Just wanted to share a project I'm REALLY excited about. Starting in September,  I'll have the honor of serving as faculty lead for the Nonprofit Roundtable's Future Executive Directors Fellowship, an intensive 9-month program designed to prepare emerging nonprofit leaders. The project is being led by the tireless Rosetta Thurman who is one of the most amazing young women I've ever met.

The program consists of six components:

Visibility & Networking: Fellows will be exposed to a rich network of colleagues, current leaders, mentors, funders, and other experienced professionals.  In addition, the Roundtable will provide multiple opportunities for increased visibility in the region’s nonprofit community. 

Skills Development: Fellows will engage in intensive skill-building workshops designed to fast track their functional understanding of board management, finance, fundraising, communications, legal requirements, advocacy, human resources, and managing change.

Executive Director Modeling: Participants will have the opportunity to have candid conversations as a group with senior nonprofit leaders who are recognized as exceptional Executive Directors for the region’s nonprofit community.  Sessions on the role of an Executive Director and work-life balance strategies will also be presented.

Advising & Peer Coaching: Participants will receive informal advice and support from seasoned nonprofit leaders during each month of the program.  Peer coaching sessions will also be facilitated to help participants achieve personal leadership goals though the “stretch assignment.”

Mentoring: Fellows will learn how to identify and work with mentors.  Throughout the program, we will facilitate the process of matching mentors with Fellows and expose Fellows to a pool of experienced nonprofit leaders from whom to learn in various ways.

Stretch Assignment: The capstone of the Fellowship is a personal stretch assignment that allows Fellows to customize and pursue a specific learning goal.  (For example, a Fellow may take on a fundraising project to gain development experience or join a nonprofit board of directors to gain experience and perspective on boards.) Stretch assignments are to be completed by the end of the program and may be implemented within or outside the Fellows’ organizations.

The Nonprofit Roundtable has also put together an amazing list of faculty to teach the course. 

The application deadline was May 30 and they received 113 applications for only 25 slots. Rosetta tells me that the quality of the applicants is stellar--selecting just 25 participants will be a really difficult task.

I'm particularly excited about helping people to work on their "stretch assignments." This is something that Rosetta has talked about before and in the previous long-term professional development programs I've run, these individual projects have made for some of the most meaningful and life-changing learning I've seen. Personally, I think that you could do an amazing job on professional development if you simply focused on helping people develop their career plans and then facilitated them in working through a series of these assignments. Totally customized learning and something that's relevant and exciting to most people.

This is going to be a ton of fun and another great learning experience . . .