serious training and development women need.

There are many reasons why women face uphill battles in advancing their careers and earning as much as men for equivalent work. For one thing, men usually lead recruitment and advancement practices, drawing on ideas of what works best for them. What’s more, many male managers display unconscious bias, often doing little to conceal their negative, condescending attitudes and outright resentment of women.

A new report, “Women in the Workplace,” — conducted by LeanIn.org and McKinsey, concluded that male managers don’t recognize or perceive their biases, making it impossible to curb them. The report found that most men in management just don’t grasp the barriers that hold women back and that many companies overlook the special challenges facing women of color.

I remember vividly, during the course of my career before becoming a CEO, countless group meetings in which men were called on more often than women to offer their thoughts. When women did add valuable insights or information, those contributions were generally not acknowledged until the same points were made by men.

Just as sharply, I recall meeting with a group of executives responsible for identifying and recommending candidates for leadership positions in their nationwide network. My request was simple: Because they did not have women leaders in their pipelines, would they consider reviewing their criteria to ensure that capable women might be included among the candidates. The response was a flat “no.” I know that not much has changed, given that few female CEOs headed the larger organizations that made up this network.

Early Pattern of Inequality

Because people believe there are many more women in leadership positions than is the case, not enough effort is being made to change the status quo.

Adding to this, researchers have found that women have to advocate more strongly than men do for higher compensation.

The different treatment of men and women begins early in the employment journey, when women receive fewer initial promotions. Women also have less access to mentorship or “stretch” opportunities. And, as the #MeToo movement has helped us see, subtle and not-so-subtle forms of workplace harassment are pervasive.

Unfair practices need to be ended for moral and equity reasons but also for the sake of organizational success. Study after study shows that diverse leadership is a key factor of high-achieving organizations.

Some companies have developed programs that could be a model for the nonprofit world. KPMG, Goldman Sachs, and GE match talented women with senior leaders who serve as their sponsors and encourage more opportunities for them at the companies.

Perhaps most important is changing the culture at many nonprofits. Bridgespan and others have described several critical elements that should be in place to ensure that organizations are building a talent reservoir of both men and women. These elements include, not surprisingly, senior leaders who are committed to talent development and who understand what specific skills are needed to help them achieve their goals. Also needed are development opportunities, coaching, and mentoring by senior staff that exposes rising stars to important external experiences that can help their careers.

Leadership Development

Because it’s critical to their future, nonprofits need to invest in the kind of leadership training that addresses the unique obstacles working women face.

Experts on women in the workplace strongly advocate customized leadership-development programs to address gender-related obstacles. They warn that we cannot underestimate the profound effect that unconscious bias has on women professionals, even in organizations — like nonprofits — where women may make up most of the rank-and-file staff.

Over time, attitudes of bias have had the effect of undermining and shaping how women conduct themselves at work and how they second-guess themselves. The result is that they are less likely to speak up, ask for promotions, and negotiate effectively. Ultimately, it has led to women being overlooked and not taken as seriously as their male counterparts.

Nonprofits that are serious about helping women advance need policies on family and medical leave, telecommuting, and flexible work schedules as well as no-tolerance policies on sexual harassment and bullying.

What’s more, nonprofits should adjust their hiring and promotion practices to accommodate career paths that include time away from work to care for young children or incapacitated family members. Human-resource departments should work to make sure managers don’t hold back women who have taken time off for family obligations.

A Need for Networking

While it’s urgent to change policies and encourage more professional development for women, there’s also a powerful way for women to come together right now to help one another grow.

During my career as a nonprofit leader, I have brought groups of women executives together across disciplines to talk about their work and their lives. I wish time had allowed for more of these gatherings, as the women themselves said that few safe spaces exist in which they could air their concerns and share strategies for advancement. It would take a much greater investment of time and effort to continue those sessions. But I wish such gatherings had been available to me earlier in my career.

As I have learned about what’s working in industry, I see this kind of approach happening, sometimes in more sophisticated ways.

In 2017, a program called All Raise began to offer senior female investors from institutionally backed venture-capital firms based in Silicon Valley, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York opportunities to meet and offer mutual support. This program grew from casual dinners among peers into a nonprofit organization that reaches women from all levels of the tech start-up ecosystem, including entrepreneurs, limited partners, and others. Women at nonprofits could create the same types of networks.

Giving women access to development programs outside their organizations provides a supportive environment that can help them improve their self-confidence, acquire new skills, and learn from one another.

Whether they share the challenges they face in their personal lives or professional challenges, women who have regular opportunities to discuss how they have coped — and thrived or failed — have greater odds of achieving success. The “women only” network is a great vehicle for developing new skills and deepening expertise. With the help of a skilled facilitator, such networks can be a place in which to express doubts and fears and share crazy ideas as well as joyful moments.

Such networks have the added benefit of promoting long-term supportive relationships among women across organizations even after a formal program has ended. Arrangements like this can provide women with information about job opportunities and resources that are likely to be helpful in their work.

Imagine that 1,000 cities in the United States have networks of women who gather and support one another as they progress in their careers. Then imagine that in each of these cities, the women reached out to others, creating a mushroom effect and eventually a work environment that embraces women at every level of their development. Nirvana? No, not a pipe dream, if we will it.

Diana Aviv is former CEO of Independent Sector and Feeding America.