The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

014 The Decision After the Decision | World Relief President & CEO Myal Greene

Myal Greene inherited an organization with a mission statement that everyone loved. World Relief had run on that mission statement for fifteen years. Internal staff admired it. External donors knew it. Myal knew it needed to change anyway. This conversation is about the eighteen-month, discerning, board-engaged process. Myal walks through how the decision surfaced during strategic planning, why he never saw himself as the decision maker but as the person facilitating the board toward a good decision, and how he handled staff who were terrified of the process. But while Myal thought he was deciding about a mission statement, he was actually making the decision after the decision. A single upstream choice forces a cascade of downstream effects not fully grasped. Strategy. How the organization raises money. Who it hires. How it allocates capital. Years later, World Relief is still living into the consequences. We also talk about hiring for culture addition rather than culture fit, and why Myal considers capital allocation the most underrated decision a nonprofit CEO makes. Myal Greene is President and CEO of World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization founded 80 years ago that works around the world and across the US as one of the major refugee resettlement agencies. He spent fourteen years at the organization before stepping into the CEO role five years ago.

013 Please Don't Let Me Break This! | Christianity Today President & CEO Nicole Martin

Nicole Martin is five and a half months into leading Christianity Today. The prayer she keeps coming back to: "God, please don't let me break this!" She began leading a 70-year-old organization founded by Billy Graham, and found it trying to be five things at once on one budget with one team. It was a philanthropy, a media company, an investigative journalism outfit, an external presence for the church, and a pastor. Something had to give. In her second month, she gathered her leaders and wrestled for hours with one key question: What are we?  The answer redefined the budget, the editorial direction, and the culture. And it meant admitting the organization is one thing, and it is not the other four. This conversation is about inheriting something significant and then reshaping it without destroying it. Nicole talks about the daily discipline of building a new culture inside a legacy institution. Rev. Dr. Nicole Martin is President and CEO of Christianity Today. CT reaches 41 million people annually through its journalism, podcasts, and publications, with a third of its audience outside English-speaking contexts.

012 Deciding Before You Know | Wheaton College President Philip Ryken

Phil Ryken had believed for years that Wheaton College's signature orientation program should be required for every new student. The research was there, and he saw what it could mean for Wheaton.  But that meant scaling a high-connection, immersion program from 200 students to 550 in a single year. And that, in turn, meant recruiting 45 additional faculty members, asking them to give up two weeks of August and solving problems that didn't have easy answers. And yet, Phil made the change. This conversation covers what COVID made possible, what he did with criticism about moving too fast, and how he and his wife rode bicycles all over the city to meet up with students at a key time.  Phil also talks about where the hardest decisions arise, what he wishes someone had told him before he became president, and one piece of conventional leadership wisdom he quietly ignores. Dr. Philip Ryken is President of Wheaton College in Illinois, a Christian liberal arts institution with $206 million in revenue in 2024.

011 Prophetic or Pragmatic? | Bread for the World President & CEO Eugene Cho

Eugene Cho started at Bread for the World two days before the COVID lockdown. In his first week, a tweet of his went viral, landing in the Washington Post. He had to figure out how to lead and how to speak, in real time. And this is while stepping up to lead an organization that had been led by the same person for 29 years. Our conversation covers the three goals he holds in constant tension: building proximity to power, speaking truth to power, and building power in ways that reflect the organization's values. He also walks through how he led a yearlong rebranding of a 50-year institution without producing grief, and what the difference is between being listened to and being acquiesced to. Eugene also talks about why he doesn't "enjoy" his work and why purpose is a better word than joy for what keeps him going in the current moment. Eugene Cho is President and CEO of Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy organization with a staff of 60-plus working to end hunger.

010 Telling Donors You Got It Wrong | HOPE International President & CEO Peter Greer

Everything was up and to the right. Hope International had just received an award for innovating in a post-conflict setting. Peter Greer the biggest champion of more. Then the cracks started to show. Peter had to stop, own the mistake, and go tell the donors who had believed what he told them. Peter is one of the most intentional leaders I've interviewed about building a personal network of advisors. He also names something I think every CEO should wrestle with: not whether you and your organization has cracks, but where they are and who can see them. Peter also shares a family decision that he nearly got wrong, and what it revealed about what most nonprofit leaders are carrying. Peter Greer is President and CEO of Hope International, an international development organization operating in about 30 countries, with $41 million in revenue in 2024.