GLAAD Leadership and Nonprofit Crisis Planning

(Photo by iStock/fizkes)

Crisis management is one of the most important and yet least discussed topics in the broader social sector. Talking about worst-case scenarios can be uncomfortable. But the public profile of your organization—and the need to be impactful—require you to have those conversations.

When I do crisis management work, I encourage boards and staff to develop a list of the most devastating headlines that could appear on the front page of their local paper and to develop both a proactive and a reactive plan to navigate the fallout. The danger is real. Nonprofits for whom advocacy is a core strategy—for whom it is their business to speak truth to power—often experience backlash in the form of media exposés. Being ready for that kind of targeting should be a central responsibility of leadership.

For example, GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ advocacy organization (with the kind of fundraising figures that most LGBTQ organizations could only dream of), was recently in the crosshairs. A headline that might have been written in one of those crisis management exercises was on the front page of the New York Times: “A Pattern of Lavish Spending at a Leading L.G.B.T.Q. Nonprofit.”

This, you don’t need me to tell you, is bad news. I care deeply about this organization; I spent a decade there as CEO, focusing on the power of the media to change hearts and minds. But even though, today, I focus my work on the nonprofit sector more broadly—I am a nationally recognized nonprofit leadership expert, an executive coach for CEOs, and an advocate for the nonprofit sector—I’ve always kept my eye on GLAAD. I am proud of GLAAD’s growth in visibility and resources under the leadership of Sarah Kate Ellis, and have been watching as GLAAD has forcefully called out the Times on biased and unfair coverage of transgender issues. I believe the founders of GLAAD would have been proud of just how tough and tenacious GLAAD has been, and when leaders at GLAAD have suggested that this expose piece is in reaction to this pressure, I have paid attention.

However, clearly I am not the target audience for scandalous nonprofit exposes, am I? And I can’t really comment on the substance of the allegations; I’m not on the inside in that way anymore (and I’m not unbiased). Most importantly, it doesn’t really matter what I think: with a story like that out there, the damage is already done. The best time to have addressed it was before it ever came out.

With that in mind, I want to urge the leaders of nonprofits to use the example as a moment of reflection, to look at your own organization and to learn or re-learn some lessons that will help you either anticipate and avoid or more effectively weather the story that comes with any future crisis.

1. The media loves scandals … and if you take on the powerful, prepare for backlash.

There are real scandals and bad actors in every space. The nonprofit space is no exception, and those stories need to be told. But for every real scandal there are thousands of leaders and organizations, with their feet planted firmly on the high road, working with integrity to repair our broken world. These stories don’t sell. Consider the ABC Evening News with David Muir: After 28 minutes of tragedy, impending doom, murder investigations, and political divisiveness, the final two minutes each evening is dedicated to what is known as “America Strong,” showcasing national resilience and rebuilding. Almost all of these brief stories center a nonprofit’s work, and I find hope in them. But think about that 14-to-one ratio!

This imbalance—the lack of visibility on the key role nonprofits play set against a media that primarily covers fraud, wrongdoing, and excess—has a cost and diminishes trust in the sector and its leadership. A decrease in trust will always lead to diminished resources.

If your organization has grown its revenue rapidly, take a closer look at your expenses. Would your expenses pass the sniff test of someone looking to stir up trouble? If it is your job to call out the powerful—be it elected officials, school districts, or the media itself—you need to be as intentional as possible about planning for how these entities might respond, and how that might impact your organization. Being proactive, and not waiting for the potential scandal to wind up in the media, is not distinct from your broader advocacy strategy: your media image is part of your ability to make change, and you need to protect it.

2. All decisions have optics. Optics matter.

Far too often, nonprofits look to bylaws or the IRS or to an attorney to ask the question: can we do this? It’s an important question, but just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Every nonprofit must, of course, consider decisions through the lens of bylaws, succession planning, program evaluation, leadership development, and comp analysis. But as Board Source identifies, there are two other responsibilities that should always be in play: “be attentive to risks” and “enhance the organization’s public standing.” A board should consider the context in which a decision will land and should attend to the story it tells about the organization. We call that “optics.”

Consider a clause in the contract of the GLAAD CEO offering her an annual allowance of $25,000 for a summer rental in Provincetown. I can, in good faith, absolutely imagine how that might have been proposed and approved. Ellis travels a great deal and is away from her wife and kids; a rental like this would offer stability, some self-care, and proximity to a community that gives generously to LGBT causes. Perhaps there was a discussion that the home could be used for dinners, perhaps cultivating and stewarding donors, that could result in large, multi-year gifts or perhaps a planned gift. Having a home base on Cape Cod for a period of time would enable a CEO to engage with other LGBT leaders on the Cape or in Boston. From the inside, the decision could almost seem straightforward.

Now add optics. What is the media context in which a decision like this will be portrayed? What is the story it tells about the organization? The $25,000 investment might be easy to explain and justify in a board room. But readers will likely hear of it after it’s been stripped of that context. Especially if the board looks at that expense in isolation, and not in the context of other expenses that could heighten scrutiny, the organization can be vulnerable. Bad optics can jeopardize public standing!

3. Building leadership is about more than one person.

Like many organizations, GLAAD focused a great deal of effort on retaining its highly successful CEO. It makes sense that they did. Nonprofit CEOs at their best are more than just executives: they are inspirational leaders, charismatic champions for their cause, and they often hold some of the most important institutional relationships in their hands. When board members see a great CEO as their leader, this dynamic can give CEOs disproportionate power during contract negotiations. It can be hard for boards to want to say no.

Lavish retention packages—and the story they can become—are only one risk. Board members will tell you that great CEOs are hard to come by and leadership transitions rock organizations to their core. They are certainly not wrong! But transitions are inevitable, and organizations are more than their leaders. Precisely because boards can overly focus on the individual at the top, intentionality and discipline are required to ensure that leadership development plans and succession planning are done, not only to prepare for that crisis (before it comes) but to validate emerging leaders and ensure organizational sustainability.

Building a leadership development plan all through the organization ensures the long-term sustainability of the organization, and it can help avoid exactly the kind of optics problem that can come with being seen as overly generous to one staff member above others. Organizations whose fortunes rise with one individual can just as easily fall with them.

4. Board members must understand their role, and be ready to play it.

One of the biggest mistakes we make in our sector is not being clear about what the job of nonprofit boards entails (nor investing in education and training so they can do these important jobs well). Because our sector recruits from a place of scarcity, a nominations committee’s success is often measured by the number of new board members rather than the quality, diversity, or commitment of those recruits. Moreover, we can downplay the responsibility involved—believing that marketing board service as a serious and important role will lead prospects to turn the opportunity down—but we may find that the reverse is true: those interested in board service (for the right reasons) are successful people who want to do important work and make meaningful contributions to the organization.

More board members need to understand their roles and responsibilities, every day of their service (and not just when “it” hits the fan). Responsible board members should be on the lookout for what, in medicine, are called “prodromes”: clues or data of problems still in their early stage. Nearly every crisis will turn out to have had them, in retrospect, but if they are ignored as isolated incidents, a concern raised only by a few (or it’s just too hard to consider the consequences) then the situation can escalate into a preventable crisis. Being outside the day-to-day workings of the organization—and charged with the long-term sustainability of the organization as a whole—means that boards are often in a position to catch things that no one else is.

When board members understand the full breadth of their responsibilities, they look well beyond fundraising growth to other important metrics of a thriving nonprofit: financial stewardship, program innovation, solid program evaluation, leadership development, and succession planning, among other things. An organization that experiences rapid growth can lose sight of the kind of attention to expense management that was essential when there were fewer resources. Yet nonprofits can thrive with small budgets and be deeply flawed with very large budgets; it is the board’s responsibility to look beyond the budget line.

Be Ready

Today it’s GLAAD on the front page navigating a crisis, but to see that in isolation is to miss a key element of nonprofit sustainability. Tomorrow it could be your organization or one you hold dear. Consider the lessons embedded in this crisis and move with speed to get out in front of possible crises and to have a “just add water” plan to react with speed and integrity if something hits the fan.

Your cause, your community, the clients you serve deserve nothing less.

Read more stories by Joan Garry.