Stuart Graff of ‘The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’: 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Lead A Nonprofit Organization

You serve many others as a non-profit leader. At the head of this line should always be your customer/client, but defining that customer/client isn’t easy. Sure, the people for whom you render services are your customers, but so are your donors. Your board is also a customer, they’re volunteers who provide support for your mission, for whom your efforts at care and feeding are critical. Each of these groups are stakeholders, and your job is to align those stakeholders. That’s far from easy, and sometimes near impossible. Your mission is the touchstone to which you can always return, because it’s the aligning tool on which every stakeholder should agree. If they aren’t aligned in supporting the mission, they probably aren’t the right fit for the organization.