Not Enough Young ED Leaders

This is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. We're working on this issue here in Cleveland. While we are doing more to grow the stock of young leaders in NE Ohio through the Cleveland Bridge Builders, Leadership Cleveland and other local initiatives, we need a stronger effort to inject new blood into civic leadership postions.

Take a note from Pittsburgh...

Listen to this. People under the age of 40 are still a minority on nonprofit boards throughout Allegheny County, but a group is trying to connect 100 young adults with organizations within the next year.

A study of 403 nonprofit organizations in the county — ranging from volunteer fire departments to economic development groups — found that young adults make up 13 percent of boards' members. Some notable volunteer boards, such as those of the University of Pittsburgh and its medical center, the Allegheny Regional Asset District and the Allegheny County Airport Authority, have no members under the age of 40.

In the county, the larger an organization's budget, the fewer younger people it is likely to have on its board, said Ralph Bangs, a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research and one of the authors of the study.

Nationwide, young adults make up 18 percent of nonprofit boards' membership, according to BoardSource, a Washington, D.C.-based group specializing in nonprofit organizations.

"This city is going through a dramatic transformation, and we need to think about this city as it's going to be 20 years from now. And we need the people who will be in leadership then to have an active role in planning it (now)," said Gregg Behr, 31, president of Forbes Funds, a Pittsburgh foundation that supports nonprofit organizations, which funded the study.

Forbes Funds is financially supporting a project called New Trustees for a New Pittsburgh, an effort to train 200 young adults to work on volunteer boards. The project aims to place 100 of the participants on boards within the next year.

The project works with Leadership Pittsburgh, a group that has placed young adults in leadership positions for about a decade. New Trustees for a New Pittsburgh organizers are also working with the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University.

FreeMarkets Inc. founder and chairman Glen Meakem, 39, is the only person under the age of 40 on the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and Carnegie Mellon University boards. He is also the chairman of the Heinz History Center board.

I say...way to go Pittsburgh!

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