- Certificate of Executive Nonprofit Leadership is not an academic program intending to study nonprofit leadership from a theoretical basis. There will be no sessions providing ‘A Historical Overview of the Nonprofit Sector’ or examining nonprofits from a macro-level. This is a nuts-and-bolts course on how to run a successful nonprofit.

The primary instructor, Tony Silard, is not an academic – although he holds a Master’s of Public Policy focusing on Nonprofit Leadership from Harvard University – but a practitioner who
has served as an Executive Director for over 12 years, raised
over $15 million, managed a staff of 35 people and learned most
of his key lessons in nonprofit leadership through trial and error at the front-line.

Transform is much more interactive and experiential than traditional certification programs. The Center for Social Leadership’s philosophy of empowerment and facilitation can be summarized by the following quote:

“In any decision-making process, it’s the person or people who participate in making the decision who gain power from
the process. For participants to get anything at all out of a professional development program, they have to share
their own expertise, make decisions with respect to what
they want to learn, and engage each other in dialogue
and other interactive exercises around issues they
consider important. This is particularly important in
the case of leaders – who don’t like to be led.”

-- Tony Silard, Executive Director and Founder,
The Center for Social Leadership