Leadership in Focus: Penelope Rowe
By Elisa Birnbaum
April 20, 2009
More about Penelope Rowe... |
First nonprofit job: executive secretary at the Early Childhood Development Association Education
Education: MSc in public policy and economics from the London School of Economics; first person in this province with an academic degree in speech pathology and audiology
Annual budget of the organization he works for: $1.5 to $2 million
Number of employees: 12-15 core group but rarely less than 18 overall
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This month in our Leadership in Focus series we feature Penelope Rowe, CEO of Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador (CSC). After making the leap from broadcasting to the CSC in 1976, Penelope has acomplished much and been honoured regularly for her achievements. We spoke with her about a range of issues she's seen and helped address in her three-plus decades at the helm of the organization.
CharityVillage: How has the nonprofit sector evolved over the years, particularly in its ability to care for their communities?
Penelope Rowe: I think the sector has always been challenged, overburdened and under-funded by and large. Perhaps in some larger communities, or cities, some organizations have been able to fare better than others but when you get out into smaller communities, the rural regions, it's always been a challenge getting a lot, or even any, funding.
Having said that, communities are full of voluntary nonprofit community-based organizations that are doing extremely worthwhile things, whether it's running a regular food-bank, looking after senior citizens or - more and more now - getting engaged in policy discussion. And working more collaboratively. We're starting to see a shift toward re-thinking how we envisage things.
In my work, I try to get beyond thinking about the nonprofit or voluntary sector to looking at other ways in which we can pull things apart and put them back together again. In the last 35 years I've been trying to really advance the concept of the sector. I was probably involved in the first piece of work that was done at a national level: in 1976 we wrote a report under the aegis of the Canadian Council on Social Development, Tapping the Untapped Potential: Toward a National Policy on Volunteerism.
In those days there was little concept of the sector as a whole so I think we've made huge strides in organizations perceiving themselves as a part of a sector rather than just a whole bunch of isolated, individual organizations. And I think that, while we may not have attained 100%, there is much more of an understanding now that there are three sectors, public, private and nonprofit, each functioning in different ways, though there is lots of overlap.
Since the sector is really nothing more than the people who associate with the sector, I think we have a lot of people who are very articulate, very associated with organizations and thus able to bring forward issues in local communities in a much better way than years ago. That has to do with knowledge mobilization, information sharing, access to internet, consultations, people talking about these issues.
"Thirty years ago I don't think people thought of us as a sector." |
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Thirty years ago I don't think people thought of us as a sector. Those of us in the sector didn't even appreciate that. The fascinating thing to me is that when the Community Council was formed in 1976, our incorporation objectives talked about creating more cooperation within the sector and between the sector and government. So there was already a notion of that coming together in some way. And what we learned very quickly was that it was foolhardy to assume that everybody wanted to come together around everything, you had to set up little constellations of groups that worked around issues of mutual concern. And that really worked well for us. In many ways, the pieces of the sector are doing that. We are probably getting better at trying to isolate those things that are common across organizations regardless of your mission, certainly around the notion of building leadership, recruiting volunteers etc.
For example, the Community Services Council is working with the CRA trying to help charities understand their obligations when it comes to reporting mechanisms. Ten years ago organizations were so far removed from that and there wasn't a lot of help for them. Whereas now, there is. And that's just one small example. There has been that kind of evolution where the sector itself is trying to work together more collaboratively around things of mutual concern.
CV: What innovative programs/research projects is the Community Services Council currently involved in?
PR: The CSC has always prided itself on taking an intellectual approach to what we're doing, looking not only at the issues but also trying to find solutions to these thorny problems. For example, if what was needed was more housing for people released from institutions, we would find a particular solution.
At some point we said these issues need to be raised on a much higher plane, not just as an individual project but how we actually conceptualize the way in which we do social policy, public policy, the ways in which government works with community-based organizations. And we've had some really interesting experiments in this province. We've looked at things like strategic social planning where government and communities can really come together to try and grapple with new approaches.
This province [Newfoundland and Labrador] is one of the leaders when it comes to having a poverty reduction strategy; we have a rural secretariat that is founded on regional committees of individual citizens who come to the table as volunteers trying to deal with issues around regional, rural and local development. A good part of that has been triggered by the CSC. I see it as a catalyst trying to push, prod, poke and work with our colleagues, asking how can we apply a new approach.
One of the really novel, exciting programs that we run is called the Student Work and Service Program. Each summer we partner with the Federal and Provincial government and nonprofit organizations and the Community Services Council acts as the administrator and deliverer of the program. We take young people who want to go to post-secondary or are already in post-secondary education and give them eight weeks of community service in a nonprofit. They receive a cash stipend and at the end of their 280 hours, they receive a tuition credit voucher which they can turn in at any post-secondary institution in the world toward their tuition. We place about 450 students every year, work with about 400 organizations in 200-plus communities.
As for research projects, I did a really cutting edge piece of research five years ago. It was triggered by the common perception in the province, particularly in rural areas, that the pool of volunteers was declining because of population decline. So we did some really interesting work which we called Leadership Gap: Perception or Reality. And we learned we couldn't just blame the issues on a declining population or the fact that young people don't want to get involved. The issue is very often within the organization itself who haven't shifted or changed. And they may not have the resources or the capacity to figure out how to make those shifts or changes.
And now we're doing a really fascinating piece of work, the Clusters Project, around the methods of collaboration. The underlying premise is when you have a lot of small under-funded organizations in small communities putting a lot of pressure on a lot of people, who don't necessarily have resources to do everything individually, can we bring clusters of organizations across communities within reasonable commuting distances together to build capacity? We're working on a couple of pilot projects now to see what we can learn. We know each region of the province may be different but how can we do more collective retention, recruiting etc?
CV: With Volunteer Week upcoming April 19-26, do you think nonprofit organizations are doing enough to foster volunteerism? What is your organization doing to promote it?
PR: We've actually been organising Volunteer Week for 27 years now. For many years we did it primarily in urban areas but we've really been pushing the boundaries. And this year we have 4 big regional events and we also put out a call for proposals from groups across the province who'd like some money to help celebrate volunteers in their communities. We're partnered with Newfoundland Power and with the Federation of Municipalities of Newfoundland and Labrador to get town councils to proclaim Volunteer Week.
We've been doing a lot with young people to encourage them to be volunteers. I'm not really convinced it's up to organizations. I think leaders come forward on their own. Organizations need to be more welcoming. There really is the notion here that young people won't get involved. But statistics don't bear that out. I think what it is, is that young people just want to get involved in their own way.
CV: That said, how should organizations inspire young leaders?
PR: We have young people who work here and we try very hard to let them do things in their own way. I think the real question is not young leadership but fresh leadership. I think the issue is, is the sector able to regenerate itself, is it functioning well. People say they have trouble getting board members with the right skills and that's often an organizational issue, there's a lack of time and energy to invest in that building process.
CV: So if we want to foster fresh leadership, would that be the biggest challenge?
PR: That's part of it. As I mentioned, I believe leaders themselves come forward and if they don't, it may be that that the organization is no longer germane. That's not true across the board but organizations need to learn how to do things differently. Certainly in my experience, in this province, people often don't want to make long-term commitments. I mean there was a time when you joined X organization and it was assumed that that was your organization for life. Whereas today people move around more. And that speaks to the structure of organizations to some extent and our ability to weave people in and out, in a way that suits them. And that doesn't only apply to young people.
CV: Does a leader in the nonprofit sector face challenges that differ from those faced in other sectors?
PR: I think one of the major shifts I've seen which I find quite negative is not from the organization's perspective but the environment the sector has to work in. Years ago, if the Council or any other organization came up with an idea, there was always someone who could take that idea and shop it around. Whereas now we can only shop in the boxes that someone else presents to us. For example, if a foundation or government comes up with a proposal call, they are basically creating the parameters. It's not entirely black and white obviously but people do have to manoeuvre more within someone else's agenda. I think we've slipped a little.
I think one of the biggest challenges is where you get the resources and how you create the environment to allow the sector to be innovative, take some risks and try new approaches. I mean to get money from a foundation or government, by and large, you're expected to do an evaluation and you better give yourself a good evaluation. Whereas, in the private sector, a lot of people who did well, then fell flat on their faces, got up, brushed themselves off, learned their lessons and moved forward. And that's a real challenge in the sector because people don't give you money to think and to poke and to try new ideas. And most organizations don't have the resources, particularly financial, to protect themselves. Some organizations have been able to build some protection but that could be bad as well because people will say, "well if you have money, why do you need ours?"
CV: What specific leadership challenges do you face in your role?
PR: A leader in most organizations needs nerves of steel. And you need to be able to do a multitude of things. People are thrown in to these jobs of CEO, without a whole lot of training for the job so if you don't have a good strong network, knowing where you can turn when you need information, it can be enormously challenging. Because sometimes you may have a weak spot that you don't want to talk to board about. Though I've had the extraordinarily good fortune of always having the most spectacular board and we've never had a major conflict - they always want to move forward and take risks together, which has been very helpful.
At the end of day, when it comes to the issue of leadership in the sector, the question may be misplaced. I think the question really should be how effective are we about influencing what is going on around us. People like to talk about different styles but to me the measure of leadership of all levels is the effectiveness of that organization. And for sure an organization couldn't be effective unless every single person in it was doing their job. When you have a weak link, it challenges your ability to be efficient and influence change. If you're not good at what you do and the people you surround yourself with are not good at what you do, you're dead in the water.
CV: Do you have any practical advice on leadership?
PR: To be a good leader you absolutely need to know what it is you're dealing with. It's not about your style but how you gather intelligence, the knowledge that you have, and the energy you apply and how you use that knowledge to move forward, to be in the vanguard, to make things happen. You always need to be on the cutting age, you can't lead unless you know what you're doing.
You have to have a lot of knowledge. You don't necessarily have to have it all yourself but you better know where to get it. Surround yourself with people who know certain things and you can then assimilate that and collectively move forward. That's the essence of leadership to me, combined with all the standard things we all talk about, like having a vision.
My first engagement as a volunteer and in voluntary leadership was at political level so the other thing I learned really early on was building strategies you need to get you where you want to go. You have to know what it is you want, and work backwards to figure out how to get there. Whereas a lot of people move forward without knowing where they're going.
It's also pretty important to know when to disengage, when you've done all the good you could and when it's time to step back and let others do it. Sometimes disengagement is very positive, particularly when in social planning and development.
For example, a lot of the work we've done at CSC has been meeting unmet needs. In the early 80s I was involved in early childhood development activities and the issue of daycare workers not having proper training. No one in the province wanted to do the training because they didn't think it could be financially viable. So the organization set up a registered training institution, a year-long training program for early childhood workers. The success rate was really high and the world of early childhood changed in the province. After 10 years or so, public college systems started the training and we realized we didn't need to do it anymore so we gave one year's notice and closed our facilities. We don't need to be there for perpetuity.
CV: Any leadership resources that have helped you in your career?
PR: I don't believe very much in job descriptions, I think it really fetters people, confines them (I've been here for 33 years and don't think I've had a job description yet). But I remember reading a work by John Carver and there was a wonderful line that makes a lot of sense: the best job description of all is “run till we tell you to stop”.
In terms of my own development, I was hired to set up this organization having been a broadcaster, having worked in print media and having had a lot of political experience. I came with a very unusual background for this particular job. And one of the early experiences I had was getting involved in the Canadian Council on Social Development. If I hadn't made that connection, I don't think the CSC would exist today. I didn't have a single mentor but it was the opportunity that I found in all of those connections through an organization that is very large and vibrant. I was dealing with all kinds of social and public policy issues so it was the good fortune of being associated with them and being involved on committees and getting invited to conferences.
It was just an extraordinary learning opportunity that might even be hard to replicate now. It was much better than any course I could study at university. I had the opportunity to be associated with deputy ministers and people working on all kinds of issues, hearing new ideas, figuring out how I could absorb that and make things happen here or even just being in the bar at night, having a drink with somebody and learning about a source of funding for a new program. It helped put things on the map here.
One of the interesting things for me is that, though we are a provincially based organization, I have been really fortunate to be associated with just about all of the big national organizations. Having had all these national contacts and learning how others do things has been wonderful.
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.
Next week:
The future of food banks.
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