Accountability in action
How One Organization Confronted an Uncomfortable Leadership History
Neighborhood Funders Group has a history of incredibly strong leadership. And yet, too many in the executive role have had difficult or abbreviated tenures. This was especially true for women of color at the helm. When faced with a leadership transition in 2022, the organization decided it was time to take a hard look at the conditions behind that trend.
Different perspectives from NFG’s former and current leaders, board members and staff revealed challenges such as rocky search processes with inadequate staff engagement that left some leader appointments feeling less celebratory, insufficient information about the organization’s state at tenure onset, inconsistent board engagement post hire, and unclear decision-making power across board, members, and staff. Nearly all of those interviewed spoke of burnout. We also discovered differences between women of color and male leaders that included gendered caregiving expectations and under-acknowledged contributions.
Rather than treating these as isolated incidents, we knew we had to explore them as symptoms of deeper organizational issues that needed to be addressed.
Applying Lessons of the Past to the Future
NFG embarked on “accountability in action” — a rigorous process with organizational development consultants from Imagine Us to seek truths, extract lessons, and apply insights.
From the beginning, NFG committed to transparency. The organization’s dedication to engaging the whole NFG community and sharing lessons with the sector was possible because of the leadership and lived experiences of the board’s diverse members, especially the women of color, and the desire to do better for NFG.
We launched the Organizational Development and Transition (OD/T) Committee — equal parts board members, member leaders, and staff, including staff union leaders. We interviewed former leaders, board members, staff, and members; and conducted focus groups to explore NFG’s identity as an organizing engine and political home with a unique way of sharing leadership across members and staff.
We assessed our current state honestly, surfacing invisible aspects and expectations of leadership, the demands of advancing our mission in a values-centered way, and the attention needed as NFG becomes a unionized workplace. We researched leadership models across philanthropic and movement ecosystems in order to build a structure suited for NFG’s current and future demands.
The lessons from this work were difficult to grapple with, and their full integration will take time, but we committed to moving forward in new ways by leaning into a powerful leaderful stance.
Designing for Structural Resilience
Based on our learning, we landed on a new co-president model, rooted in shared leadership not only between two leaders but across the organization. We partnered early with executive recruiter Melissa Madzel of Do Good Connections on the search process so that it overlapped with the leadership model selection.
The OD/T discovery process centered the experience of women of color. We applied the same model to the search process, which in turn, benefitted all candidates: deep transparency in information about the interview process, roles, and compensation; attentive candidate care throughout the process including ongoing feedback; and interview structures designed to mitigate bias. The OD/T and search processes also included significant staff engagement at every stage.
Additionally, the board committed to post-hire changes like working toward stronger financial cushioning for new leaders, ongoing board support beyond hiring and onboarding, improved attention to equity and power dynamics, and more intentional organization-wide leadership development.
This month, NFG announced the appointment of Amanda Andere and Stephanie Chan as NFG’s co-presidents. The hire feels like a major milestone — and a humbling one — recognizing that applying past lessons is the way we honor our former leaders’ hardest experiences. The process wasn’t perfect; we know the work is ongoing.
We’ve embraced that our ongoing work is what Kimberly Freeman Brown calls building “structural resilience” — surfacing and interrogating the unspoken load we expect leaders to bear; implementing strategies to navigate the forces beyond our control that impact our mission; reinforcing our structure and culture at the earliest signs of wear and tear; and proactively flanking, strengthening and sustaining leaders and staff who are on the frontlines of increasingly complex and perilous social justice work.
The Path Forward
“Moving to Co-Presidency is a strategic decision designed to support powerful, impactful and values-aligned leadership, while ensuring sustainability, care, and collective power,” says NFG Board Co-Chair Kaberi Banerjee Murthy.
NFG isn’t completely there yet, but there are signals that we are moving in the right direction, including how the incoming co-presidents speak of their search experience. “The board’s transparency about their process and co-presidency decision fundamentally shaped our transition,” said Amanda Andere. “We learned things that made us ask tough questions about real repair and intentionality.”
Stephanie Chan adds, “There was something powerful about the search committee’s transparency with us as candidates. Because of that transparency, we are ready and excited to continue to model the reflection and accountability NFG has already demonstrated.”
Our process demonstrates that accountability in action is possible, though it requires a significant investment of time, resources, and emotional labor. While not resolving every organizational pain point, this work clarifies that the alternative — continued cycles of leadership depletion and breakdown — undermines collective justice work.
We will make good on our commitment to sharing learnings by hosting upcoming webinars, conference sessions, and developing resources based on our research and practice. We hope other organizations will join us in building structural resilience across philanthropic and movement ecosystems.
—- Written for Medium by Kimberly Freeman Brown and Amy T. Morris
Amy T. Morris is the outgoing Interim President of Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG), a philanthropy supporting organization (PSO) whose members co-conspire to accelerate racial, gender, economic, disability and climate justice.
Kimberly Freeman Brown is a founding partner at Imagine Us, an multiracial, multigenerational organizational development consulting firm and community whose clients serve the public good.