Leader and Manager Survey

MCS conducted several surveys of our customers this past year, both of the executive leadership groups and an internet survey of non-profit leadership, in an effort to find out how we were doing, and also to find out what services our customers would like to see offered. We have the results from 13 executives who have been in our Leadership Groups, and 82 respondents to our internet survey. Here is what we learned from you.
Responses from leaders were received from a wide range of organizations, in size, number of employees and volunteers, and in types of organizations.
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This is who answered our surveys: 21 % of you are from health and human services organizations, and 18% from education non-profits, with large responses from housing and homeless programs and the arts, and many other types as well. Two thirds of you are from greater Boston. Half have 2-10 person staff size and a quarter have 11-30 staff. A quarter each have 2-10 volunteers, 11-30 volunteers, and over 100 volunteers, while 11% have no volunteers. About a fifth each have budgets of $250,000 to $500,000, $1 million to 3 million, over $3 million, and 30% have budgets of $500,000 to 1 million.
Most of you thought leadership was good or very good in your organizations, and in the non-profit sector in general. You also felt there was room for improvement in several areas.
A majority of responses rated leadership in all areas as either somewhat effective (53%) or very effective (45%). We then asked about specific qualities of leadership. The internet survey asked people to describe the qualities of their organization’s leadership on a five point scale from very good to very poor, and most skills were rated as good or very good, but where specific qualities were rated as less than good a pattern emerged. In respondent’s organizations where certain qualities were rated as less than good, they were most often commenting about leadership that was not: 1) decisive, 2) responsive and 3) clear. 7% of you felt that leadership in the non-profit sector in general was of low quality, 49% said average quality, 41% said high quality and 3% said very high quality.
A majority felt that consultants they had worked with were good or very good.
Consultants were also rated on a five point scale, with 54% rated good, 11% very good and 32% “neither good nor bad”. A majority of you also felt that the availability of consultants doing intensive leadership development for the non-profit field were either inadequate (30%) or “didn’t know” (24%). A majority (58%) of you felt that funding for leadership development was poor but 12% said it was adequate.
There was a clear pattern concerning which leadership and management skills you thought needed to be developed for your organizations.
The executive management skills you felt would improve your organizations most were: 47% wanted to see skills developed in program evaluation, 40% wanted additional sills in fundraising, and one third wanted increased skill in each of technology management, in strategic planning and in business planning, and in operations. For management and program leadership skill development, the answers were similar: 47% said program evaluation skill development was needed, followed by budgeting and operations skills.
Next Steps
Based on these surveys, MCS plans to offer an increased number of training programs in an effort to meet the needs of the non-profit community of greater Boston. We hope to address the needs you identify for decisive, responsive, clear leadership, and to move from good leadership to very good leadership. We hope to offer trainings that address the needs you identify for program evaluation skills, strategic and business planning, operations, technology management, fundraising and budgeting, and some other trainings, including technical topics for non-profits as well.
We need your help to make MCS better too, and the way we can move from good to very good ourselves in if we have more information on exactly what we can do to assist your organization. We need your help in order to put our plans into action, by answering this follow up questionnaire so we can design specific programming for our valued customers.
Click Here to take survey
Also, look for training customized to your organization coming soon too!
Michael Richards, Brandeis MBA '08, MCS Intern