When the United States government issued executive orders to freeze all aid in January this year, it upended an already resource-strapped sector leaving organizations scrambling to fulfil their mandates to participants and employees, all while dealing with their operational challenges. The aftershocks were many and led to questions – all of them urgent, important and needing to be dealt with simultaneously. From managing donor relationships, to legal responsibilities and liabilities, to finding ways to keep the ecosystem afloat – while simultaneously sourcing additional financing and shaping an emergency strategy for survival. As a leadership challenge for non-profits, this has been extremely difficult – with huge responsibility falling on decision-makers.
“Many of these problems require either a really good understanding of the organization's finances or fundraising in the sector more broadly. And some of them are at a decision-making level where it's hard to just delegate, especially as it comes down to things like cash flow and strategy moving forward,” says Accountability Lab co-CEO Cheri-Leigh Erasmus.
When Accountability Lab’s founder Blair Glencorse, then Director of Learning Cheri-Leigh Erasmus and Director for Operations and Growth Jean Scrimgeour took the decision to become co-CEOs a year and a half before the sector was turned on its head, they could not have foreseen just how important their choice for a more collaborative and robust leadership model would prove.
“Because we are very flat at the management level of the organization, we've been able to make decisions collaboratively and quickly during this period,” says Blair.
“Particularly at a moment in which it feels like all decisions, even small ones, need to go all the way up – not having a single-leader bottleneck helps”.
Apart from being the natural next step to formalize the collaborative decision-making structure, the Lab chose co-leadership in response to a world of work in which expectations of leadership in general, and CSO leadership in particular, had expanded far beyond the responsibility of one organization. By serving as board members and members of advisory committees to other organizations, as well as actively participating in leadership of global fora for change, being a good leader in the sector means playing a significant role in the ecosystem.
“All of these environmental factors have – in our view – pushed a co-leadership model as the more sustainable and successful alternative to a single leader in places like ours which require you to be on all the time,” says Jean Scrimgeour.
A pervasive myth of the co-leadership model is that it is a “soft landing” for women and people of colour to take on the lite version of leadership. While it does allow for more inclusive leadership, this is only a by-product of a model that meets the moment in crucial ways. And nowhere was this more apparent than in the first months of 2025.
“Many of these problems require either a really good understanding of the organization's finances or fundraising in the sector more broadly. And some of them are at a decision-making level where it's hard to just delegate, especially as it comes down to things like cash flow and strategy moving forward,” says Accountability Lab co-CEO Cheri-Leigh Erasmus.
When Accountability Lab’s founder Blair Glencorse, then Director of Learning Cheri-Leigh Erasmus and Director for Operations and Growth Jean Scrimgeour took the decision to become co-CEOs a year and a half before the sector was turned on its head, they could not have foreseen just how important their choice for a more collaborative and robust leadership model would prove.
“Because we are very flat at the management level of the organization, we've been able to make decisions collaboratively and quickly during this period,” says Blair.
“Particularly at a moment in which it feels like all decisions, even small ones, need to go all the way up – not having a single-leader bottleneck helps”.
Apart from being the natural next step to formalize the collaborative decision-making structure, the Lab chose co-leadership in response to a world of work in which expectations of leadership in general, and CSO leadership in particular, had expanded far beyond the responsibility of one organization. By serving as board members and members of advisory committees to other organizations, as well as actively participating in leadership of global fora for change, being a good leader in the sector means playing a significant role in the ecosystem.
“All of these environmental factors have – in our view – pushed a co-leadership model as the more sustainable and successful alternative to a single leader in places like ours which require you to be on all the time,” says Jean Scrimgeour.
A pervasive myth of the co-leadership model is that it is a “soft landing” for women and people of colour to take on the lite version of leadership. While it does allow for more inclusive leadership, this is only a by-product of a model that meets the moment in crucial ways. And nowhere was this more apparent than in the first months of 2025.
A collective decision-making model actually allows us to make decisions more quickly under pressure, not less quickly
Blair Glencorse, co-CEO Accountability Lab
“We can rapidly sense check each other and come to conclusions in a way that one person may not be able to do – even though in theory they could pull the trigger straight away on their own.”
Following the first aid freeze orders, all three leaders responded quickly to high-level financial, programming, and donor relationship needs in tandem with each other. What might have taken a week was done in a few days.
“There are pieces of work that Blair's running with, for example, that I'm certainly aware of, but don't have to question or become involved in because I trust that he knows what he's doing,” says Cheri.
“We come from the same set of values and we're motivated by wanting to do what's best for the organization. We can just let each other run with blocks of work – and in times of crisis, it really tests whether you stand by that value of trust”.
Cheri, Blair, and Jean underscore that trust and transparency are crucial to successful co-leadership, and need to be cultivated consistently. Regular touch bases – both personal and professional – and keeping each other loosely in the loop on all work, ensures everyone is up to speed but focused on their own areas of work. This also builds a more horizontal, peer-to-peer accountability between the leaders of the organization. Support from board chairs, the broad involvement of upper management in much of the decisionmaking, and a leadership coach rounds out this robust structure.
“It's made us more resilient, it’s made us more innovative. I think it has spread risk in a really helpful way. I think it's given us the ability to be braver because there are more people part of the conversation,” says Jean.
It is the guardrails of this robust structure that allows the freedom to take bolder risks, and explore creative problem solving avenues, while also leaning into each leader’s individual strengths, capabilities, and diverse networks. During a period in which organizations have had to make difficult decisions about closing their doors, AL drew on these strong networks. The Lab was able to gather and consolidate data, then worked with partners to develop and launch services to support the ecosystem. As organizations decide whether strategic partnerships and mergers are an option, a co-leadership structure – if implemented with care and intent – can help build some of the stability lost over the past months.
“The world has changed. We have to create models and processes and ways of working that respond to those changes,” says Jean.
“And there hasn't been any meaningful transformative innovation in the world of non-profit leadership to ever really face up to these changes”.
