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Yet step-up leadership has long been central to how the social impact sector builds talent. Leaders often rise through deep programmatic expertise, community trust, policy fluency, funder relationships, or long-standing institutional knowledge before being asked to lead at enterprise scale. In a sector facing persistent workforce strain, burnout, and pressure on senior leadership benches, those pathways are an important way organizations develop talent while preserving mission continuity and institutional trust.
Our analysis of nearly 10,000 of Russell Reynolds Associates’ senior leadership appointments over the past five years – including more than 800 social impact appointments – underscores just how important step-up leadership has been to the sector. From 2022 through 2024, social impact and nonprofit organizations were, on average, 11 percentage points more likely than other sectors to make step-up appointments.
But that pattern changed sharply in 2025. The share of step-up appointments in social impact and nonprofit fell 12 percentage points, from 67% in 2024 to 56% in 2025 – nearly even with the broader market at 55%.
% of RRA successful candidates who were "step-up leaders"
Source: Russell Reynolds Associates executive placement data (2022-2025); n=9,884 senior leadership placements. Step-up leaders are defined as those appointed to a role they have not previously held, representing a meaningful increase in the scope, complexity, or level of their leadership responsibilities.
That convergence came at a moment when the sector’s need for leadership capacity was arguably becoming more acute, not less. Funding disruption, policy uncertainty, rising demand for services, workforce fatigue, and pressure on leadership benches have made continuity and adaptability more important than ever. In response to these conditions, the data suggests that many social impact organizations are chasing proven expertise at precisely the moment when the experienced candidate pool is under the greatest strain.
It’s an understandable instinct. When boards, funders, staff, and communities are anxious, a candidate who has already held the role can feel like the safer signal. But if “safe” becomes synonymous with “has done the job before,” the sector may reduce one kind of transition risk while increasing another: a thinner leadership pipeline, fewer advancement pathways, and a greater dependence on a limited pool of already-tested executives.
The better response is not to ignore the risk inherent in step-up appointments, but to manage that risk more deliberately. The most effective CEOs approach these appointments with both conviction and discipline: conviction about the leader’s potential, and discipline about the support, feedback, and alignment required to help that potential translate into impact.
Many step-up leaders are exceptional performers. They have delivered results, built followership, earned trust, and demonstrated the capacity to grow. In many cases, their potential is precisely why they are considered for a bigger role.
But the strengths that earn someone a step-up opportunity do not automatically translate to the next level of leadership. The new role may require a different relationship to power, influence, pace, ambiguity, and accountability.
This is especially true in social impact organizations, where senior leaders often operate in highly complex ecosystems. They must navigate boards, funders, communities, government partners, staff, and public expectations. They are often asked to move quickly while carrying deep relational and mission accountability.
For a first-time senior executive, that transition can be both energizing and destabilizing. The very behaviors that made someone successful earlier in their career — hands-on problem solving, functional advocacy, personal drive, or deep subject-matter expertise — can become limiting if they are not adapted to the new role. A leader moving from program execution to enterprise leadership, for example, may need to make broader tradeoffs about funding, talent, scale, and stakeholder trust. Understanding a leader’s potential requires looking beyond prior experience to the underlying growth factors, leadership patterns, and possible derailers that will shape how they perform under greater scope and scrutiny.
This is where many organizations misread the challenge. They treat the appointment as the finish line: the search is complete, the offer is accepted, the announcement is made. In reality, the appointment is the starting line.
Too often, executive coaching is introduced only after something has gone wrong. A leader is struggling with their team. A board relationship has become strained. Early decisions have created confusion. Stakeholders are beginning to question whether the appointment was the right one.
By then, coaching can still help — but the organization has already absorbed avoidable friction, and in a mission-driven environment, that friction can quickly affect staff confidence, funder trust, board engagement, and the pace of programmatic work.
For CEOs hiring direct reports, the better frame is preventive. Coaching matters, but it is only one part of a successful transition formula. The full work is to understand the leader’s future potential, anticipate possible derailers, clarify what success will require in this specific context, and ensure the leader’s success is treated as a shared responsibility, rather than an individual test.
That means helping the leader understand the role they are truly stepping into, not just the job description they accepted. It also means helping the CEO, team, and key stakeholders create the conditions for that leader to succeed.
That shared responsibility matters most in the first six months, when perceptions form quickly and the new leader is navigating a series of defining moments. Board meetings, budget decisions, team restructures, funder conversations, public communications, and strategy offsites can all shape early credibility. So can the first visible decisions a leader makes to demonstrate progress. Without clear alignment, even well-intentioned action can create confusion, resistance, or mixed signals for staff, funders, partners, and communities.
Proving that clarity early also gives the new leader space to ask: What does success look like in this role? Which relationships matter most? Where are the hidden risks? What expectations have been stated clearly—and what expectations remain implicit? Where might my old playbook help me, and where might it get in my way?
While these questions are useful for any senior hire, they’re essential for step-up appointments.
The social impact sector cannot afford to stop taking smart bets on emerging leaders. The challenges facing nonprofits are too complex, and the leadership pipeline is too important — particularly in a sector where leaders often develop through mission proximity, community credibility, functional depth, or programmatic excellence before being asked to operate at enterprise scale. Those leaders may come from inside the organization, from adjacent institutions, or from other parts of the social impact ecosystem. What matters is not whether they have held the exact role before, but if they have demonstrated the capacity to lead through ambiguity, disruption, and change.
The better path is to treat leadership development as part of enterprise risk management. That means seeing transition support as a core element of responsible leadership development, not as a perk or a remedial intervention. It means recognizing that even the most talented leaders need clarity, feedback, stakeholder alignment, and support when the scope, visibility, and complexity of their role changes.
For CEOs, the mandate is clear: keep looking for leaders with the capacity to grow into bigger roles, and be equally intentional about the conditions that will help them succeed. Challenge assumptions about what “ready” looks like. Make room for leaders whose potential may exceed their resume, including those whose value comes from seeing beyond how the role has traditionally been done. In a moment of disruption, the strongest candidate may not be the person most fluent in the old playbook, but the leader able to imagine what the organization needs next.
Organizations that get this right will strengthen more than an individual transition; they will build leadership cultures capable of developing talent, absorbing complexity, and sustaining mission impact through uncertainty.
Jamie Hechinger leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Social Impact and Education sector. She is based in Washington, DC.
Emily Meneer leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Social Impact and Education sector Commercial Strategy & Insights team. She is based in Portland, OR.
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