Saving Miss Oliver’s

FOUNDER’S SYNDROME IN NON PROFITS

My knees were shaking, my heart was beating much too fast and I was on the verge of tears. My meeting with a woman whom I respected and admired, the founding head of an extraordinary school where I would have been delighted to enroll my own children, was to begin in five minutes, and I had steeled myself  as her consultant to tell her I thought she should resign. Otherwise, in another year, two at the most, the board which she had recruited would fire her. I was prepared to go on and admit that the board might not have the heart to save the school from the very person who had made it so worth saving – in which case the school would falter and soon not be as worth saving anymore.

Imagine my exhilaration when, before I opened my mouth, she told me she had come to the same conclusion. “It hasn’t been an easy decision,” she said. “I’ve done more than a little grieving. I’m still in love with the school, and with the idea of being its head. But I’m not in love with, nor particularly fit for the kind of leadership and management the school needs now that it is three times the size than when we started.”

The core of the leadership this brilliant educator had provided the school had been in the classroom. She’d focused on recruiting great teachers and leading them in the development of exemplary progressive curriculum. That’s where her talents lay and where her heart was, and the superb program that drew the families to the school in rapidly increasing numbers was the result. Thus the paradox: her success as a leader had created the need for a different kind of leadership: more global, overarching, delegating the work she was best at to someone else. Yes, in a fantasy world, she could have taken on that work as the Dean of Faculty and reported to her successor, but she knew her continued presence as everyone’s hero would drain the authority from the new head.

In June of that year, she told the board she would resign, effective July 1 of the following year. During her last year, I served as consultant to the search committee for her successor, and had constant contact with the school. I watched her steps get lighter and lighter and serenity imprint on her face as she realized how smart she had been to resign before anyone had to suggest that to her, and what a fine thing she had done. She had caused a great school to exist. Now she was giving it away to the world!

Here’s another, but different, success story:  Twenty-three years ago, a young man, Ben Holmes (full disclosure: he happens to be my son-in-law) started The farm School in Athol, Massachusetts. He didn’t have a nickel to his name, but he did have several credit cards – as did the friends he gathered around himself to be the board of trustees. He rented a small family-run dairy farm from a retired farmer whose children had chosen other professions, made repairs and improvements with his own labor, and invited local public elementary and middle schools to bring groups of children and their teachers to participate in the life and work of a traditional family farm, thus  connecting kids to the land, inspiring conservation and instilling the concepts of sustainable agriculture. And, of course, he was raising funds for, among other things, a bunkhouse (built out of lumber from local sustainable forests, milled by a local mill, constructed  by local workers) to house approximately 30 children and their teachers who would come to the farm for a program which lasts three and one half days. Now, in addition to all the work of operating a farm, raising funds, hiring, inspiring, supervising staff, leading the development of the curriculum, he was recruiting the children in public and independent schools from as far away as Boston and Providence.

The Farm School very rapidly became a success. Its calendar is entirely booked. Last I heard, not one participating school has opted out. It owns the farm, the mortgage paid off. And it has expanded. Three miles away on another farm rented for a very small sum from a retired farmer delighted to preserve her land as a farm, The Farm School operates an intern program for people who want to learn organic farming. The program earns good revenue selling the produce of a thirty-five acre organic garden to local subscribers and high end markets in Boston. On that farm in what was once a very large chicken coop, The farm School operates a one-room school house for 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade children whose parents want a more progressive education than the public school offers. Two of my grandchildren received a superb education there.

Thus, like my friend’s elementary school, The Farm School has become a much more complex organization than when Ben started it, requiring a different kind of leadership to sustain it. But, unlike the elementary school’s founder, Ben is still at the helm. His decision, equally self-aware and disciplined as hers, was to give away operations  to competent others. Now, if he milks a cow or weeds a garden, he does so for therapy or to relieve someone who needs a break. Likewise for teaching. There was some sadness in saying goodbye to activities that are the source of his passion, but his willingness to delegate to competent others has left him free to see the organization as a whole and thus guide it so as to sustain it. To say nothing of sustaining himself.

Both of these successful founders were able to separate their own identity from the organizations they brought into being. Not easy to do. And they understood that when they recruited a board they were creating an authority greater than their own.

Too bad these two successes aren’t what usually happen.

What too often actually happens instead is a brilliant, charismatic person with a compelling idea for making the world a better place makes an irresistible  pitch to prospective board members who agree to form a board and start an organization to implement that vision- and then proceed to act not like a board, but instead a loyal rubber stamp to the founder. Most often, the board doesn’t even ask the question whether the founder should be the Executive Director. For, after all, the whole idea is hers, the thinking goes; our organization wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for her brilliant vision, her passion, and commitment to this marvelous idea which has given us the chance to be good servants and brought new meaning to our lives. Thus the board’ relates to the founder as if she owned the organization, and inevitably after awhile, the best board members drift away, leaving the weak ones behind to be even more reverent of the executive director. Why would a strong board member want to continue attending all those meetings to hear what has already been decided? Without a strong board, no non-profit organization will ever emerge from immaturity to reach its potential.

And if the founder/director does not perform well, there is no way to stave off dysfunction. As the organization grows, there is the predilection for the founder/director to stay too closely involved with all the functions, including those for which she has the least talent – or if she does delegate to others, to undermine their authority by changing their decisions when they don’t agree with the way she is thinking – which is often a secret because she “owns” everything. Secret also are the internal problems because the board takes her reports at face value, never asking tough questions, let alone doing 360 degree evaluations. Valuable employees, tired of waiting for the board to do its job, resign. Soon new hires and resignations resemble a revolving door. Ultimately the dysfunction is so pervasive the organization dies – or the board finally does step in and remove the Executive Director.

Therein lies another paradox: the pain of forcing the separation of the creator from her creation is engendered by the same phenomena which makes doing so necessary: reverence on the part of the board, a sense of ownership on the part of the founder/director.

How much more victorious the outcome if, at the first instant, boards and founding directors would think through to the true nature of their work and their relationship to each other.