Reading for Leading Change–Feb. 2023
We recommend these recent articles as you seek out new inspiration and innovative approaches to nonprofit leadership and social impact.
Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis
We think this recent article by Maurice Mitchell in Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine is a must-read for making sense of and providing a hopeful path forward for our nonprofit sector and social justice movements. The essay shares what we “must do to shift movements of justice toward a powerful posture of joy and victory” and “describes the problems our movements face, identifies underlying causes, analyzes symptoms of the core problems, and proposes some concrete solutions to reset our course.” Mitchell calls for building resilient organizations that are “structurally sound, ideologically coherent, strategically grounded, and emotionally mature.” Strategic planning plays a key role in this vision of resilience.
Five Essentials of Workplace Well-Being
We have learned directly from our clients how the pandemic created stress and burnout in the workplace over the past few years, particularly for nonprofit direct service staff. This Five Essentials framework by the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General clearly articulates five key aspects of well-being centered on workers’ voices and equity, promoting and advocating for the well-being of all workers.
Should We Cancel Capacity Building?
We appreciated this article by our colleague Marcus Littles at Frontline Solutions that challenges our field’s use of the term “capacity building” and highlights the need to focus on strengths. He advances four Black equity principles for philanthropy that have emerged out of this work: truth, strategic disruption, strength, and love.
We found the Jewish Community Federation’s Culture of Belonging Toolkit so deeply relevant to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and to our strategic planning work with our clients. A culture of belonging strengthens a sense of mattering, meaning, ownership, and shared purpose for all within a group and an organization. When there is belonging, all participants feel like owners and they share responsibility for making a great program. But belonging doesn’t happen by chance. As leaders, we must be intentional and systematic about implementing a culture of belonging.
What have you read lately that helped you lead your organization? We’d love to hear about it.