September 2, 2024

A roast of our (and your) leadership

My manager recently went to a leadership retreat and all I did when she was away was write this post.

2 min read

1

You are told a grant proposal is due in two days where you have to detail your organisation’s five year plan, your current impact, and make a compelling case for why your nonprofit will collapse if you don’t get the grant.

Your manager two hours before the deadline:

2

After a year of back and forth on a grant, a donor decides to not give your organisation the funds because during this time, their CSR goals have changed and no longer align with your organisation.

Your co-founders to each other:

3

A board member strongly suggests that your organisation should build a second line of leadership, train them on fundraising, managing a diverse team, office work culture, and much more.

Your CEO who plans to go on vacation the moment someone applies for the position:

4

You ask for health benefits and a pay hike because you’ve been working overtime for months. Your manager says they really appreciate your contribution.

Your reaction:

5

Your manager asks you–an English literature graduate–to write a data-driven 60-page report on your nonprofit’s outcomes. You make glaring errors in the data and no one can understand the bar charts you’ve included.

Your manager:

6

Your manager who finally gets fed up of employee complaints and decides to splurge almost all the current funds on a team retreat in a super fancy heritage hotel in Jaipur:

Proof this happened:

IDR team in a group photo_nonprofit humour

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Srishti Gupta-Image
Srishti Gupta

Srishti is an editorial associate at IDR where she’s responsible for writing, editing, and curating content in English and Hindi. She previously worked in an editorial capacity at Springer Nature. She holds a master’s degree in political science and is interested in researching development and social justice from a ground-up perspective.

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