Professors Susan Appe and Jennifer Dodge discuss the Emerging Nonprofit Leadership Accelerator (ENLA) program created and taught by faculty at the UAlbany's Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy. ENLA draws on a cohort model of leadership development and action research principles to support nonprofit leaders’ growth in their organization and field.
Emerging Nonprofit Leadership Accelerator
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy
Professional and Continuing Education at UAlbany (PaCE)
The Engagement Ring, Episode 34: Creating a Pipeline and Action Plan for Nonprofit Leaders
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Welcome to The Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars and community partners working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt today on the podcast…
JENNIFER DODGE:
We're clearly in a moment of pretty serious social, political, economic transformation, and nonprofits are being strongly impacted by the changes that we're seeing,
SUSAN APPE:
We see shifting funding environment, shifting policies that are really trickling down and affecting local nonprofits everywhere, certainly in in the Capital Region.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
I’ll talk with Professors Susan Appe and Jennifer Dodge about the Emerging Nonprofit Leadership Accelerator program created and taught by faculty at the University at Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy. ENLA draws on a cohort model of leadership development and action research principles to support nonprofit leaders’ growth in their organization and field.
JENNIFER DODGE:
We're going to be doing a very specific methodology to work with people to develop a clear sense of what the challenge is that they're facing and build an action plan around that.
SUSAN APPE:
Most certainly, we want to leverage the capacity locally, and so we have a lot of good partners, subject matter experts, who will be involved in the program and be value added, for sure.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Here’s my conversation with Susan Appe and Jennifer Dodge…
MARY HUNT:
Well, welcome to the podcast, Susan and Jennifer, it's nice to have you both here.
SUSAN APPE AND JENNIFER DODGE:
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you.
MARY HUNT:
What was your research telling you, or what were you learning from associates or students who work in the nonprofit world that made you think launching the nonprofit leadership accelerator was a good idea and would support the local nonprofit community?
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, I would say that we're clearly in a moment of pretty serious social, political, economic transformation, and nonprofits are being strongly impacted by the changes that we're seeing. And we want to bring back a program that we had started a while ago to continue to support the nonprofit sector, especially focusing on sort of mid-level folks who have a few years of experience in the field, who want to grow and develop their own leadership. And we see this as an opportunity to support nonprofit work in the community, to address some of the major challenges that we see in society, from, you know, specific policy issues like homelessness, housing, whatever those may be, to specific organizational challenges that allow people to have a greater impact on the social problems and challenges that they're trying to address through nonprofits. Is there anything you would add to that?
SUSAN APPE:
I just think that Rockefeller College in particular is positioned to lead such a such a program, right. And as Jennifer mentioned, this is kind of the revival of a program that had existed and took a pause with COVID and some changes at the university. But we're really excited, and we think that Rockefeller College is exactly the type of unit on campus that should be developing such engagement with the community, and the nonprofit community in particular.
MARY HUNT:
Now the program —or ENLA, for short as the program is known — is an accelerator program. What does the term accelerator mean when it comes to learning and teaching instruction?
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, I think an accelerator is exactly what the word says. It's an opportunity for people to step out of their busy work lives and take a moment to reflect in an intense kind of way that accelerates their leadership development and growth.
MARY HUNT:
I think you mentioned briefly the type of individual or the point in a person's career that this program might be of interest to them but talk a little bit more about that. Who is the program designed for? Who could really benefit from participating?
SUSAN APPE:
Yeah, I think we're really targeting mid-level nonprofit professionals who want to engage more in leadership in their organizations and in the causes that they're working for.
JENNIFER DODGE:
That's exactly right. We're looking for people who have maybe five to 10 years of experience working in nonprofits or even in another professional setting, but who are interested in moving into nonprofits. I think we'd be open to that type of person, but we're talking about people who are in sort of a mid-career position, and they're interested in either developing their own personal skills, changing something about their organizations, or even changing something about the field that they're working in so that they can have a greater impact on addressing some of the social challenges that they're working on, whether it's environmental issues, you know, social services, whatever that might be,
MARY HUNT:
You've just gone where I wanted to take you. Nonprofits are quite different. I mean, they share a lot of the same challenges, but they represent a lot of different sectors of the economy. So, will the program be more generally about managing and leading in nonprofits? Or will you be exploring the individual sectors… say it's the arts, or it's healthcare, it's environment? I mean, will you go that deep into the individual needs of the person and the field that they represent?
JENNIFER DODGE:
It depends a lot on who applies for the program. So, this is a cohort model. So, we're going to bring together a group of approximately 20 people every year who are interested in developing their own leadership, and they're going to bring with them questions that they're asking themselves about how they can grow their own leadership in their fields. And if we happen to have 10 people who are working on health care, we can definitely focus on health care issues. We're not specifically asking for people who are in health care or any other specific policy area or issue area to apply. But if there's a critical mass of people in that area, and the questions that they're asking themselves in terms of how they grow their own leadership are related to those specific policy issues or other issue areas, then we can definitely focus on that to some extent with the group, that's not our specific purpose, right. We're focusing on how people are defining their own challenges with developing their leadership. And so, the groups that we might organize for people to reflect with each other could also be around specific organizational issues, like, how do you launch a new program that hasn't been seen before and get funding for that, for example. So, it could have to do with those types of issues. Or how do you deal with imposter syndrome right in your own personal growth and development, so that you can show up in really highly productive ways in the field that you're in? So, it really depends on what the group is bringing to the table and what they really want to focus on, and how we can create the most productive change that people want to see in the Capital District, and maybe even beyond.
SUSAN APPE:
I think what Jennifer highlights the responsiveness of the program to the cohort is. Right, since it is a cohort model, and I think across some of those identified needs and interest in the cohort we will have some standard nonprofit topics right from collaboration to financial management, to fund development, right, and then also advocacy, which we — Jennifer and I — have been talking a lot about in terms of the role of advocacy in the nonprofit sector. And how can we start thinking about that more deliberately locally given some of the challenges that we're seeing for the sector and for who the sector is serving.
MARY HUNT:
You talk about three integrated elements of the program. Can you explain what that means and what those elements are?
JENNIFER DODGE:
So I just want to pick up on something that Susan was just saying about doing an advocacy. There's some really great work that's been done by the Demos Institute in New York to talk about how nonprofits can sort of do 5% of their work toward advocacy and systems change. And you know, Susan and I were just having a conversation, and she was reminding me of some research that she's been looking at recently, that over the last 20 or 30 years, nonprofits have started to do less advocacy rather than more, and a time when more advocacy might be warranted, and there are small ways that nonprofits can start to do more advocacy and focus on systems change so that nonprofits are not stuck in this perpetual cycle of trying to find resources to deal with growing problems, but instead address those problems at their roots and also change the system so that more resources are coming to nonprofits for the kinds of problems that they identify. So, I think this is a core of our mission in doing this program is to focus on more fundamental kinds of changes that require nonprofit leaders to step into. And so, I think that's a real fundamental thing, and that feeds into the design that we have for the three elements that you are asking us about.
MARY HUNT:
What are the three integrated elements of the program that you speak about?
SUSAN APPE:
Yeah, so I can start, and then Jennifer can fill in any of the gaps. We will be addressing leadership challenges, right. That's one really interesting component that we will ask participants to identify and think about. What are some of the challenges that they're facing in their positions, in their nonprofits. With that, we will also develop, continue to develop soft skills and technical training on topics, as I had mentioned, that are very nonprofit, so to speak, collaboration, fund development, financial management, etc. And then there's going to be a coaching component. And maybe I'll let Jennifer talk a little bit about that third prong that's an important part of the model.
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, definitely. So, for the coaching, I've been having conversations with one of my colleagues who does coaching, and she's planning on doing a workshop that's for the entire group that will set the stage for some of the work that they're going to do over the course of the program. So, there'll be some individual coaching, but in a group setting, so that the whole group can learn from that coaching. And then I'm going to be the instructor one semester… one year, and then Susan will be the instructor the next year. And so, we'll probably also integrate some one-on-one coaching for participants there. So that's a really important part of the program in terms of helping people address some of the challenges that they'll be focusing on. I also want to talk about that first component that Susan was mentioning, where we're focusing on the specific challenges that the group brings to the table, because we're going to be doing a very specific methodology to work with people to develop a clear sense of what it is that the challenge that they're facing, and to build an action plan around that, and they're going to take concrete steps to implement that action plan in the context of the safety of this group that's going to reflect together with them on how their actions are playing out. So, there are cycles of action and reflection that are involved in that. So someone comes in and says, look, I really want to address, you know, my challenges around stepping into the executive director role in my nonprofit organization, and I need to build certain skills in order to do that, that person's action plan might involve certain steps that they want to take to start building those skills. And they'll take those actions on a weekly basis, and they'll come back to the group to reflect on what happened as they're taking those actions. And so, they learn about the kinds of challenges that they're facing, the things that are working, the things that they might need to work more on, and where some of the new challenges might lay in doing that. And it's, you know, we've, I've worked on this before with colleagues, and it's a really terrific way of building knowledge of the group, of some of the specific challenges that people are facing, and individuals gain so much from that process. So, it includes that process and these specific skills develop, skill development workshops that Susan was talking about, and then the coaching. So those are integrated aspects of the program.
MARY HUNT:
This is a really extraordinary time for nonprofits. It seems like there are so many challenges we're all facing, as you said, economically, socially, politically. Maybe we're leaning on nonprofits even more, relying on them more so the pressures on those that run them, manage them, staff them, are greater. What are you hearing or are expecting to hear from the students who join the cohort in terms of the greatest challenges that they need to find a way to cope with or strategies to deal with?
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, I think, I mean, you've mentioned a couple, I think one of the big picture issues is just the enormous demands that nonprofits are under in the best of times they're serving their mission and under demands, but we see shifting funding, environment, shifting policies that are really trickling down and affecting local nonprofits everywhere, certainly in in the Capital Region, and so I think that being responsive to those demands. I think we also, Jennifer and I talked just before this… and thinking about some of the risks inherent now in running a nonprofit, depending on what policy area or clients or beneficiaries you're serving, and so I think that there's some reflection on that probably needed. What else do you think? Jennifer,
MARY HUNT:
I think technology too. I don't know but that seems like that might be a big one… how people are dealing with technology or maybe intimidated by it, but they need to embrace it, perhaps to get to that next step or meet the challenge.
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, I think if the group comes in talking about having big technology needs, I think we can find some of those resources in the community or on campus to come and do a workshop around that. We did something like that with one of our faculty members from Homeland Security, if you can believe it, and did a workshop on data security for nonprofits, and they absolutely loved it because they are thinking about those types of issues. So, I think we can, you know, I think we can be responsive to the needs of the community. The other thing that I would add is that I think nonprofits right now are experiencing a retraction in funding, right. So, I think we're working right now to bring someone in from the nonprofit community, executive director of a local nonprofit, who has experience and skills in finding creative strategies for dealing with funding shortages. And so those are the kinds of things that we can offer to our participants.
MARY HUNT:
And in addition, obviously, to getting the experience, the strategies, the skills that they will get through participating in this course, is there a micro credential? Is there some sort of continuing education credit that a participant will take away?
SUSAN APPE:
Yes, absolutely. So, it is part of UAlbany's offerings of Credly Badges. So, a participant, upon successful completion of the program, the 14-week program that will start end of January, will receive a micro credential, and that really is a badge, a signal of completed and learned skill building and competencies that we’ll identify and be very specific about as we continue to develop the curriculum. But yes, that is part of the package, so to speak.
MARY HUNT:
How about deadlines for applying? Is there an application process? Is there a deadline? When does the program start? What kind of those details should somebody keep in mind as they're thinking about whether this is the right program for them.
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, the deadline is December 5 for applications. Keep an eye out on our website, because there's a possibility we might extend that deadline. So, we'll send a link for you Mary to include on the website. The program starts January 23. That's a Friday, so it's going to occur every Friday for… it's actually 15 weeks with one week off in the middle. So, there'll be 14 weeks of programming. And that's January 23 to May 1. And the program is from 9 a.m. to noon every Friday morning in that time period.
MARY HUNT:
You ladies are both researchers in the area of nonprofits so I'm assuming you're bringing some of your own particular areas of interest or expertise to the program. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? What might you be contributing to the conversation and to the curriculum?
SUSAN APPE:
Yeah. I mean, I think in addition to both Jennifer and in my interest in seeing nonprofits advocating and lobbying more for their missions, which I think is really important, I think some of what I'm interested in is how nonprofits are responding to the political, funding, even regulatory environments. And I think some of my research, both in the U.S. and abroad, can feed into some of the conversations that we're having and what we're seeing now in the U.S. And I also think depending on the positions and the cohort itself, some of my work on private philanthropy thinking about what motivates people to give their time, their money, their talent, to causes that nonprofits really steward and push forward will also be a value added and something that I think will most certainly come up.
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah, my research focuses on policy advocacy and the role of nonprofit organizations in organizing their communities to comment on public policy, usually in the environmental field. I also have a broader research program that has done action research, research with nonprofit organizations across a whole range of service areas and advocacy areas on social change, leadership and social change nonprofit organizations and I focus on certain skills, like framing. How do you frame your issues and also field level dynamics? So how do you cooperate in a context that might have some competition in it? How do you do those types of things? I should also mention, we have a colleague, Bo Li, who will also be involved in the program, to some extent. She's a newer faculty member, so she might get more involved as she spends more time at the University at Albany, but she has some experience also in personnel management, so we'll probably bring her in and nonprofit financial management as well.
MARY HUNT:
And Rockefeller itself… Rockefeller College has long been known for its nonprofit studies program and nationally ranked in that area and has really a fine reputation. So, there will be I a great deal of experts who'll be behind you too, and who will be contributing as well as pulling in from the community and your associates from nonprofit organizations in the area as well.
SUSAN APPE:
Yeah, I think that's actually important to underline, and Jennifer had alluded to that, is that, you know, the Capital Region has a lot of expertise. It's not just at the university, although the university, I think, is definitely a hub of that expertise, and certainly in the nonprofit world. But we have some tremendous nonprofit professionals, many whom have gone through the Rockefeller MPA program, so we'll take some credit for that, but most certainly we want to leverage the capacity locally, and so we have a lot of good partners, subject matter experts, who will be involved in the program and be value added, for sure.
MARY HUNT:
Who are some of the community partners that you might invite in to work with you on ENLA?
SUSAN APPE:
Oh, great, great. And some have been involved from the beginning. And so I definitely want to underline, or we want to underline, that the local Community Foundation and the local United Way of the Greater Capital Region, both of them infrastructure organizations, organizations that are real leaders in the nonprofit sector here, who themselves provide great capacity-building programming, they are on board and are partners with us, both providing human and financial resources to the program. So, we're really excited to have them on board.
MARY HUNT:
I should ask you about cost. Is there a cost associated with the program? Are there scholarship opportunities? What can you share about that?
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yes to both. So, the cost for UAlbany students and alumni is $1,800 and if you are a nonprofit employee, it's $1,900 for those in the Capital District or, sorry, in -tate, if you're out of state, it's $2,500 and there are scholarship opportunities available. So, if you're interested in a scholarship, there's a box that you can tick in a comment that you can make about that on the application form. And we will take all of those requests under consideration,
MARY HUNT:
And we will make sure we put that web link on our resource page for the podcast as well.
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah. Okay, great. And I also just want to mention, if you want to apply, you can go on to the University of Albany website and type in ENLA, so that's E, N, L, A, and the first thing that's going to pop up is a link to a description of the program, and at the bottom of that, there's a link to apply. So that's another route that you can use to apply if you're interested.
MARY HUNT:
I've known you ladies for several years, so I know you are really passionate about what you speak. Just curious, though, for those who don't know you as well, where did your interest in nonprofits come from? Was there a particular story, incident, professor, someone who inspired you to pursue this as a career?
SUSAN APPE:
Yeah, I mean, for me, I think it's been many points that has kind of led me. But I think initially I was an art studio, art major in undergrad. It's very odd how then now I look at regulatory policy, yeah, in Latin America, but and I so, I think that's, you know, the world of the arts, in particular, in the U.S., is nonprofit led, right? And so, I was always introduced to nonprofits because of my interest in art. And when I did internships, I was working at art nonprofits. And so that kind of led me to have interest more generally in the nonprofit world. And then that with I'm a returned Peace Corps volunteer. I served in Macedonia and Bolivia, working with NGOs in development, often on cultural issues and educational issues. So, it did overlap a bit with my interest in the arts, but certainly seeing the important role that they played on the ground as a Peace Corps volunteer. Then from there, it was, it was a sure thing that I would continue studying. And then, you know, Professor Judith Saidel was here at UAlbany and that really paved the way. And she really has built, had built with lots of collaborators, the nonprofit concentration and teaching and research in Rockefeller, and so we're kind of following that path.
MARY HUNT:
Judith Saidel… Very well-respected expert in the field. How about you?
JENNIFER DODGE:
Yeah. So I became interested in nonprofits when I was living in New York City and I was a member of a community garden there, and the city wanted to bulldoze the community gardens, and I became involved in trying to protect that garden, and we were successful at doing that with a movement across the city to protect a lot of those open spaces that were really community institutions. At the same time that I was doing that, I was working at a think tank that was doing research on citizen participation in public housing, and I was just really struck by the differences in how participation was organized in a city bureaucracy or a federal bureaucracy and how that was being done in these community gardens. And I was really driven to do research on how nonprofits are affecting the policy process and what are the different ways in which that can happen. And I just found the civil society nonprofit sector like having a very robust approach to citizen participation in community organizing and advocacy. And so I went to graduate school at NYU, and I worked on a project called Leadership for Our Changing World that was sponsored by the Ford Foundation, with Sonia Ospina, Erica Foldy, and Ellen Schall, who are all faculty members at NYU, and we ended up doing a project with over 100 social change leaders across the United States on any issue that you can imagine to understand how they were developing their… how they were practicing their leadership in their communities to create social change. These were some of the most impactful nonprofits across the country, working on really tough issues, and we learned a lot from them, and so we developed a lot of scholarship on social change leadership out of that. And since my work has evolved actually coming out of that project, doing research with nonprofit organizations that do advocacy on environmental issues, from environmental justice to fracking, coal bed methane, now climate change. So, I'm really interested in now how those groups can come together to build coalitions to create change and be strategic and effective at achieving their goals and their ambitions.
MARY HUNT:
You know that community gardens bulldozing example is kind of a metaphor for what nonprofits are going through today. There is so much pressure, so many challenges. As I said, we're relying on them so much more, maybe than we ever have before so the message is really to lean into your mission. Don't be daunted by the challenges. Don't back away, you know, keep forward thinking and looking, and try to find strategies for dealing with these new challenges.
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JENNIFER DODGE:
That's absolutely right. I think that's exactly what we're trying to do here. So, if you have big challenges and you are not sure how to move forward, or you have some ideas and you want some support, I think this is a great program for you to join and to get some support. And in leaning in, as you put it, yeah, yeah.
SUSAN APPE:
And leaning in and finding and working with others that are also in similar if a little different situation. And so, I think, you know, the cohort model, the relational aspect of the program, is beneficial as well.
MARY HUNT:
I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you come back and tell us more about the program once it's underway.
SUSAN APPE:
We would love that.
JENNIFER DODGE:
Absolutely. Yes.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr. Susan Appe is associate professor and MPA Director in the Department of Public Administration & Policy and International Affairs at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany. Susan Appe's research focuses on government-nonprofit relations and the dimensions and evolution of the nonprofit sector. She examines how government policy influences and shapes civil society and nonprofit organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); how and why nonprofit organizations form networks and their implications; and the relationship between organized civil society, foreign aid and development.
Dr. Jennifer Dodge is an Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Rockefeller College and Affiliated Faculty in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at UAlbany. Dr. Dodge's research focuses on the interpretation of policy conflict, primarily in the environmental field.
For more information on today’s guests and the Emerging Nonprofit Leadership Accelerator through Rockefeller College, visit the resource page for this podcast online at the dash engagement dash ring dot simplecast dot com.
The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
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