Leading And Governing High Performing Nonprofit Organizations

Course Number 1582

Career Focus

A large number of HBS graduates will engage in the nonprofit sector during their lifetime. Leading and Governing High Performing Nonprofit Organizations (LGN) is designed to help students become highly effective nonprofit professional managers and/or board members.

This course will offer an in-depth exploration of how to create, build and sustain high performing nonprofit organizations. Many for-profit leadership and management skills can be successfully adapted to nonprofit organizations; however, because the differences between the sectors are often greater than their similarities, the process can be daunting. Moreover, many for-profit concepts and frameworks do not transfer; therefore, new approaches must be developed for the complex nonprofit operating environment. LGN will identify, analyze and integrate the concepts and frameworks that nonprofit organizations need for outstanding performance.

No prior nonprofit experience is required but students must be committed to addressing critical societal challenges. LGN will accept a limited number of cross-registrants.

Educational Objectives

The course has two overarching objectives:

The first is to analyze the operating environment of the nonprofit sector and the unique managerial and leadership challenges it creates. In the for-profit world, the rules of the game are clear. Virtually all stakeholders agree on the definition of success, and market forces drive corporate leaders to achieve it. By contrast, the forces exerted on nonprofit leaders are frequently fragmented, disparate and conflicting. What impact do these nonprofit market forces have on an organization's ability to achieve its mission? What are the root causes of these market conditions?

The second objective of the course is to investigate dynamic change in the sector:

• how leaders manage their organizations to effectively overcome the barriers to high performance;
• how leaders are working to transform the current nonprofit operating environment to make it more supportive of and focused on organizational performance.

Course Content and Organization

The cases include organizations that range from relatively small domestic nonprofits to large international organizations. Many of the sessions will include guests, either the case protagonist or leaders from the organization. The cases will cover:

• Connecting mission, theory of change and effective strategy (A new nonprofit organizational framework will be introduced.)
• Building a coherent nonprofit organization that delivers on its mission
• Measuring organizational performance
• Governing effectively for high performance
• Scaling the impact of a nonprofit organization.