Leadership in Focus: Patrick Johnston
By Elisa Birnbaum
October 5, 2009
This month in our Leadership in Focus we feature Patrick Johnston. A true veteran of the sector, Patrick has amassed an impressive portfolio of leadership positions, including president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy and executive director of the Canadian Council on Social Development and the National Anti-Poverty Organization. President and CEO of the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation from 2002 to 2009, Patrick recently left his post but remains aligned with the organization as a senior fellow focused on researching Canada's international development policies.
CharityVillage: What do you see as the main challenges facing the nonprofit sector today? Do they look any different from the ones you faced when you started out?
Patrick Johnston: My first job in the sector was as an executive director in 1975, so I'm thinking back over 35 years. The obvious one that everyone would point to is the continuing challenge of generating enough revenue. It's different today, but it was still the number one challenge 35 years ago. What's perhaps different today is that the whole fundraising business is much more competitive today. There was probably more government money available back then, but it wasn't as much as people think. Sure, there was certain core funding from some government departments but a very small proportion got ongoing funding. There's a lot of mythology about the "good 'ole days."
Probably the second most important challenge has to do with communications, getting the message out about an organization's mission, service or programs. It's a much more difficult task today simply because of the noise that exists. Of course, that relates to the ability to generate revenue, get volunteers, everything. This challenge is probably one that is most different from years ago. Some other challenges include the ability to recruit and maintain good competent staff and volunteers - the same issues we worried about back then. And then there's the issue of accountability. I think there's a greater demand to be transparent today.
What is most different today from when I began, and which has implications for all the other issues we talked about, has to do with technology and the way in which we use it as a matter of course. Very few people conceived of that when I started my career. Think about how dependent we are on technology today and it has huge implications, not the least of which is the speed at which everything has to happen today. Of course, as a flip side, opportunities provided by technology are big too.
CV: What is the nonprofit sector "getting right" and what requires a lot more work?
PJ: By and large, organizations are much more sophisticated in their ability to communicate. It's become a more crowded landscape, but there has been a sea change in terms of the ability of many nonprofits to get their message out versus when I first began my career. The other thing the sector does a much better job with, is it's a much more entrepreneurial sector than in the past. It has to be because it's responding to some really big challenges. But I find this particularly with some of the younger people I've worked with who are very different from my peer group at that age. They want to roll up their sleeves and are very entrepreneurial. I find it very exciting, though not always perfect. There's a bit of hubris on the part of some young people, but I do think they're much more innovative, creative generally speaking.
The other thing I've noticed is there's much less likelihood that organizations assume the public knows what they do and like what they do and that all they have to do is do good things and the public will respond. It wasn't really the case 35 years ago, but they assumed as long as they did good things, money would flow. That's quite different today, and is part of the sophisticated messaging.
"I think, by and large, the sector is still very ignorant about how government works and I think that's a real challenge and problem." |
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I think, by and large, the sector is still very ignorant about how government works and I think that's a real challenge and problem. Because, regardless of which sub-sector someone may work in, at the end of the day, the government is still going to be, in almost all cases, the largest funder of the activity in all those sub-sectors. Therefore, whatever an organization or sub-sector is going to be able to do, [it] will be influenced for better or for worse by what governments at all levels do or don't do. I found so few people who have any sense of how government operates, and have very limited capacity to influence government. Or if they try, they do it more in a ham-fisted way that probably works against them. It's surprising to me because I would have thought that over the past few decades there would be a much greater understanding on the part of much larger group of people about the importance of trying to figure out how to work more constructively with government. I would say that is probably the one area in particular where I have seen almost no improvement over the years.
The second thing I think needs work is there are times when I'm not sure there is a sector. People involved in organizations tend to identify in the first instance with the individual organization they are involved with. They may or may not associate with something a bit broader like the health or environmental sector, but very few people really associate or identify themselves as part of something much bigger. I think that's been to the detriment of nonprofit organizations because, unlike the private sector, they lack the more sophisticated understanding that sometimes you're better off standing together and trying to achieve things collectively than on your own.
CV: Do you foresee significant long-term consequences on foundations and the sector because of the current economy?
PJ: There is absolutely going to some mid-term implications that we'll see for the next two or three years, at a minimum. So many private, public and community foundations have taken a real hit in the last 18 months - our foundation lost 31 to 32% of the market value of our assets. No one is expecting them to bounce back quickly. A lot of people are holding off and not making decisions in terms of establishing new foundations or new funds in community foundations. And that will have mid-term implications over the next three to five years. Beyond that, it's hard to say. Certainly those in the fundraising business say donations of appreciated securities have completely tanked.
If organizations haven't already become more entrepreneurial, they will have to. And remember, we're going into an era with the federal government deficit projected to be in the billions and government taps will be turned off, so it's almost a perfect storm that is developing. People shouldn't be lulled into thinking just because the economists say the recession is over that everything is going to be good in terms of funding sources; there is a longer-term delayed impact. Next year and the year after may be the tougher years. But who knows the long term impact?
The one upside on the part of grantmaking foundations I've been associated with is there's much more interest today in mission-based investing. If you have far fewer assets than you did a few years ago, more people will look at how they invest those assets and if they can invest them in more creative ways to help further their charitable mission.
CV: Has the role of the grantmaker evolved over the years?
PJ:
Most significantly, there's a tendency of some of the larger more established foundations to become more of operating foundations as opposed to simply grantmakers, or to become more of a hybrid where they will do some grantmaking but also direct activities themselves. The Gordon Foundation is a perfect example. For the past couple of years, less and less of our total charitable disbursements have been done by way of giving grants to others, and more and more are direct activities that the foundation has undertaken itself. Many grantmakers have moved in that direction; it's an interesting trend I noticed in the past five to 10 years. Foundations are asking: are there other ways to achieve our mission other than simply providing a grant? It's not right for every foundation since it depends on one's mission. It can also be more labour-intensive and not every foundation is prepared to invest in staffing to deliver their own programs.
I think foundations are a little more transparent then they used to be. And I think they are a little better at cooperating and working together. This year is the 10th anniversary of the establishment of Philanthropic Foundations of Canada, but 11 years ago there was no national association of private foundations and 20 years ago there was no national association of community foundations. Umbrella networks uniting people with common interests are relatively new developments. It's an improvement that a lot of us would argue should have happened years ago. I think it's good for philanthropy and it's a sign of changing roles and collaboration.
CV: Tell me about your fellowship. Is the time especially ripe for this type of research project?
PJ: The fellowship is part and parcel of a number of changes that the board made to our grantmaking, in particular, its decision to phase out the Global Citizenship Program. It seemed to be a logical way to bring the program to an end. And through doing a lot of grantmaking on the international side, I became very aware of how many organizations were dependent on funding from CIDA. While our support was appreciated, it was really just a drop in the bucket. And CIDA has been heavily criticized for a long time. I thought maybe there's something we can usefully do as a grantmaking foundation to help advance the discussion about reform to our foreign aid policy. We're not the first and probably won't be the last to do so. But, as a private foundation, we are able to position ourselves as an honest broker. We're not dependent on government, never have been, never will be, and we have no relationship with CIDA. Most of the groups are worried about biting the hand that feeds you but CIDA doesn't feed us. So if we can constructively put on the table some of the challenges the groups we were funding experienced with CIDA and, more importantly, some solutions, we felt that that would be a good contribution of the foundation's resources.
So, for the next 18 months I'm going to be working on this project and I'm just at the stage of scoping out what we can do as a foundation that would be helpful to advance discussion about reform efforts. There's an example of a direct activity; we're not giving a grant, we're doing it ourselves to the extent that we're using the Gordon Foundation's good reputation in Ottawa to pursue and further a conversation about a really important agency and set of policies. We'll probably organize some workshops, bring in guest speakers from other countries as models for us to pursue.
CV: Do you think being a leader in the nonprofit sector differs from leading other sectors?
PJ: The way we exercise leadership is very different when you have huge, hierarchical, bureaucratic structures to work through, as opposed to the situation of the majority of nonprofits, where there are two or five staff. So the aspects of leadership you have to demonstrate are different depending on whether you are in nonprofit or public sectors. In some ways, the toughest part of leading in the nonprofit sector is that you don't have the same kind of easy, quantifiably measurable bottom line, especially in relation to the private sector. So the added challenge of trying to demonstrate impact and to measure outcome and to prove that what you did makes a difference is more difficult if you're running a program for homeless people than if you're manufacturing auto parts.
CV: Are organizations doing enough to foster young leaders?
More about Patrick Johnston... |
First nonprofit job: ED of Richmond Youth Service Agency in BC
Education: BA in Political Science and Bachelors of Education and Masters in Social Policy Planning and Administration
Annual budget of the organization you oversee: Charitable disbursements this year amount to close to five million dollars
Number of employees: 6
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PJ: It may be a function of my age but I don't think so. We began a fellowship program at the foundation called the Gordon Global Fellowship geared at younger Canadians at the early stage of their career. The response was phenomenal. We identified at the foundation early on that there wasn't enough being done to support, nurture, and develop and mentor that next generation of leadership. In fact, we've done this now in all our program areas. And the foundation just announced the establishment of a new northern fellowship program focused on young people living in three northern territories; the majority of them will be Aboriginal. It was patterned in large part after the global fellowship initiative and it's a joint venture with the Kaplan Fund in NYC. It's an interesting collaborative venture focused on fostering young leaders in the north.
CV: Any books or resources on leadership you can recommend?
PJ: I can think of two people from the field of business management. Peter Drucker was considered one of the management gurus of last century and tends to be associated with business but, in fact, he did a lot of work with the nonprofit sector. He wrote a lot about the challenges of management and leadership in the nonprofit sector. He was someone who understood there were commonalities in leadership and management between the sectors but that there were also some unique differences. At one point he said the best-run organization he had seen in his experience was American Red Cross. His stuff, though dated, passes the test of time.
And then there's Harvard business professor, John Kotter, who also wrote about leadership. He is very effective at explaining how good leadership is the ability to be a manager when you need to manage and lead when you need to lead, but know the difference between the two. I would recommend almost anything by these two; I found their resources enormously helpful.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.
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