Australian Nonprofit Leaders Enriched by Executive Education Programs

Social Enterprise Newsletter, Winter 2003

When Lindsay McMillan traveled halfway around the world to attend last summer's Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management (SPNM) program at HBS, he was thrilled that 8 of the 140 other participants also made the trip from his native Australia. "SPNM was a unique and important opportunity to spend six days with a distinguished group of Australian nonprofit managers, working to ensure that our leadership remains dynamic and highly relevant," says McMillan, chief executive of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Victoria.

McMillan is part of a growing cohort of Australians who have come to HBS for a Social Enterprise Executive Education program, aided in part by nonprofit fellowships sponsored by the Harvard Clubs of Australia. Since 1995, more than 30 CEOs, board chairs, and other leaders from Australia's "third sector" have attended SPNM, Performance Measurement for Effective Management of Nonprofit Organizations, or Governing for Nonprofit Excellence. Through case studies, faculty presentations, and peer-driven strategic workshops, the programs have honed participants' leadership skills and provided a common set of experiences for some of the country's foremost nonprofit managers. "There is real power in bringing together a set of leaders from around the world to share their collective wisdom," McMillan notes. "Helping build this network of social enterprise leaders was one of my motivations for attending the course, especially as the recognition and rise of social enterprise efforts in Australia gains momentum."

For more than two centuries, Australia's nonprofit sector has shaped many important institutions in almost every aspect of the country's social, civic, and cultural life. With over $19 billion in annual expenditures, it also is a major economic force. After adjusting for population size, Australia's nonprofit sector is roughly equivalent to that of the United States in terms of shares of national expenditures and employment. Yet as is true in many countries, including the United States, the sector faces a host of strategic challenges, including frequent financial pressures, the complexities of performance measurement and management, and increased competition from for-profit enterprises.

Such challenges have prompted Australia's nonprofit leaders to seek out new ways to learn from each other and from international best practices, to build a more cohesive network of nonprofit professionals to strengthen and extend their learning. These ambitions have helped fuel a participation rate in ISE's Executive Education programs that has outpaced all other non-U.S. countries.

Participants report that the experience offers new perspectives on how to improve nonprofit management practice in the context of a changing operating environment. Patrick McClure, CEO of Mission Australia, which offers counseling, accommodations, training, jobs, and assistance in the development of small businesses to disadvantaged people and communities, says, "SPNM reinforced the need for Mission Australia to operate efficiently, to adequately invest in our information technology and human resource systems, and to seek out strategic collaborations with for-profits, the government, and other nonprofit organizations."

Picking up on the collaboration themes emphasized throughout the program, Tim Medhurst, executive director of Outward Bound Australia, has maintained a network of Australian colleagues from his 2001 SPNM class, and is in regular contact with fellow participants from three social services agencies: the Benevolent Society, Odyssey House, and Jobsupport. "We're working with these organizations to explore how their clients can benefit from Outward Bound's wilderness programs."

HBS Professor Stephen A. Greyser, faculty cochair (along with Professor James L. Heskett) of the SPNM program, believes in the core ISE idea that the program provides an opportunity for leaders to teach leaders. "The growing number of participants in SPNM from Down Under—part of our 20 percent non-U.S. attendees—is certainly indicative of HBS's ability to impact leaders in all nonprofit sectors throughout the world," he says. "They, and we in ISE, are helping build social capital the world over."