Transform – Certificate of Executive Nonprofit Leadership is not an academic program intending to study nonprofit leadership from a theoretical basis. Transform is much more interactive and experiential than traditional nonprofit executive certification programs. There will be no sessions providing ‘A Historical Overview of the Nonprofit Sector’ or examining nonprofits from a macro-level. On the contrary, Transform is a nuts-and-bolts course on how to run a successful nonprofit.

The primary instructor, Anthony 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 18 years, raised over $15 million, managed hundreds of staff, worked with dozens of board members and learned most of his key lessons in nonprofit leadership through trial and error at the front line.

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.”

— Anthony Silard, President and Founder, The Center for Social Leadership