What happens when a movement loses its most passionate leader?

News of the world environment

 NEWSLETTER | JUNE 7, 2024

Charismatic Megafounders

“Whereas many individuals have ideas about different ways to improve the human condition [and] safeguard the environment, relatively few individuals in the world are sufficiently determined to set up an organizational entity to translate their ideas into reality,” management expert Stephen R. Block writes in Why Nonprofits Fail.

We honor such people, Block writes. Admire them. And sometimes witness negative effects from their continued involvement with the organizations they create. He devotes an entire chapter of Why Nonprofits Fail to “Founder’s Syndrome,” where profound conflict arises between an organization’s needs as it matures, and the tenacious, driven, high-achievement leadership style of a founder who cannot seem to share control. 

Less dramatic, perhaps, but just as threatening to an organization’s long-term viability, is the situation where founders seem — to themselves or to others — irreplaceable. Founders like Pilai Poonswad [who founded the Thailand Hornbill Project nearly 50 years ago] are motivated by a passion for their cause that doesn’t blink at hardship or low or no pay. If an organization operates on a shoestring, who but a founder is willing to put on those shoes, and feel their pinch? And if the organization evolved around one key person with the unique skills, knowledge bases, and relationships to keep it running, how can it develop further when such leaders reach their limits?

In our Summer print issue cover story, reporter Greg Harris digs into the work of environmental visionaries like Poonswad and explores what happens when charismatic movement leaders move on.

READ MORE

Image by Steve Johnson

PRIDE STORIES

In honor of Pride Month, here are some articles from our archives that feature some of the many intersections between LGBTQ+ rights and the environmental movement.

Anti-Trans, Anti-Climate

Writer and activist Sage Agee draws on personal experience, contemporary politics, and history to explore the connections between political attacks on body sovereignty and attacks on the Earth, and how both take an especially high toll on trans people like them. (Read more)

Solace in Science

It wasn’t easy being young, gay, and poor in Arkansas, but science provided Jacob Carter a much-needed escape. Now he’s giving back, standing up for science in the face of Right-wing attacks. (Read more)

Our Tenuous Boundaries

In her book How Far the Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler “weaves through topics of queerness, adaptation, family, and community, shining a critical light on the burden and beauty of survival in hostile environments and teaching us something along the way,” our reviewer writes. (Read more)

Queering the Environmental Movement

Across Turtle Island, Two Spirits — people who are believed to possess both feminine and masculine spirits, and who play sacred roles in Native communities — are standing on the frontlines of the climate justice struggles and reclaiming their collective identity. (Read more)

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