Democratic Staff Structures: Weaving Shared Leadership and Union Practice in Nonprofits

2:00pm to 3:30pm Eastern

Many nonprofit leaders are building towards workplaces defined by transparency and deep participation while still balancing clear decision-making. Such balance is difficult to achieve. Increasingly, staff at organizations committed to transparency and participation are forming unions and choosing to bargain collectively.

Shared leadership and unions are often imagined as opposites. They are not, but navigating the inherent contradictions requires extraordinary leadership and a willingness from staff at every level to find a better way.

For management leaders, unionization raises real questions. How do we sustain community and belonging when the union is its own democratic structure? How do we maintain transparency, healthy communication, and principled boundaries throughout the organization? What practices and agreements make the union-management relationship generative?

Drawing on eight years of accompanying more than 180 organizations–and three years with the Beyond Neutrality Project–Amy Smoucha will describe what she is seeing: what is changing, how labor-management relationships naturally grow and get disrupted, and what is possible.  Guest leaders will share their experiences weaving transparency and inclusive decision-making together with collective bargaining and formal labor-management relations.

Whether your organization is unionized, organizing, or working toward more shared leadership, you will leave with an expanded view of how internal democratic practices and structures, unions and collective bargaining included, can strengthen organizations and develop staff as leaders at every level of the organization.

By the end of this 90-minute webinar, participants will be able to:

1. Name trends, challenges, and opportunities related to transparency and participation in nonprofits.
2. Reflect upon how internal democratic practices, such as transparency and participatory decision-making, relate to the structures and practices of union relations.
3. Consider principled boundaries and generative agreements that leaders have built with their unions, drawing on firsthand examples.
4. Identify natural periods of disruption and disequilibrium that challenge organizational practices and relationships.
5. Imagine how unions and collective bargaining can advance the development of staff as leaders at every level of the organization.

Moderated byJeanne Bell, Program Host, Leading Edge (NPQ)

Presenters:

Amy Smoucha (she/her/they) has spent 30 years in nonprofit organizations, beginning as a community organizer in Missouri and eventually serving as managing director of the national office of Jobs With Justice.  As a staff member of Missouri Jobs With Justice, Smoucha was on the staff team that negotiated their first collective bargaining agreement. At the national office, Amy led and managed labor management relations and contract negotiations, as well as supporting colleagues and affiliates whose staff were unionizing.  Smoucha currently has a consulting and coaching practice focused on nonprofit, social justice leaders and managers seeking to live out their organizational values through the workplaces they create.  Smoucha is building out a body of work and resources to support leaders in applying values-based approaches to staff unionization and collective bargaining.

Please note: The purchase is for 12 months access to the on-demand version and resources.

Leading Edge members will automatically have a reserved seat for this important event—no additional registration is needed.

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