The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

Adam Jeske
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Non-Profit

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. 

  1. 2d ago

    032 RIF or Resign? | Thompson Child and Family Focus President & CEO Will Jones

    Three days into his tenure, Will Jones was asked to sign a letter moving $150,000 from Thompson's endowment to cover a $200,000 payroll.  Two weeks later, the same letter was back on his desk.  Thompson was spending about $5 million a year more than it brought in, and its leaders were telling staff the model could not work any other way.  Will concluded the organization had more people than work. On a three-day beach trip with his family, he told his wife, "I know what I need to do." He would take a reduction in force to the board, and if they would not back him, this was not the right mission for him.  A board member asked whether it could wait six months. Will said it could, but in six months the number would be 50. The board backed him.  This conversation covers what it cost him to be "the heavy" in a leadership team that was "okay with the mission shutting down," and how Thompson innovated to serve more kids that were falling through cracks in the system elsewhere.  He also talks about why he stopped his executive team from voting on decisions, why leaders who can grow but don't want to are the worst fit for a growing organization, and why nearly all his peers are for-profit leaders.  Will Jones is President and CEO of Thompson Child & Family Focus, a 140-year-old youth-serving organization in the Charlotte area that works in five states. Thompson reported $49.4 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

    032 RIF or Resign? | Thompson Child and Family Focus President & CEO Will Jones

  2. Sep 22

    031 Am I Supposed to Decide This? | M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust CEO Romanita Hairston

    The hard calls, the ones that are 51/49, are supposed to land on the CEO's desk. Romanita Hairston warns that without a clear escalation framework, you'll be doing the wrong work.  "You can be making 51/49 decisions, but not the most consequential ones," she says.  One of her first moves after becoming CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust in 2022 was a strategy decision. The Trust affirmed its identity as a capacity-building institution and cut the sectors it served in half, from about 80 to 38. A second review narrowed that list by roughly half again.  Her reasoning runs through the whole conversation: "Strategic intent always exceeds strategic capacity, no matter how large you are as a foundation." We talk about how she builds strategy from principle-level choices down to business plans, and why decision speed depends more on business rhythm than on layers of management. She also explains how her team deals with a question that no guideline covers, and why feedback runs all year long. She also shares what she tells new CEOs, and what books she re-reads. Romanita Hairston is CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a 50-year-old foundation that invests in nonprofits across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. She has also led her own consulting practice and previously served at World Vision.

    031 Am I Supposed to Decide This? | M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust CEO Romanita Hairston

  3. Sep 15

    030 Is This Mission Drift? | FCA President & CEO Shane Williamson

    The Fellowship of Christian Athletes had worked the same way with high school and college athletes since 1954.  Then someone asked a question in a leadership meeting that nobody could answer well, and it started a decade of change. Shane Williamson became the CEO in 2017. The reset came down to three words: engage, equip, empower.  I was surprised that the vision and the mission then changed to match, not the other way around. And it was a radical expansion of their work to new age brackets, and many more types of sport. They began working with leagues for six-year-olds, as well as surf camps and motocross, radically different from their first 60 years.  That smells like mission drift to some people.  Shane says the why never moved, and the how and the where are supposed to. Shane Williamson is President and CEO of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which has 3,500 staff and about 1.5 million volunteers. FCA reported $262 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025, up 138% since the reset.

    030 Is This Mission Drift? | FCA President & CEO Shane Williamson

  4. Sep 8

    029 What Am I Even Doing Here? | Prison Fellowship President & CEO Heather Rice-Minus

    Heather Rice-Minus walked out of a board meeting without an important approval.  She had presented a new mission and vision for Prison Fellowship, built over a year of listening in prisons and long work with her leadership team. The lawyers wordsmithed. Her board chair asked whether people would understand it. The words went back on the shelf. She went home and sat with her husband, wondering what she had signed up for. Four months later, at her first board meeting as CEO, she put the same words back on the screen. She had sent a memo in advance explaining why each one was chosen. The vote to approve was unanimous. This conversation covers what happened in between, including the January meeting where she asked her leadership team to tell her what to change in the draft, and the cascading decisions that followed the vote. She also talks about the board selection process she has been rebuilding, why she would rather have 13 board members than the maximum of 21, the parental leave policy she announced in her first all-staff meeting, and why the people slightly askew from your vision are the hardest ones to see. Heather Rice-Minus is President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, the nation's largest Christian nonprofit serving people in prison, their families, and those coming home. Prison Fellowship reported $70.3 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025 and is celebrating its 50th year in 2026.

    029 What Am I Even Doing Here? | Prison Fellowship President & CEO Heather Rice-Minus

  5. Sep 1

    028 Teach Me to Care and Not to Care | Biola University President Barry Corey

    Barry Corey is starting his twentieth year as president of Biola University. He says he is on his third presidency at the same institution. Early on, he hired a senior leader he liked and respected. Years later the university had moved and the role had moved with it. Barry agonized for weeks over a decision he already knew was inevitable, and when he walked in to deliver it, the office started to spin and he nearly passed out.  That decision, and what it cost to make, sits at the center of this conversation. Barry has also written a book, Necessary Burdens, with contributing author John Townsend, on the fourteen burdens carried by the one person at the top of an organization. His argument is that those burdens turn into assets once a leader stops reading them as evidence of weakness. This conversation covers why the top leader personifies the organization and absorbs its criticism as personal rejection, the distinction he draws between wanting to "be president" and wanting to "do president," and how fifteen years of retreats with a small group of other presidents has sustained him in the work. He also talks about the T.S. Eliot line he leads by, the five things he told his board he would do himself and delegate to no one, and why he calls it the president's office and never his own. Barry Corey is president of Biola University, a 5,500-student university in Southern California. His book Necessary Burdens, written with John Townsend, releases today.

    028 Teach Me to Care and Not to Care | Biola University President Barry Corey

  6. Aug 25

    027 Weather the Storm? Or Walk Away? | Growing Hope Globally President & CEO Kaitlyn Slate

    Kaitlyn Slate stepped into her first CEO role knowing she was very different from her predecessor.  The board wanted her to diversify revenue. The staff wanted her to understand who they were. And the farmers who had anchored the organization's model for 26 years were in the most difficult agricultural economy in recent memory.  Kaitlyn had to decide whether to chase a quick win or stay true to a model that was severely strained. This conversation covers how she worked through the tension between diversifying revenue and protecting mission identity, how she thinkis about the farming communities at the heart of their work, and what a pilot program is teaching her about expanding the donor base without drifting. She also talks about why the loneliness of the CEO role surprised her, plus what she carries from degrees in historic preservation into how she thinks about organizational identity. Kaitlyn Slate is President and CEO of Growing Hope Globally, a 26-year-old membership-based food security organization working with 13 partner organizations globally.

    027 Weather the Storm? Or Walk Away? | Growing Hope Globally President & CEO Kaitlyn Slate

  7. Aug 18

    026 Do We Pull the Plug on a 50-Year Program? | Jews for Jesus CEO Aaron Abramson

    Jews for Jesus had been sending staff to present to churches for 50 years, more than 1000/year. Pastors invited them in. Churches put them on the schedule. People started to give.  Then the invitations started declining, and the costs kept rising.  Aaron Abramson stepped into the CEO role and knew a reckoning was coming. He had been in the organization for 25 years, including a stretch as COO. The question was not whether to act, but when and how much. In his second year, he pulled his executive team offsite and put everything on the table. They talked about radical options. They talked about doing nothing.  They landed somewhere in between: cut the department nearly in half, keep the engine at its core running, and carve out budget to find a new relationship with churches. There was a restructure, and there were layoffs. The decision involved people who had been with the mission for 20 years or more.  Aaron shares what it took to hold that, why he needed the whole team riding with him rather than just signing off, and what he has learned about communicating a hard decision to boards, major donors, senior staff, and those in the field, all with different stakes in what they hear. Aaron Abramson is CEO of Jews for Jesus, a global organization with nearly 300 staff. He's also the author of Mission Design: Leading Your Ministry Through Organizational and Cultural Change.

    026 Do We Pull the Plug on a 50-Year Program? | Jews for Jesus CEO Aaron Abramson

  8. Aug 11

    025 He Got a $60 Million Gift. Then He Left | Freedom Fund CEO Nick Grono

    He got the largest gift in his organization's history. Then he left anyway. Nick Grono had been employee number one at the Freedom Fund since 2014, the only leader the anti-slavery organization had ever known, and he had already decided to step down at the end of the year. Then, in late 2025, an unexpected $60 million arrived from MacKenzie Scott, roughly three times the organization's annual budget. Everything that made leaving hard suddenly got harder. This conversation covers what made him go ahead anyway, why he spent months quietly reducing staff and slowing spending before that gift ever arrived, and what he believes a departing CEO owes the person who comes next. He also shares a world exclusive: the new nonprofit he is launching to back the next generation of nonprofit leaders. Nick is candid about the rest of the load. What Arthur Brooks and Richard Rohr taught him about the second half of a career. How he trained himself to stop deciding unilaterally and pull his leadership team into almost everything. And the quarterly all-staff call where any employee can ask him anything, anonymously, and "I don't know" became one of his most useful answers. Nick Grono is the CEO of the Freedom Fund, a global anti-slavery organization working across 10 countries on a roughly $20 million budget. They work alongside and on behalf of the estimated 50 million people trapped in forced labor, trafficking, and forced marriage. He is the author of How to Lead Nonprofits, and he steps down at the end of 2026 after 13 years.

    025 He Got a $60 Million Gift. Then He Left | Freedom Fund CEO Nick Grono
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

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. 

Information

  • Creator
    Adam Jeske
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    33
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Nonprofit CEO Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

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