"What LeaderSpring has done is provide a forum for all of these nonprofit leaders to come together to learn from each other and share experiences, commonalities, differences, barriers, and successes. I have learned more from my class Fellows than all of the outside trainings and workshops that I have attended since becoming a nonprofit executive director. There is no other place to get that unconditional support from people who really understand what we go through. That kind of support is invaluable and helps us maintain ourselves and gain renewed strength to keep doing what we do."

Ronda Rutledge, Executive Director
American Indian Child Resource Center

The core of LeaderSpring's two-year, on-the-job Fellowship is a leadership development program for executives of community-based organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The theory guiding our work is that leaders matter.  When the leadership of a nonprofit is strengthened, the agency’s capacity is strengthened, enabling it to deliver improved and expanded services. 

LeaderSpring provides a comprehensive learning environment by offering a menu of distinct yet integrated learning approaches. The program consists of monthly day-long gatherings, individualized mentoring trips, overnight retreats, and peer coaching.  Each month Fellows meet to compare learning experiences and discuss real-time leadership and management topics of common interest.  The program strikes a balance between didactic learning, by bringing in expert trainers, and peer-based learning, by engaging in peer learning activities.

LeaderSpring awards 14 to 15 Fellowships to nonprofit leaders annually, providing the Fellowship to 28 to 30 nonprofit leaders at any given time. Cohorts are selected alternately from the East Bay and San Francisco.
Based on ten years of experience, the Fellowship has five key program characteristics:

• Contextual: LeaderSpring embraces an “action learning,” or contextual focus, providing customized opportunities for our Fellows to apply acquired knowledge and skills to real-time compelling challenges specific to their agencies. 
  
  
• Continuous: No other leadership program offers a two-year comprehensive period of goal-setting, training, mentoring, and networking to help ensure impact on organizational performance.
  
  
• Collective: The Fellowship is designed to nurture collective leadership by strengthening the capacity of cross-organizational networks. 
  
  
• Diverse: The rich diversity of our program participants (including mission, leadership tenure, size of agency, and ethnicity) make it possible to deeply mine the multiple talents, knowledge, and wisdom for the benefit of all participating leaders.
  
  
• Adaptive: Our program delivery approach enables us to adjust our program curriculum to reflect the interests of each cohort.

Click here to download LeaderSpring’s fact sheet.

Click here to download a case study of LeaderSpring written by the Whitman Institute.