I don't write about my own experience often. Consulting work is about the client, not the consultant, and I've always believed that. But after two years leading United Way of the Northern Shenandoah Valley through a period of significant financial and organizational challenge, I think there are things worth saying plainly. Not to relitigate what happened, but because other leaders are facing the same pressures right now, and some of what I learned the hard way doesn't have to be learned that way.
The Job Looked Different From the Inside
When I became President and CEO of United Way of the Northern Shenandoah Valley in August 2024, I knew the organization was in a difficult position. I did not know the full extent of it until I was in the chair. That's almost always how it goes. The picture you see during due diligence and the reality you encounter on day one are related but not identical.
What followed was two years of leading through financial scarcity, structural challenges, and the particular pressure that comes from running an organization whose mission is to help the community, while the organization itself needs help. I'm writing this not to relitigate those years but because I think there are things I learned that are worth saying plainly, for the benefit of other nonprofit leaders, board members, and anyone who manages through adversity.
Lesson 1: Clarity Is a Form of Kindness
The instinct in a budget crisis is to protect people from the full picture. You don't want to demoralize staff. You don't want donors to panic. You don't want board members to lose confidence before you've had a chance to stabilize things. I understand that instinct, and it's wrong.
People can handle hard truths. What they cannot handle well is uncertainty. When people sense that something is wrong but nobody is saying it clearly, they fill the silence with the worst version of what might be true. Rumors are almost always more demoralizing than facts. The organizations I've seen fail their staff during crises usually did so not by sharing bad news but by withholding it too long and then sharing it badly.
Being clear, even when the news is difficult, is an act of respect. It signals that you trust your people with the reality of the situation and that you believe they can handle it and help. Most of the time, they can.
Lesson 2: Leading Through Scarcity Requires Different Instincts Than Leading Through Growth
Most leadership development content is written for growth conditions. Hire well, delegate clearly, build culture, invest in your people. That's all good advice when resources are expanding. When resources are contracting, the leadership challenge is different in ways that most frameworks don't address directly.
In scarcity, every decision has a visible cost. When you fund one program, another one waits. When you retain one staff position, another may not survive the next budget cycle. The political and emotional weight of those decisions is significant, and there's no framework that fully prepares you for the reality of sitting in a room and deciding what a community will and won't have access to because of what you can and can't afford.
What I found is that leading through scarcity requires two things above all else: a clear set of priorities and the willingness to make decisions against those priorities even when it's painful. Organizations that try to protect everything during a crisis usually end up protecting nothing effectively. The cuts come anyway, but later, less strategically, and with more damage to morale. Deciding early and deliberately is harder emotionally but better organizationally.
Lesson 3: The Board Relationship Is Everything, and Most Boards Aren't Ready for Crisis
Board governance is one of those topics that gets discussed a lot in the nonprofit world and practiced inconsistently in the real one. Most boards are built for oversight during stable periods. They review financials, approve budgets, support fundraising, and provide general guidance. That's fine when things are going well. When things aren't going well, you need a board that can function as a real governance partner, and not all of them can.
A board in crisis mode needs to make difficult decisions quickly, sometimes with incomplete information. It needs members who understand the difference between governance and management, who trust the executive director to manage while holding clear strategic and fiduciary accountability themselves. When that relationship is solid and well-defined, a crisis becomes something you navigate together. When it isn't, the crisis reveals and amplifies every dysfunction in the governance structure.
One of the most important things any nonprofit CEO can do before a crisis arrives is invest heavily in the board relationship and board clarity. Define roles clearly. Build trust. Make sure the board understands the real financial picture, not a sanitized version of it. That investment pays dividends when things get hard.
Lesson 4: The Difference Between Managing and Leading Is Most Visible Under Pressure
Management is making sure things run. Leadership is deciding where things are going and why, and bringing people with you on that journey even when the destination is uncertain. Most of the time, you need both. Under pressure, the distinction becomes critical.
I've seen capable managers buckle under crisis conditions not because they lacked skills but because crisis demands more than management. It demands the willingness to stand in front of your team, your board, your community, and say: here is what we know, here is what we don't, here is what I believe we need to do, and here is why. That requires a kind of personal conviction and communication capacity that isn't always developed in organizational management roles.
Leadership under pressure is also about absorbing anxiety rather than transmitting it. When a CEO is visibly panicked, the whole organization panics. When a CEO is calm, honest, and directionally clear, even in the middle of a genuine crisis, people can function. That's not performance. It's a real responsibility. The leader sets the emotional tone of the organization, especially when conditions are worst.
What I'd Tell Someone Walking Into This
If you're about to take on a leadership role at an organization in difficulty, go in with your eyes open. Do your due diligence on the financials and don't accept incomplete answers. Understand the board culture before you're accountable to it. Build relationships with your community stakeholders immediately, because those relationships are the resource you'll draw on when formal resources run short.
And when it gets hard, and it will, hold on to the reason you took the role. The work matters. The people the organization serves are depending on it. That's not a slogan to put on a wall, it's the actual reason to keep going when the easier path would be to find somewhere quieter to spend your time.
The two years I spent in that role taught me more about leadership than anything I studied in an MBA program, and I'm grateful for it, even the hard parts. Especially the hard parts.
