Executive Director, Shafer Leadership Academy

My name is Mitch Isaacs, executive director for Shafer Leadership Academy. Shafer Leadership Academy is a not-for-profit organization that creates local leaders in east-central Indiana. So our charge is to develop leaders for both the workplace and also for the community. I'm the jack of all trades as the executive director, we're a very small, not-for-profit organization it's myself, one other staff member, and our board of directors, and so, it's very much like running a small business, and when you find yourself in that set of circumstances you do a little bit of everything: supervision, marketing, sales, community relations, program assessment and implementation, finances, every aspect that you might expect of running a not-for-profit organization and a small business really does fall on my shoulders, because there's only two of us. We do intentional activities and exercises, so when we're talking about a concept, we might an activity to help you make sense of that. Very brief example: we do a program on leading multi-generational teams, and the whole way we do that program is by playing a game. A professionally produced game board to help you understand the generations. So through the activities, and just as importantly, through the conversations with other people in the class, it really is a community approach to understanding leadership because we feel like people bring a lot to the table already themselves, and so they can also learn from others as well as our facilitators. Primarily, we work with working adults. And so often times, who comes to us, are the emerging and up-and-coming leader in their community or in their place of work. So when an employer sends somebody to us, it's often that person who is already demonstrating leadership potential, or who they see leadership potential in. Or, if people come to us through the community, through their work in the not-for-profit sector, or through neighborhood associations. We just finished our 10 year anniversary celebration. What that meant for me was mobilizing a force of volunteers who went out and fund-raised for our organization. Since it was an important milestone, we thought it was a great opportunity to raise funds for our mission. So I had a team of about 15 volunteers who were calling over 400 graduates, inviting them to the celebration event, and also explaining to them our scholarship drive. In addition to that, I had stakeholders that I was working directly with to not only invite them to the event, but ask corporations and significant community members to make major contributions. And that's in addition to planning all of the logistics from the program, to the presentation, to the food, to reserving the space.