The challenge for a national, religion-specific umbrella organization is a daunting one: preparing the next generation of community leadership for a world in which the expectations of donors and beneficiaries are rapidly changing and fundamental purposes are the subject of active debate. It is compounded by the number, diversity and autonomy of its members—156 local fundraising and service-providing federations and 360 independent communities across North America.

These are successful organizations; together they raise more than $1 billion a year from more than 700,000 donors. Tension between the national and local groups over autonomy, and between the larger and smaller local federations over power and control have called into question the basic organizational assumptions. Young potential donors are increasingly looking elsewhere. Many inside and outside the system are questioning whether the balance of attention between domestic and international programs ought to be changed.

To address this challenge, the national organization created a competitive process to select 25 men and women from within the system who aspired to the senior authority role in one of the forty largest local federations and who were now one or perhaps two jobs away from reaching that goal. Several are already the CEOs of smaller organizations; others are responsible for massive development or service programs.

CLA was retained to provide the framework, language and tools of Adaptive Leadership to help the 25 Fellows (1) create their own individual capacity to lead change in large local federations without sacrificing what is most essential and needs to be preserved, and (2) become a professional cohort and support group that can be a collective force for adaptive, system-wide and community change for the next 20 years.

To do this, CLA and the national organization collaborated on the design of an 18-month initiative for the Fellows that included workshops, one-on-one coaching, peer consultations on current leadership challenges, international fact-finding and study, a disciplined individualized self-assessment program, and the challenge of addressing several critical system-wide issues.

Halfway through the initiative, the Fellows are already well into their own transitions, applying the tools of Adaptive Leadership in their current roles and thinking about the road ahead. In the words of one, "The experience was seminal in how I can effectuate change...I found the CLA framework illuminating and my interactions with my peers illuminating as well.”