Understanding nonprofit leader engagement and turnover: A story of job demands and resources

Abstract

Nonprofit groups deeply rely on their executives to fulfill a demanding, often isolated, role leading the group in carrying out its mission. Although much research has focused on the effects of these leaders and great investment has been made in developing a talent pool to fill nonprofit leadership needs, almost no research has explored the experiences of nonprofit executives themselves. For nonprofit boards and nonprofit leadership development programs, this is a serious deficit in understanding the factors that drive engagement or withdrawal from the job. This paper reports the results of a two-phase mixed methods research study that applied the Job-Demands Resources (JD-R) Model to understanding the energizing and depleting elements of professional life as a nonprofit executive. Phase 1 featured in-depth, firsthand interviews with nonprofit executives from a variety of groups. Phase 2 progressed the research with a quantitative analysis of survey responses from more than 100 active nonprofit leaders. The results of both studies reveal important insights to supportively motivate and retain these critical executives: (1) leaders fulfill very unique jobs, although the JD-R model can provide an organizing framework for understanding their depleting demands and energizing resources; (2). Boards of Directors can act as a demand or a resource, and executives' (dis)satisfaction with their Boards importantly predicts turnover and burnout; (3) executives need more social support in doing a sometimes lonely job. Limitations and future directions for research are also discussed.