Several years into my tenure as an Executive Director, I hit a wall. Not a dramatic, public unraveling - just the slow, quiet kind of exhaustion that creeps in when you have been carrying something too heavy for too long by yourself. The strategic plan needed updating. The board felt disconnected. The staff was stretched. And I, convinced that the mission depended entirely on my ability to hold it all together, had somehow decided that asking for help was a sign of weakness.
I was wrong. I had anxiety during the night to prove it. I longed for Psalm 4:8 - "In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety." But peace, I was learning, does not come to those who insist on carrying alone what was never meant to be carried alone.
I wrote in a previous post about "Me, Myself, and I are not the Holy Trinity" - the dangerous tendency leaders have to operate as if the entire weight of the organization rests on their shoulders alone. Today I want to take that same idea and apply it to the structure of nonprofit leadership itself, because the research is clear, the Scripture is clear, and frankly, my own hard experience is clear: you cannot do this alone, and you were never supposed to.
Nonprofit leadership is uniquely collaborative by design.
Unlike a business, which exists to generate profit for shareholders, a nonprofit exists to serve a mission that benefits the public. That mission is too important and too complex to be carried by any one person or any one group. It requires the board and the Executive Director and the staff and the volunteers, each bringing their distinct gifts, perspectives, and expertise to the table. Not competing. Not duplicating. Collaborating.
The Standards for Excellence Institute, whose framework informs so much of my consulting work, describes collaborative leadership as the capacity to engage people and groups outside one's formal control and inspire them to work toward common goals - despite differences in convictions, cultural values, and operating norms. I love that definition because it does not pretend collaboration is easy. It acknowledges that the people around the table will not always see things the same way. And it says: do it anyway.
What does genuine collaboration actually look like?
It looks like a board that asks great strategic questions instead of managing the day-to-day. It looks like an Executive Director who shares information openly (financials, program outcomes, emerging risks) rather than curating a rosy picture for the board to approve. It looks like staff who feel empowered to bring their full perspective into the work, not just execute orders from the top. It looks like volunteers who are treated as genuine contributors, not just free labor.
It also looks like diversity, real, intentional diversity. Not a board that looks and thinks and comes from the same places, making the same kinds of decisions that have always been made. A board and staff that together reflect the community being served, that includes perspectives and lived experiences that challenge the dominant culture norms, will always make better decisions than a room full of people who all agree with each other. Groupthink is comfortable. It is also dangerous.
And here is the hard truth about collaboration: it requires ego management. It requires the Board Chair who is used to running a company to resist the urge to run the nonprofit the same way. It requires the Executive Director to resist the urge to hoard information or control the narrative. It requires every person at the table to hold their own perspective loosely enough to genuinely consider someone else's. That is not natural. That is discipline.
In Mark 6, Jesus calls the twelve to him and sends them out two by two. Not one by one. Two by two. Henri Nouwen, in Reflections on Christian Leadership, writes that "we cannot bring good news on our own. We are called to proclaim together in community." The concept of two by two, Nouwen says, takes care of leadership loneliness, leadership pride, and the never-ending to-do list. It invites people into collaboration. It reminds us that we are not the Holy Trinity.
I have returned to that passage more times than I can count, as an Executive Director, as a consultant, as a Board Chair sitting across from a leader who is visibly carrying too much alone. The invitation is always the same. You don't have to do this by yourself. You were never meant to.
So what does this mean practically?
It means investing in the relationship between the board and the Executive Director - not just the transaction of reports and approvals, but the genuine partnership of two entities who trust each other enough to be honest. It means building a board that is diverse enough to challenge itself. It means creating structures - committees, clear roles, shared goals - that distribute the work and the wisdom rather than concentrating both at the top.
It means that the next time you are sitting in your office at 9pm, staring at a strategic plan that feels like it is entirely your problem to solve, you stop. And you ask: who else should be in this room?
Is building this kind of collaborative culture easy? No. Is it worth it? Every single time.
You cannot do this alone. And the good news (the really good news) is that you were never supposed to.
Erin
PS. If your organization is struggling with collaboration between board and staff, or if your leadership team is feeling the weight of too much carried by too few, I would love to come alongside you.