You're Not Crazy.

Nonprofit CEOs are isolated. The vast majority of CEOs have told me they do not have the connection and support to do their best work, to make their best decisions. 

This pattern has emerged from my 230+ conversations with CEOs across this sector. And the isolation makes everything else harder: it’s a drag on ideas, it’s bad for CEO health, and it slows down hard decisions that CEOs know they need to make. 

Jennifer Holloran, President and CEO of American Bible Society, faced a $5 million decision in her first week on the job. She had staff. She had her board. She did not have a peer:

"The place that I didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to is more at that peer level, a safe space to just unpack any feelings that I might have or to talk through the strategy of how do I do this well."

(You can hear Jennifer's story on this week's episode of The Nonprofit CEO Podcast: Apple, Spotify, YouTube.) 

She’s not the only one. Just yesterday, a CEO of a national human services organization told me: "I do feel alone sometimes. It's not always about the decisions I'm making. It's about the reality that we're situated in.”

Here is what CEOs keep telling me: