Leadership and nonprofit management within the African community of Greater Philadelphia

This qualitative ethnographic study question the exploration of the leadership styles and management skills employed by leaders of African nonprofit organizations within Greater Philadelphia. Five themes emerged on leadership styles: participative, leading by example, servant, transformational and situational. Six themes emerged from local challenges: funding as a fundamental issue, lack of awareness, poor working relationship amongst the organizations (collaborations, communication), insufficient training, inter-organizational competition and organizational capacity/structure. Globally, four challenged themes emerged: lack of organizational structure in running nonprofit organizations in African countries of origin; lack of pre-planning and defined outcome measurement; bad governmental policies in countries of origin of the leaders; and poor work ethics in countries of origin. Four other significant themes emerged: mission/goal, collaboration, relationships and sustainability. This exploratory study resulted in the following recommendations: Creation of an African Collaborative Leadership Council (ACLC), community awareness information programs, cooperative relationships building amongst African nonprofit organization leaders, strategy defining funding for African immigrant nonprofit organizations and efforts towards integration into mainstream America. Implementation of these recommendations will assist African nonprofit community leaders to adapt a more aggressive but progressive leadership style, in coalescing African community leaders to form one Council of leaders of African descent within Greater Philadelphia.;Key Words: Leadership, Collaboration, Relationships, Ebola, Leadership-Council.