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Leadership Development Resources

An annotated list of publications from the Annie E. Casey Foundation Leadership Development portfolio. 

Spotlight: Executive Transition Monograph Series  

Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits is the sixth volume of a 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. See all Executive Transition Monographs.

All Leadership Development Resources

Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits

The development of leadership skills throughout an organization is a key strategy for succession planning and strengthening capacity. This publication presents emergency succession planning tools (an important “risk management” practice). It offers executive directors concrete guidance for thinking about when and how to leave an organization. It also includes suggestions for boards in being proactive in assuring the sustainability of the organizations for which they are responsible. more >>

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Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out

A skilled, committed, and diverse pool of next generation leaders would like to be nonprofit executives in the future, but concerns about insufficient work-life balance and lack of earning potential may keep them from it. This national survey of 6,000 emerging nonprofit leaders, produced by the Meyer Foundation in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and others, presents challenges and recommendations for training and supporting future nonprofit executives. more >>

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Next Shift: Beyond the Nonprofit Leadership Crisis

This is the second monograph in a series on generational shifts in the non-profit sector. In this monograph, the authors counter a variety of proposed interventions from infrastructure organizations and present an alternate to the current crisis framework. The authors posit that by applying a crisis framework to the transitional trends in the non-profit sector, leadership ignores the rich opportunities that lay ahead. The authors make suggestions as to how the non-profit sector can embrace this time of change and have positive outcomes. more >>

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2007-2008 Annie E. Casey Children and Family Fellowship

This brochure highlights the 2007-2008 Annie E. Casey Foundation Children and Family Fellows. The individuals portrayed in this brochure are a diverse group of individuals who want to accelerate their professional and personal development to enhance their ability to ensure that children, families, and communities are strong--that all children and youth have permanent connection to a family and that all families are economically self-sufficient. more >>

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Turning Curves, Achieving Results: A Report of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Children and Family Fellowship

Achieving results for children and families is a central focus of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Children and Family Fellowship. The results-based accountability framework has allowed leaders and organizations to plan reforms that are strategic goal-oriented and effective. This report uses the framework to examine how Casey Fellows have assisted the human services sector in making effective change. more >>

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The Impact of Leadership Development on Early Childhood Education: A Preliminary Review of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Leadership in Action Program

This report was prepared for the Casey Foundation by the Research Center for Leadership Action at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. It was designed to capture stories about Casey's Baltimore and Maryland Leadership in Action Programs that illustrate what leaders have done to contribute to helping children enter school ready to learn. more >>

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Leadership in Action Program Brochure

Casey’s Leadership in Action Program delivers hands-on training for people from diverse fields and backgrounds who are working hard to improve results for vulnerable children and families. The program—used for agency managers, educators, business people, nonprofit leaders, public officials, parents, and child advocates—works with local groups to focus on improving a specific result, like reducing the number of low birth-weight babies or increasing the number of children ready for kindergarten. This brochure explains how the program works and how to tell if a community is ready to participate. more >>

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Leadership in Action Program

Casey’s Leadership in Action Program delivers hands-on training for people from diverse fields and backgrounds who are working hard to improve results for vulnerable children and families. The program—used for agency managers, educators, business people, nonprofit leaders, public officials, parents, and child advocates—works with local groups to focus on improving a specific result, like reducing the number of low birth-weight babies or increasing the number of children ready for kindergarten. This brochure explains how the program works and how to tell if a community is ready to participate. more >>

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The Annie E. Casey Foundation Children and Family Fellowship Brochure

This brochure highlights the Casey Foundation’s Children and Family Fellowship, an 18-month executive leadership program for accomplished professionals. The Fellowship explicitly strives to increase the pool of diverse, visionary leaders with the competence to create supports and systems that help families make positive choices and to lead and sustain major system reforms and community change initiatives that benefit larger numbers of children and families. more >>

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Maryland’s Early Care and Education Committee Progress Report

This progress report provides details on the Casey-supported Maryland Leadership in Action Program's progress to date toward their stated goal to accelerate the rate at which children enter school ready to learn in Maryland and to increase the leadership capacity of participants. more >>

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Stepping Up, Staying Engaged: Succession Planning and Executive Transition Management for Nonprofit Boards of Directors

This publication focuses particularly on board leaders. It provides a set of practical perspectives, hands-on tools, brief case studies, and useful resources to help board chairs, officers, and members take a proactive approach to preparing their organizations for a transition. more >>

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Leadership Matters: The Role of Latino/a Religious Leadership in Social Ministry

This report’s applied research information about Latino/a congregations and their leaders offers an informed portrait of the needs, aspirations, and challenges facing Latino/a ministers of faith-based organizations. The authors of this report looked at the role of religious leaders who act as catalysts for change by mobilizing and building grassroots organizations. more >>

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What’s Next? Baby Boom-Age Leaders in Social Change Nonprofits

This paper reports on how twenty-seven social change nonprofit leaders in the baby boom generation view their work and the contributions they have made during the past thirty years. more >>

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Baltimore's Five-Year Action Plan for School Readiness

Baltimore ’s Five-Year Action Plan for Achieving School Readiness is a product of the Baltimore Leadership in Action Program (B-LAP), a group of community leaders, public officials, parents, and education providers. The purpose of this plan is to ensure that children in Baltimore City, Maryland are ready and prepared to succeed in school.  more >>

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Resident Leadership and Facilitation Work Book

The Resident Leadership and Facilitation (RLF) Training is designed to help participants gain an understanding of the skills needed to lead successful meetings that result in decisions about actions that will achieve desired results. more >>

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Founder Transitions: Creating Good Endings and New Beginnings: A Guide for Executive Directors and Boards

This guide examines the unique challenges presented by transitions involving founders or long-term executives. It provides clear advice for executives and their boards in confronting the complex issues these transitions present. more >>

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Interim Executive Directors: The Power in the Middle

This paper explores the benefits and basics of using an interim executive director during a leadership transition. It also highlights some considerations that organizations should take into account when deciding whether or not to use an interim executive director.  more >>

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Up Next: Generation Change and the Leadership of Nonprofit Organizations

Research indicates that leadership transitions from the Baby Boom generation to Generations X and Y will become more common within the nonprofit sector. This report delivers a series of recommendations on how a variety of stakeholders can improve the hand-off from this generation of leaders to the next.  more >>

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Casey Connects Newsletter, Issue 18, Fall 2004

This issue focuses on executive leadership transitions in nonprofits, and the impact that Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) campaigns have on low-income workers.  more >>

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Change Ahead: (Summary) Nonprofit Executive Leadership, and Transitions Survey

Effective leaders and leadership are critical to the health and wellbeing of nonprofit organization and the sector as a whole. This summary of a survey of 2,200 executive directors of nonprofit organizations from across the country highlights the implications that the growing number of leadership transitions may have for the nonprofit sector. The document presents a strong set of baseline numbers with which to measure trends in leadership transitions over the coming decades. more >>

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Change Ahead, Nonprofit Executive Leadership and Transitions Survey 2004

Effective leaders and leadership are critical to the health and wellbeing of nonprofit organization and the sector as a whole. This report of a recent survey of 2,200 executive directors of nonprofit organizations from across the country highlights the potentially distributive implications that the growing number of leadership transitions may have for the nonprofit sector and creates a strong set of baseline numbers with which to measure trends in leadership transitions over the coming decades. more >>

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Capturing the Power of Leadership Change: Using Executive Transition Management to Strengthen Organizational Capacity

This report highlights the challenges associated with executive transitions and describes the model of executive management transition that has been used in the last decade. It also details opportunities for funders to further develop and implement strategies to better cope with executive management transitions.  more >>

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Accelerating Results, Building Leaders: The Leadership in Action Program

This report documents the evolution of the Leadership in Action Program (LAP), an innovative approach to leadership development that deliberately and directly seeks to improve outcomes and accelerate results on behalf of children, families, and communities.  more >>

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Achieving School Readiness: A 5-Year Action Agenda

This report details the goals, strategies and action steps that members of the Leadership in Action Program (LAP) have determined as most critical to the long-term achievement of the result that all of Maryland’s children will enter school ready to learn. This Action Agenda is the result of lengthy deliberations and review of evidence-based proven practices by the LAP members. more >>

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The State of Executive Transition Services Nationally and in Baltimore, San Francisco & San Antonio

Executive transition services and funding to support such services are important in ensuring a smooth change of leadership. This scan of existing leadership transition services shows a need for higher standards of practice, greater variation in the types of services offered and the creation of a more integrated system of executive transition services.    more >>

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Casey Connects Newsletter, Issue 5, Winter 2001

This issue focuses on the Oakland Citizens’ Rally for small schools, the 2001 National Families Count honorees, and profiles a new group of Casey Fellows.  more >>

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Building Leaders for Change: An Overview of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Children and Family Fellowship

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has long been committed to increasing the pool of available leaders with the capacity to initiate and manage change efforts systems, communities, and neighborhoods. This monograph provides information about the previous model for the Casey Foundation's Children and Family Fellowship as of 2003. It includes lessons learned about leadership development and leadership development programs. more >>

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The Changing Face of America: Highlights from the Fourth Annual Leadership Development Workshop

This report of the Fellowship Alumni Network’s Fourth Annual Leadership Development Workshop focuses on the transformative effects of the nation’s growing diversity on government policies, social change organizations and activists. more >>

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Charter Schools: Mobilizing and Motivating Your Staff to Get Results

Because of their independence, charter schools are afforded a unique opportunity to transform the educational system by selecting, training, and providing staff opportunities that are not often available to school districts.  This handbook helps charter school leaders convert their educators’ drives and talents into behaviors that support their school’s specific vision, needs, and objectives.  more >>

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Paths to Leadership in Community Change

This paper examines the leadership development process in several Rebuilding Communities Initiative (RCI) sites.  It also presents a conceptual framework that helps people better understand the leadership development process as well as suggests best practices for communities interested in leadership development.    more >>

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