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CompassPoint's research and publications are timely, relevant and addresses the issues that nonprofits face today. Our "on the ground" approach and experience, combined with the ability to move quickly on these issues, allows us to find the information that will be useful for nonprofits now. In addition, our research is furthered by the guidance and support of a national advisory council.
Below are some of our most recent reports and publications:
- Coaching and Philanthropy Project: Action Guides for Grantmakers, Nonprofits, and Coaches - 2010
- Creative Disruption: Sabbaticals for Capacity Building and Leadership Development in the Nonprofit Sector - 2010
- The Leadership Development Program for Women Executives in Underserved Communities Evaluation Findings - 2007
- 2009 Community Clinic Leadership and Workforce Studies - 2009
- Building Knowledge on The Fundraising Approaches Of Nonprofits Based in Communities Of Color - 2009
- The San Francisco Nonprofit Sector: Contributions, Diversity, Challenges - 2009
- Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits - 2008
- Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out - 2008
- Cultural Competence Monograph Series - 2007
- Daring to Lead 2006
- Interim Executive Directors: The Power in the Middle - 2005
- 2005 Santa Clara County Nonprofit Benchmark Study
- Convergence & Competition: United Ways & Community Foundations - 2005
- What We Really Need - 2005
- The M Word: A Board Member's Guide to Nonprofit Mergers - 2005
- All Hands on Board: The Board of Volunteers in an All-Volunteer Organization
- Securing the Safety Net: A Profile of Community Clinic and Health Center Leadership in California - 2003
- Bridging Medicine and Management: A Profile of Community Clinic and Health Center Medical Directors in California - 2003
- Executive Coaching Project - 2003
- Flying Blind: Proposition 54 and Philanthropy - 2003
- On The Rise: A Profile of Women of Color in Leadership - 2002
- Flashpoint: Loss of Expected Funds Forces Bay Area Nonprofits to Change Programming, Fundraising Strategies - 2002
- Help Wanted: Turnover and Vacancy in Nonprofits - 2002
- Flashpoint: Bay Area Nonprofits Respond to the Economic Downturn - 2001
- Daring to Lead: Nonprofit Executive Directors and Their Work Experience - 2001
- Nonprofits At Risk: The Space and Occupancy Crisis Facing San Francisco Nonprofits - 2000
- The Market for a San Francisco Nonprofit Multi-Tenant Project - 2001
Coaching and Philanthropy Project: Action Guides for Grantmakers, Nonprofits, and Coaches, February 2010
The Coaching and Philanthropy Project was created to assess and advance coaching as a strategy for building effective nonprofit organizations. We’ve conducted an unprecedented deep dive into learning about the nonprofit sector’s support for and use of coaching, as well as the coaching field’s knowledge of and work within the nonprofit sector.
The Coaching and Philanthropy guides were created as a resource for and about coaching in the nonprofit sector. Each publication is tailored to and contains relevant information for three different audiences – funders, nonprofits, and coaches. Taken together, the three publications add up to a summary of the current state of coaching in the nonprofit sector.
Download the PDF: An Action Guide for Grantmakers: Executive Summary
Download the PDF: An Action Guide for Grantmakers: Full Report
Download the PDF: An Action Guide for Nonprofits
Download the PDF: An Action Guide for Coaches
For more information about the Coaching and Philanthropy Project and to access the CAP Online Toolkit, Click here
Creative Disruption: Sabbaticals for Capacity Building and Leadership Development in the Nonprofit Sector, January 2010
The study exposes the myth that an executive sabbatical will be a chaotic disruption, finding instead that the creative disruption of a well-planned sabbatical can be productive for the entire leadership of an organization. The report recommends funding sabbaticals as a best practice in philanthropy for extending the tenures of executive directors, for strengthening their second-tier leadership, and for deepening funders’ understanding of the challenges faced by nonprofit leaders.
Download the PDF
The Leadership Development Program for Women Executives in Underserved Communities Evaluation Findings, June 2007.
The Leadership Development Program for Women Executives in Underserved Communities was inspired by several research studies conducted by CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. This Program was funded by the UPS Foundation and evaluated by Harder and Company Community Research.
Download the PDF
2009 Community Clinic Leadership and Workforce Studies
The Blue Shield of California Foundation and the Community Clinics Initiative, a joint project of Tides and The California Endowment, engaged a team of consultants from CompassPoint and BTW informing change to examine the leadership and workforce needs of California community clinics field, with the goal of providing a snapshot of the current leadership landscape and implications to stimulate discussion and action among clinic leaders, their nonprofit and for-profit partners, funders and other stakeholders in the community clinics field.
Three companion reports describe the findings of the 2009 Community Clinic Leadership and Workforce Studies. While the three studies are related, each one takes an in-depth look at a distinct group of staff within community clinics and clinic consortia. The studies and their subject groups are:
- 1 Mission Critical: The State of CEO Leadership in California Community Clinics, focused on current CEOs of clinics;
- 2 Taking the Pulse: The State of Medical Director Leadership in California Community Clinics, focused on current medical directors who hold the most senior clinical position within these settings; and
- 3 The Pipeline Promise: A Study of Emerging Leaders in California Community Clinics, focused on other staff who may become the future CEOs, medical directors or other senior leaders in clinics.
A fourth publication - Community Clinic Leadership in California: The State of the Field & Implications for the Future - highlights key findings from all three studies and considers the implications across the studies.
Building Knowledge on The Fundraising Approaches Of Nonprofits Based in Communities Of Color
In September 2008, CompassPoint and the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training conducted a study of nonprofits based in communities of color in Los Angeles to learn about their approaches to income generation, their staffing strategies, successes and challenges. This report on people of color led nonprofits underscores the importance of ongoing training that is multicultural and builds multicultural fundraising leadership within communities of color.
Download the PDF: Opportunities for Nonprofits within Los Angeles Communities of Color
The San Francisco Nonprofit Sector: Contributions, Diversity, Challenges
A new report co-authored by CompassPoint and the Institute for Nonprofit Management at USF—details the size, economics, diversity, and capacity challenges of San Francisco’s nonprofit sector. The report concludes that despite our local sector’s relative size compared with other parts of the state, nonprofits are facing severe financial challenges and have strides to make in board and management diversity.<br />Download the PDF: The San Francisco Nonprofit Sector
Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits
This monograph seeks to continue to detoxify the topic of nonprofit succession, looking closely at the tough issues organizations may face when planning for succession. It provides nonprofit boards and executive directors a framework for their own succession planning activities and offers tools and resources, many of which have been used by the leadership consultants who designed the approaches outlined.
Download the PDF: Building Leaderful Organizations
[This is the sixth of a six-monograph series on executive transitions and executive transition management, funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Evelyn and Walter Haas. Jr. Fund. The complete series is available to download here.]
Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out
From recent reports, including our own Daring to Lead 2006 study, we know that the sector is facing large-scale executive turnover and has turned its attention to strengthening its leadership pipeline by focusing on the recruitment, retention and development of next generation of leaders. To better understand and address these issues, CompassPoint (in partnership with The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Meyer Foundation and Idealist.org) recently surveyed over 5,700 nonprofits. Our findings suggest that there are indicators of strength within the leadership pipeline. Despite these promising indicators, we also found that next generation leaders face significant barriers to pursuing executive positions.
Download the PDF: Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out
Cultural Competence Monograph Series
This series came about as a result of the desire to promote learning and to strengthen effectiveness of both theorists and practitioners in the field of cultural competence and multicultural organizational development in health care. Produced by CompassPoint and supported by a grant from The California Endowment, these three monographs explore a variety of frameworks for organizational development or capacity building and their implications for practice, taking in a number of issues that arise in real world practice.
Download the PDFs:
- Multicultural Organizational Development: A Resource for Health Equity
This paper discuss the applicability of multicultural organizational development (MCOD) for building the multicultural capacity of health organizations, positing that multicultural capacity and equity are interconnected. - Encouraging More Culturally & Linguistically Competent Practices in Mainstream Health Care Organizations
This paper is written as a survival guide for change agents and systems who intend to advance the cultural and linguistic (C & L) practices of mainstream health organizations. - Cultural Competence in Capacity Building
The National Community Development Institute's paper delves into the definition of culturally –based capacity building, presenting three field experiences in which this framework was applied. CompassPoint’s paper discusses the relationship between improving cultural competency and improving organizational effectiveness. It also describes a capacity building approach to improving cultural competency in an organization where systems issues are dealt with through the lens of multicultural organizational development.
Daring to Lead 2006
Three surprising findings from CompassPoint's new national study on executive directors: a) 30% of executives leave their jobs involuntarily (either fired or forced out); b) Executive directors plan to leave their jobs but will stay active in the nonprofit sector; and c) A key driver of executive burnout is frustration with funders.
Download the PDF:daringtolead2006.pdf
Interim Executive Directors: The Power in the Middle
The following monograph describes the benefits and basics of using an interim Executive Director in a leadership transition. It covers the issues that nonprofits in transition should then consider when weighing whether to use an interim ED—either in tandem with a transition consultant or on their own. The case studies in this monograph present stories of nonprofit groups capitalizing on the special growth opportunities that appear between the tenures of permanent leaders.
Download the PDF: Interim Executive Directors: The Power in the Middle
[This is the second of a six-monograph series on executive transitions and executive transition management, funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Evelyn and Walter Haas. Jr. Fund. The complete series is available to download here.]
2005 Santa Clara County Nonprofit Benchmark Study
In this report, Community Foundation Silicon Valley and CompassPoint look at the challenges, successes, risks and opportunities faced by the local nonprofit sector. One word emerges—resilience.
Download the PDF: SantaClara_benchmarkstudy.pdf
Convergence & Competition: United Ways & Community Foundations
For more than 100 years, United Ways and community foundations have helped shape the landscape of American philanthropy. They champion giving-providing means by which every individual and business can be philanthropic.
Download the PDF: CP_UnitedWayCommunityFdn.pdf
What We Really Need
Eight reforms to make nonprofits more accountable and effective.
Download the PDF: SSIR_Regulations_6.05.pdf
The M Word: A Board Member's Guide to Nonprofit Mergers
This study provides a road map to a merger's expectations, processes, and obstacles. Special sections depict seven organizations' actual merger experiences, feature sample resolutions and worksheets, and highlight the key roles executive directors play in a merger. Also offers advice on how to close down an organization.
Download the PDF: M_Word.pdf
All Hands on Board: The Board of Volunteers in an All-Volunteer Organization
All-volunteer organizations comprise a huge economic force, but few resources exist to help them. This booklet outlines the "Top 10" jobs of the board.
Download the PDF: All_Hands_On_Board.pdf
Securing the Safety Net: A Profile of Community Clinic and Health Center Leadership in California
CompassPoint recently completed two studies on California's community clinic leadership. The first, Securing the Safety Net: A Profile of Community Clinic and Health Center Leadership in California, commissioned by the regional and statewide clinic consortia, examines the demographics, career paths, and job challenges of clinic CEOs. Among CEOs the data suggest a need for attention to succession planning as many founders and long-time CEOs approach retirement.
Download the PDF: Securing_Safety_Net.pdf
Bridging Medicine and Management: A Profile of Community Clinic and Health Center Medical Directors in California
This companion study on California's community clinic leadership, commissioned by the California Primary Care Association, used a similar research design to explore these same issues among Medical Directors. Among Medical Directors, the central issue is preventing turnover and developing the managerial skills of doctors who are bridging medicine and management.
Download the PDF: Bridging_Medicine_Management.pdf
Executive Coaching Project
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services embarked on a 12-month demonstration project of Executive Coaching with 25 Executive Directors in the San Francisco Bay Area. A longitudinal evaluation by Harder + Company studied these new executive directors who worked one-on-one with executive coaches who helped them navigate both personal life issues and organizational leadership matters.
Executive Summary: CP_Coaching_ExecSumm.pdf
Full Report: exec_coaching.pdf
Flying Blind: Proposition 54 and Philanthropy
Concerned over the impact of Proposition 54 - the Classification by Race, Ethnicity, National Origin (CRECNO) Initiative, The San Francisco Foundation commissioned CompassPoint to conduct a statewide study of its potential impact on philanthropy.
Download the PDF: flying_blind_crecno.pdf
A case study was written on how the San Francisco Foundation acted to help defeat Proposition 54, including its commissioning and use of this study. The case study is part of the Public Policy Toolkit of Northern California Grantmakers: www.ncg.org/toolkit/flash_splash.html
On The Rise: A Profile of Women of Color in Leadership
This study finds that minority leadership is on the rise in nonprofits of all types and sizes, including mainstream organizations.
Download the PDF: on_the_rise_final.pdf
Flashpoint: Loss of Expected Funds Forces Bay Area Nonprofits to Change Programming, Fundraising Strategies
While the media reports that the economy is beginning to pick up, the executive directors and development staff who attended CompassPoint's East Bay Funders Fair in February 2002 say that significant cuts in foundation, corporate, and government funding are taking a heavy toll on their 2002 programming.
Download the PDF: flashpoint-economy.pdf
Help Wanted: Turnover and Vacancy in Nonprofits
This study of more than 400 nonprofit organizations quantifies the position vacancy challenge at nonprofits and highlights the characteristics of the problem.
Download the full PDF: HelpWanted.pdf
Flashpoint: Bay Area Nonprofits Respond to the Economic Downturn
CompassPoint surveyed local nonprofits to find out how they are responding to today's economic climate.
Download the PDF: flashpoint.pdf
Daring to Lead: Nonprofit Executive Directors and Their Work Experience
This groundbreaking report includes findings on nonprofit executive career paths, tenure, salaries, and job challenges.
Download the PDF: Daring.pdf
Nonprofits At Risk: The Space and Occupancy Crisis Facing San Francisco Nonprofits
Rapidly escalating real estate costs and competition for space has resulted in a crisis of affordability and availability for San Francisco's nonprofits. Concern over the impact of space availability on nonprofits-and therefore on San Francisco residents and neighborhoods-led a group of civic institutions to commission this study and identify strategies for effective response.
Download the PDF: nonprofits_at_risk.pdf
The Market for a San Francisco Nonprofit Multi-Tenant Project
The study is essentially market research, taking ideas for tackling the space problem and putting them to the test with a potential target market of nonprofit leaders. This study is the follows up a study done in th Fall of 2000 that alerted us to the magnitude of the nonprofit space crisis.
Download the PDF: market_for_multi_tenant_project.pdf
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