The Nonprofit CEO Podcast
Nonprofit CEOs carry decisions they can't fully discuss with their board, their team, or their peers. So they carry them alone.
Each week, Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor, sits down with a nonprofit CEO to go inside the decisions they carry: the agonizing restructure, the wonky board dynamic, the moment that defined their tenure.
Adam has been in over 230 of these conversations. The patterns are striking and valuable. This podcast surfaces them so you can lead with the perspective most CEOs never get.
For weekly patterns, synthesis, and peer intelligence between episodes, subscribe to The Nonprofit CEO Briefing at nonprofitCEO.com.
The Nonprofit CEO Podcast
Trailer | The Nonprofit CEO Podcast with Adam Jeske
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The role of the nonprofit CEO role is isolating. The decisions are high-stakes, the support is often thin, and the margin for error can literally be life and death.
The Nonprofit CEO Podcast is where those decisions get talked about honestly.
Hosted by Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor, this podcast goes beyond theory and best practices to the real choices that define careers and shape communities.
If you're a nonprofit CEO navigating tough calls, or you know one who is, this is the conversation you've been missing.
For patterns, synthesis, and reflection from hundreds of other CEO conversations, delivered weekly, subscribe to The Nonprofit CEO Briefing at nonprofitCEO.com.
The nonprofit sector does critical work, giving food and water and care and connection to people who are hungry and thirsty and needy and sick and despairing. The nonprofit sector is the sector of love, and that's 5% of the US economy, $1.5 trillion. I'm Adam Jeske, the nonprofit CEO advisor. I work one-on-one with CEOs navigating the hardest calls of their tenure, and I've had deep conversations with over 230 CEOs in the sector. Here's what I'm finding. Nonprofit CEOs are constantly making high-stakes decisions, sometimes literally life and death. Every year, each of them makes a handful of decisions that can define not just that year, but their tenure, sometimes their career. And they almost always carry these decisions alone. They can't fully process with their board. They can't be completely honest with their team. Their peers in the sector are navigating their own significant issues. So the decision, the real decision, the hard one gets carried solo. When that happens, decision quality suffers, decision velocity suffers, and the downstream cost isn't abstract. It's more hunger, more need, more suffering than there would have been if the person leading had access to the perspective and honesty they need. In all my conversations, only 5 CEOs have told me they have the connections they need to make their most critical decisions. Well, 5 out of 230? That's what this podcast is all about. Each week I sit down with a nonprofit CEO and we talk about the decisions they carry, the ones that kept them up at night, the ones they got right, the ones they're still not sure about. Not theory, not best practices, the actual decisions and how they made them. I'm Adam Jeske, the nonprofit CEO advisor, and this is the Nonprofit CEO Podcast. I'll be releasing new episodes weekly. If you know a nonprofit CEO or executive director or president who's carrying something significant, Send them the show. Let's go.