Donald Summers of Altruist Partners: 5 Things You Need to Know to Successfully Lead a Nonprofit Organization
Be able to deliver a solution to a problem better/faster/cheaper than anyone else. Like any organization, you must have a strong value proposition and clear proof points that your solution is meaningful and best-in-class. For a nonprofit this is especially important, as there are often many organizations competing to provide the same services, often in the same community.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Donald Summers.
Donald Summers, Ed.M., is the Founder and CEO of Altruist Partners LLC, a pioneering social impact advisory firm dedicated to helping mission-driven organizations achieve their most ambitious goals. He has a Master’s Degree in Leadership & Policy from Harvard. Through Altruist Partners, Summers has assisted hundreds of nonprofits and mission-driven organizations globally, guiding them to overcome strategic, fundraising, and organizational challenges and amplify their social impact.
Summers is also the founder and executive director of the Altruist Accelerator, the firm’s nonprofit arm, which delivers the Altruist Growth and Impact Methodology to ambitious nonprofits and NGOs of all sizes and stages. His work has generated hundreds of millions in new revenue and capital; strengthened boards, staff, and volunteer teams; and advanced some of today’s most crucial social change efforts.
An accomplished author, Summers recently released his book, “Scaling Altruism: A Proven Pathway for Accelerating Nonprofit Growth and Impact,” which became the #1 New Nonprofit Release on Amazon. His research and essays have been featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Learm more at altruistpartners.com.
Thank you so much for doing this with us. Before we begin our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”?
I grew up very suspicious of businesses. Like so many nonprofit types I would come to admire and support later in life, I abhorred what the big, bad companies were doing to people and the planet, and I spent my time immersed in literature and art. After a few brief teaching stints, I landed in an educational leadership program at graduate school that required classes in management and accounting. I walked into them dreading the content, but after the first class I was smitten. It was fascinating stuff. This is how the world works, I thought: What if we could use these tools for good?
On graduation, I was able to marry my newfound love for business practice with my altruistic impulses in my next job as a non-profit fundraiser. Thanks to the power of the business methodology I learned, within three years of graduation, I designed and executed two multimillion-dollar nonprofit fundraising efforts, one at an independent school and another at a large residential community serving adults with cognitive impairments. Another five years overseeing yet another multimillion-dollar fundraising acceleration for the language and literature division at a large research university cemented my belief in the power of business tools for social good. My doctoral research around social sector entrepreneurship indicated how few nonprofits took advantage of the power of basic business tools: financial projections, key performance indicators, and dashboards — the same instruments used to catalyze my success in raising money and accomplishing goals.
It was like discovering a new world of opportunity. But I was simultaneously suspicious and incredulous. Surely I couldn’t be the first person to realize the full power of marrying business processes with altruism. Yet there it was: a great gap in the literature. After almost 10 years of fundraising, I sought new challenges and landed a gig as a CEO of a small charitable foundation, working for a board full of scientists who had all retired wealthy when their companies were acquired. They set up an environmental philanthropy to take an “innovative systems approach” to environmental challenges. It started out great. After years of hustling for the charitable dollar, I finally landed on the money side. I thought I would be in
philanthropy forever.
I lasted about six months. It quickly became clear that the nonprofit grant seekers needed a lot more help than the small sums we were doling out could provide. The grant applications described nonprofit programs with exciting, world-changing potential, but the applications often lacked clear goals, sound strategy, clear performance indicators, and a means of sustainable financing. If their missions were summiting mountains, they proposed some courageous and promising new routes up difficult peaks, but their equipment list wasn’t much longer than shorts and sandals.
It struck me: This is a waste of time. These are good people with great ideas who need a lot more than little sums of money doled out after endless hours of grant selection meetings. They need deep guidance on how to structure and scale their programs, many of which appear to have real potential. I excitedly pitched my board about how we could use the business toolkit I had been using successfully for years, the same one that had made them all wealthy. To my surprise and disappointment, they were uninterested. As I would later realize, they weren’t in it for the impact, despite all the talk of “systems change.” It was all just theater. They had made a great deal of money and were following a well-traveled path of setting up a foundation because they needed something to do. They also clearly enjoyed the image and prestige of philanthropy and, frankly, the power trip of deciding who gets money. I wanted to dig in deep with each grantee, unpack the underlying business and organizational constraints, help them fill in the blanks on their program and financial modeling, and then go raise capital. Asking this board to engage in that level of work was like asking retirees on a cruise ship to crack open their accounting ledgers. Interacting with other philanthropies and attending philanthropic conferences, I saw more of the same: the appearance of investing in social impact, but little substance — and only a fraction of the necessary capital.
Philanthropy as practiced like this was clearly not for me, so I left and pitched my services as a consultant to two of the grantees. They paid me a couple grand a month to write their business plans and guide them through funding and execution. Just like I had done with my previous organizations, I catalyzed multimillion-dollar growth and delivered social impact that improved the lives of many people around the world, but now I was doing it for more than one organization at a time.
Success was intoxicating. I worked hard on developing the methodology with moderate levels of success. And then I had the Treehouse engagement, where we landed a moonshot in the world of social services, creating a level of social and financial acceleration that few thought possible. It was yet another confirmation that I was onto something truly important: the secret to unlocking the untapped potential of the entire social sector.
It took years of trial and error, the help of supportive colleagues, and the input of hundreds of nonprofit executives and board members, but I eventually landed on a comprehensive, step-by- step process that consistently accelerated nonprofit growth and impact. The boutique consulting firm I founded to deliver this methodology, Altruist Partners, works today with a small set of ambitious clients around the United States and internationally. We have also set up a nonprofit arm, the Altruist Nonprofit Accelerator, to teach the methodology to cohorts of nonprofits, and my book, “Scaling Altruism,” serves as the backbone of the curriculum. Early deployments in nonprofits around the world are encouraging.
Can you tell us the story behind why you decided to start or join your non nonprofit?
To provide our sector-leading growth and impact methodology to nonprofits everywhere for very low cost, all within a supportive community of peers.
Can you describe how you or your organization aims to make a significant social impact?
We have proven that, if followed with care, our methodology catalyzes profound increases in annual revenue and social impact, with median sustained annual rates of 25%. No one else that we know of can help nonprofits this much, and we are excited to share it as broadly as possible.
Without saying any names, can you share a story about an individual who was helped by your idea so far?
There have been many millions around the world, from unborn babies whose lives were saved because of the safe birth practices and prenatal care we’ve helped disseminate, to the youth who have received an education they have not otherwise would have received, to the families who can enjoy a livelihood with jobs and housing that they enjoy because of the work of our clients, or entire regions that live with less toxic exposure and more sustainable food and energy systems. We’ve even driven massive growth in palliative care for people at the end of their lives, educating doctors how to provide more humane, lower cost end-of-life care. And that’s just the people — we’ve catalyzed global increases in carbon sequestration, healthy oceans and forests, and sustainable consumption; it’s a very long list, and one we are proud to have taken a hand in. And the great thing is this: We are still just scratching the surface of the system’s true potential.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
We already have the solutions before us: the thousands of small to mid-sized nonprofits that are the fabric of our communities. But they are struggling to keep their doors open, let alone meet the full scale of the need before them. The solution, we believe, is in giving them the power to solve their revenue and organizational challenges. If we can do so, we can unleash a wave of social impact the country has never before seen. We’ve already done it with a few organizations. We know it works.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I’ve worked with thousands of leaders in my career — a wonderful privilege — and I’ve learned to identify the six traits of leaders that drive success:
- Courage: They are unafraid of change and take measured risks, understanding that failure is an ingredient of success and that there is more merit in setting a scary goal and failing than never stepping outside comfort zones.
- Optimism: They believe in their work and have (or are working to get) evidence that they have a best-in-field solution that can solve a major problem.
- Grit: They understand that growth and performance are hard. They expect to fail repeatedly and demonstrate resilience when they do.
- Urgency: Talk is not a deliverable. Meetings are short. They are biased toward action and experiment, not analysis and reflection. There are no social impact tourists on the board or staff.
- Discipline: They plan the work and then work the plan. They are analytical and base decisions on data. They don’t chase shiny objects and invent a program to fit a grant opportunity.
- Focus: They pick a goal, define strategies, and then stay focused on the small handful of metrics that measure the execution of the strategy. They don’t create new programs on a whim. They don’t boil the ocean. They are trying to solve one specific, hard problem.
Based on your experience, what are the “5 Things a Person Should Know Before They Decide to Start a Nonprofit”. Please share a story or example for each.
They are remarkably similar to the things anyone should be clear about before starting any other type of business:
1. Be able to deliver a solution to a problem better/faster/cheaper than anyone else. Like any organization, you must have a strong value proposition and clear proof points that your solution is meaningful and best-in-class. For a nonprofit this is especially important, as there are often many organizations competing to provide the same services, often in the same community.
2. Develop compelling evidence that your solution works. This is worth mentioning twice — nonprofits must have independent, third-party evidence that their programs are truly best-in-class. Every organization, regardless of tax status, is subject to intense pressures that distort their own reporting of their results. Nonprofit organizations are no different.
3. Believe in your solution so much that you are willing to push through years of extreme hard work and effort to bring the solution to scale. So many nonprofit founders have no idea what they are getting into. Founding a nonprofit can be even harder than founding a business. You better have true grit, passion, and years of endurance.
4. Commit to raising the start-up capital you need to give your solution a fair trial. The number of undercapitalized nonprofits is huge; there are great programs that never can achieve their true potential because the founders didn’t raise enough money, or don’t know how to fund their programs.
5. Possess the wisdom and network to select and build a world-class team to help you. “Getting the right people on the bus” is wisdom every leader learns, usually the hard way. Nonprofits must be prepared to compete with private sector organizations for top talent. If you have even a whiff of martyrdom in your compensation plans, forget about your social impact.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world who you would like to talk to, to share the idea behind your non profit? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
An entire class of people: CEOs of charitable foundations. They are giving fish, when they need to be teaching their nonprofits to fish. While there have been a few halting starts at this, we believe we have a low-cost, scalable platform that is ready for scale. Tell them to check out altruistaccelerator.org.
Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson” Quote? How is that relevant to you in your life?
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are probably right.” That’s Henry Ford. Not a nice person, but he knew a thing or two about building organizations that scale.
How can our readers follow you online?
I teach social impact leaders how to scale their work; I don’t spend time posting about it. Nonprofit leaders can sign up to join my community by visiting altruistpartners.org. Otherwise, I hang out fairly consistently on LinkedIn.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success in your mission.
Thank you for the work you do to make the world a better place.
Donald Summers of Altruist Partners: 5 Things You Need to Know to Successfully Lead a Nonprofit… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.