Shortage of management talent could hamper nonprofits, speaker says

Published: 2007-08-15

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Nonprofit organizations will face a serious shortage of senior leaders in the next decade unless efforts are made now to recruit and retain outstanding managers, a consultant to nonprofits told the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management. Thomas J. Tierney, chairman and co-founder of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit organization that provides tools and strategies to help other nonprofits increase their social impact, and a lecturer at the Harvard Business School in Boston, gave the keynote address at the leadership organization's annual membership meeting, held at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in early July. The text of Tierney's talk was made available to Catholic News Service in August. "The nonprofit sector -- and this would include the church, for sure -- is colliding head-on with a fundamental shortage of management talent, a shortage of senior leaders," Tierney said. "This escalating leadership deficit, if you will, is going to be more profound and more pervasive than anything this country has ever experienced," he added.

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