Leading Youth-Serving Organizations-New Challenges

Leaders of youth serving organizations are asked to be many things—youth development experts, educators, accountants, relationship specialists, behaviorists, staff trainers, family engagement coordinators, youth outcome evaluators, fundraisers, and board managers. The growing professionalism of the field over the past decade has pushed these tasks to ever-higher levels of skill requirements without increases in compensation to support and develop staff effectively. To be truly transformative, OST leaders need to move beyond running organizations and providing services to engage policymakers and funders in creating new roles. These roles may include developing the voice of the field to help shape the broader public debate around education, youth development and achievement; or aligning community-based assets, including schools, OST programs and health services to better address the needs of the “whole child.”

Clearly, many OST leaders already play these roles, but their ability to create a viable paradigm shift in how communities view youth development is limited. Yet, this role is critical in the current climate of education reform with so many new choices being presented to communities—Expanded Learning Time, Pilot schools, community schools, charter schools, etc. The role of OST as a partner in education, youth development and public health will continue to expand over the next 5 years and will put greater demands on programs to provide high-quality educational and enrichment services. To be successful, the OST sector will need to be more thoughtful about how it recruits, develops and nurtures leaders. These individuals will be critical in shaping the identify of the field and creating realistic expectations for OST that are driven by communities, programs and youth, rather than the larger federal or state education mandates. To move the sector forward, we need to create more opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, mentoring and collaborative education.