Erica Mitchell is President and CEO of United Way of Greater Nashville. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, the United Way of Great Nashville’s mission is to unite the community and mobilize resources so that every child, individual and family thrives. Erica participated in the Driving Nonprofit Performance and Innovation - Virtual (DNPIV) Executive Education program in March. In the post below, she discusses her experience in the program.
At the United Way of Greater Nashville, our mission is to unite the community and mobilize resources so that every child, individual and family thrives. We accomplish this mission by focusing on breaking the cycle of poverty, helping kids learn and succeed, building strong, healthy communities, and meeting our neighbors’ basic needs. Our efforts are mobilized by investing in direct service, cultivating strategic partnerships, and building long-term collaborations to advance systems change.
I started my journey with United Way nearly 15 years ago. Across that span of time, we’ve experienced exponential growth in both our work and geographic footprint. In the last six years alone, we’ve merged five times, four of which were with neighboring United Ways in our region, and one with a volunteer organization. With each United Way merger, we increased our coverage area by one or more counties, each with its own unique local culture, philanthropic philosophy, and community needs. The merger with the volunteer organization increased our capacity and capabilities to meet current and emergent volunteer needs. While we had long been focused on volunteer engagement, having a new team solely dedicated to volunteering created a new line of business for our organization to manage. While our mission and vision remained the same, our strategic approaches needed revamping to successfully manage the significant changes our organization was experiencing.
After our last merger, we were roughly four years into a five-year strategic plan. Knowing that a new plan was on the horizon, we had the opportunity to cast a wider, more comprehensive vision that represented our new regional organization and clearly articulated the broader outcomes we were aiming to achieve. And herein lay both an opportunity and a challenge. We had long struggled to effectively tell our full story through the right outcome measures, both qualitative and quantitative. We wanted to seize this inflection point to align all parts of the organization around a compelling roadmap forward to achieve our mission. It was almost serendipitous to find the Harvard Kennedy School’s course on driving nonprofit performance.
As a participant in Fifth Third Bank’s Empowering Community Leaders Program, I have the privilege of taking coursework through Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Education Program in pursuit of a certificate in nonprofit leadership. My most recent course, Driving Nonprofit Performance and Innovation, provided the right balance of case studies that shined light on various scenarios of leadership in action coupled with current frameworks that were immediately applicable.
The case studies were fantastic! I will admit that I had some reservations about reading multiple case studies in preparation for each class. My hesitancy was born out of concern that the cases would lack alignment or applicability to my current work questions. These were completely inaccurate assumptions. The cases were intriguing and thoughtfully selected to align with class concepts. We even had the treat of being lectured by a dynamic leader featured in one of the cases.
The course made me think more critically about how my organization is executing on our mission across every department as well as how we are measuring and communicating our results. Professor Dutch Leonard masterfully grounded our work in the simple, but profound concept of “Question Zero” - what, exactly, are we trying to accomplish? I have found this simple question to lie at the root of most of our organizational challenges and opportunities. As we approach our strategic planning process, this question will shape our foundation to such an extent that everyone in our organization can answer this question without hesitation and with shared language and understanding.
Finally, sharing learning with students across the globe was special to say the least. I was inspired to hear how fellow students were tackling challenges within their geographic context. We shared many of the same issues, but the socio-political nuances challenged and expanded my thinking. I’m looking forward to my next course!
