The Chronicle of Philanthropy

of professional leaders. Recruit ers and search committees only recruit from pools of interested and appropriately skilled tal ent. If those pools don’t have enough talent for today’s leader ship challenges, then who will assume the responsibility for do ing something about it?

No one is paying enough at tention to building the pipeline of leaders for the near future. We must do more to provide pro grams to prepare midmanag ers for executive roles, develop meaningful executive programs for career changers, and think together creatively about how we can do more to attract and keep the “best and brightest” en gaged and employed in the non proft sector.

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table theft can best be illustrat ed in just the last two years. In 2009, we saw a 50percent rise in the amount of money stolen over the previous year.

In 2010, data showed that that trend line has not subsided, with an additional 25percent increase to over $2billion; and that represents only between 5 to 10percent of all fraud, according to several members of the Association of Certifed Fraud Examiners who reviewed our data collection. Most fraud is not made public and is buried in the boardroom or the execu tive suite, an insurance payout, repayment with no prosecution, etc. With only 25percent of this year gone, it appears that the charitable sector will have an other recordbreaking year.

While $2billion may not seem like much money given that assets in charitable coffers are over trillion dollars, it is big money to the thousands of char ities and donors that are affect ed annually.

But an important point is missing in Mr. Lenkowsky’s ar ticle. No matter how many dol lars are lost or what percentage of charities face fraud, a tremen dous problem exists and it con tinues. Charitable fraud is hav ing a corrosive effect on the sec tor.

Leaders of the sector and the media prefer to focus more on tractable, but important, issues such as charitable giving or vol unteerism. Most are dismissive of the notion that charitable fraud is important and the stag gering dimensions of the prob lem.

With no one watching the sec
tor’s money, the issue of fraud,
misappropriation, malfeasance,
and mismanagement is not lost
on the public, and as the prac
tice widens it will discourage in
vestments in the sector that are
so desperately needed.

GARY SNYDER Publisher

Nonproft Imperative West Bloomfeld, Mich.

Leadership ‘an ethos’ and not just skills

DAVID EDELL President

DRG Executive Search New York

Fraud at nonprofts: ‘widespread’ after all

TO THE EDITOR:

Leslie Lenkowsky’s opinion (“Despite HighProfle ‘Three Cups’ Controversy, Nonproft Fraud Isn’t Widespread,” May 5) does not comport with the em pirical evidence I have seen in over fve years of collecting data about fraud for Nonproft Imper ative, a twicemonthly newslet ter.

While there may be some soft ness to various studies about charity fraud, one cannot come to the conclusion that it is not widespread. It is omnipresent and continues to grow at a spec tacular rate.

A signifcant jump in chari

TO THE EDITOR:

Pablo Eisenberg’s essay “Real Leadership Doesn’t Develop in Classrooms” (Opinion, April 21) raises the important issue of identifying and supporting new leadership models to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.

We agree that the best lead ership development takes place outside the boundaries of a class room, especially those programs that engage young people in realworld community problem solving. Developed at the turn of the 20th century by John Dew ey, that approach has since been embraced by scores of educators who recognize the importance of experiential learning, reflec tion, and sociopolitical context in education.

Despite its popularity with many educators, however, the approach has yet to be widely ac cepted as a framework for leader ship education. Today, the prev alent view of a leader is still of

Innovations Devised by Teams May Succeed
More Often Than Those by Single Entrepreneurs

leaders of social change are the “Type A” lone wolves who la bor mightily against the odds. These individuals deserve acco lades for their obsession, perse verance, and grit.

But plenty of “Type B” en trepreneurs, people who like to work collegially, successfully op erate in teams that reach well beyond the heroic model, and even “Type C” entrepreneurs can come together through the kind of spontaneous leaderless combustion that is remaking the Middle East.

Indeed, recent research sug gests that innovations devised by teams are not only more successful in producing break throughs but also more effective in preventing failures.

This is not to say lone wolves never succeed, but teams have special advantages in winnow ing bad ideas, fnding new com binations of old ideas, and creat ing efforts that succeed.

Is there a better phrase for

Continued from Page 25

social entrepreneurship that might create a more insight ful way to talk and think about what it really means to be an ef fective leader who can promote social change?

President Obama certainly thought so when he used “social impact” to announce a new bond fund in his 2011 budget, but that term raises the same ques tioning glance. “Civic entrepre neurship” might work, too, but it contains that word “entrepre neurship” again.

Perhaps “public service” is the answer. Although the term has a checkered past linked to gov ernment bureaucracy, it can be broadly defned as any action to challenge the prevailing wisdom about intractable problems.

Instead of restricting public service to serve as a synonym for government, the term actu ally captures everything from occasional volunteering all the way to lives of service as social entrepreneurs, stewards, ex plorers, and advocates.

It also invites individuals, teams, organizations, and even crowds to do their part in cre ating lasting progress and can also take place just about any where—from the streets of Tu nisia to seemingly moribund government agencies, corporate socialresponsibility divisions, and ancient nonprofts.

If words matter, why not choose a term that imagines many paths to social change? And why not a term that em braces the active defense of established programs that work?

Instead of emphasizing social entrepreneurship as the favored option for changing the world, public service says, “just do it” in whatever way possible.

Paul Light is professor of public service at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and author of Driving So cial Change: How to Solve the World’s Toughest Problems.

a charismatic “great man” who
will show us “the way.”
The world, however, is rapidly
changing, meaning that new ap
proaches to leadership are not
only warranted but required.
Recent years have seen dra
matic cultural shifts driven by
technology, globalism, and new
generations with different ideas
about work and “success.”
In fact, young people—who
have grown up with technology
(and are comfortable with its em
phasis on transparency, collabo
ration, and results)—are tak
ing the lead in calling for new
approaches to leadership.

A poll by Peter D. Hart Re search Associates, for instance, found that 65 percent of millen nials (those born after 1982) saw ordinary people as being better equipped to solve social problems than authority fgures or experts. Millennials are also more likely to have ambivalent, even negative, feelings about for mal leadership, preferring hori zontal arrangements in which everyone is a leader, according to another study by the Girls Scouts of the USA.

And they want leadership edu cation to reflect that notion. At a recent McCormick Founda tionsupported symposium on leadership education, a diverse group of students from some of the top leadership programs in the country called for curricula that move from a focus on mak ing money, public speaking, and dealmaking to helping young people incorporate the public purposes of leadership, includ ing civic engagement and real world problemsolving.

Auspiciously, a small but
growing number of programs
in colleges and universities re
flect these trends, with many of
fering curricula focused on the
civic aspects of leadership—in
cluding service, community
problemsolving, and activism—
with a larger framework of lead
ership education that stresses
relationships over position and
action over attainment. We be
lieve these kinds of efforts de
serve more attention and, thus,
have attempted to document
some of the best in the country
in From Command to Commu-
nity: A New Approach to Leader-
ship Education in Colleges and
Universities (Tufts University
Press, 2011). Today’s defnition
of leadership education is not
just a set of programs, cours
es, or skills; it is an ethos that
many believe should extend
across disciplines, departments,
and individuals to permeate the
way in which entire institutions
function. That ethos is one that
values the transparency, authen
ticity, collaboration, action, and
interactivity that are becoming
the hallmark of a new global so
ciety—one that young people
are embracing and one with
which older, more traditional in
stitutions are grappling.