Rising number of nonprofits vie for shallow pool of leaders
Area nonprofits still suffering from lack of large companies

For Tim Helm, the moment of awakening came in 2004 when his board chairman died of a heart attack.

He scanned the rest of the YMCA of Greater Dayton board and saw it stacked with older men.

"We didn't have a lot of young people on our board who had future leadership potential," he said. "It was kind of alarming."

Nonprofit leaders such as Helm are competing for a smaller pool of local corporate leaders who have less time to give than ever before. To complicate the situation, the number of nonprofits has grown 40 percent since 1995 in Montgomery County alone, from 1,200 in 1995 to 1,800 this May.

If the situation continues, some predict that smaller nonprofits may not survive. Others may merge, said Bob Reynolds, director of the nonprofit team at Brady Ware, a Dayton accounting and consulting firm.

A decade ago, nonprofits successfully drafted bank presidents, chief executive officers of public companies and other prominent corporate types to sit on their boards. They had what nonprofits need most: deep pockets and connections to others who could drive fundraising.

But the Dayton economic landscape has changed and the city has fewer public companies and nearly no locally based banks. It's dominated by smaller companies that may have never been tapped as community leaders. The increasing number of nonprofits means there are even more board seats to fill and causes to support.

Some groups have found fresh blood at lower levels of companies, yet others continue to call on the same usual suspects whose time and resources are stretched thin.

"Donors are getting far more requests for dollars and there are fewer dollars to go around," Reynolds said.

The community needs to get a sense of its priorities and how to best use the time and talents of its people, said Marc Levy, chief executive officer of the United Way of Greater Dayton.

"How many boards can you maintain without burning out your community leadership?" he said.

Who will lead?

But Levy said he's optimistic that the nonprofits will be able to find more people for the boards. He's seeing nonprofits look in different places for new leaders as the business world changes. Instead of cultivating a bank president only, nonprofit leaders are looking at the next level of senior management who may have more time to share their abilities.

The Leadership Dayton program helps nonprofits find those folks, said Dennis Grant, president of United Rehabilitation Services, a nonprofit that serves children and adults with developmental disabilities. Grant has snagged a couple of good board members through Leadership Dayton's board match program.

The program, which trains local workers to be community leaders, has been matching its graduates with nonprofits for the past three years, said Susan Hayes, Leadership Dayton's chairwoman.

Local young professional programs also are looking to build future community leaders. But many of the younger generation of workers aren't as interested in fundraising as they are in doing hands-on volunteering, said Matthew Schmitz, chairman of Generation Dayton, a young professionals group in Dayton.

"I think a lot of folks in our generation want to be involved but aren't sure how to get involved," he said. "They aren't sure what's required."

Cultivating community leaders from smaller companies will be key for Dayton to continue its strong history of philanthropy, which included a whole cast of heavy hitters -- names you'll find attached to buildings and companies across the city, said Pete Luongo, chairman of the United Way of Greater Dayton.

"We in this community have relied on too few for too long," Luongo said. "Those wonderful benefactors like John Berry Sr. and Virginia Kettering are all gone. We've got to be able to continue to mine this whole explosion of small companies and entrepreneurs in terms of giving."

When the United Way studied its lapsed donors, Luongo and United Way president Marc Levy expected to find they were retirees. Instead they were workers between the ages of 30 and 55, many who had given to organizations through the United Way when they worked at larger companies but had now moved to smaller firms that didn't do United Way campaigns.

"We need to redefine the concept of leadership," Levy said. "There are a lot of people who had not been seen in the same light five to 10 years ago that could be a big help to nonprofits."

After taking stock of his board in 2004, Helm began an intense search for new faces. He sought people at lower levels of companies and leaders of smaller companies.

Helm said, "We are trying to catch people on their way up."

E-mail tkershaw-staley@bizjournals.com. Call 222-6900, ext. 116.