Emerging Leaders in Nonprofit Management
Nonprofit leadership in today’s dynamic world requires adaptive and strategic professionals, able to both meet specific organizational needs and understand the broader landscape.
To prepare the next generation of leaders, PASE and Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York (Colin Powell School MPA) have partnered to relaunch Emerging Leaders in Nonprofit Management: A Course for Youth Program Professionals, a comprehensive, three-month course in nonprofit leadership and management. By investing in developing more capable leaders, we can strengthen organizations and ensure better outcomes for the youth they serve.
For over a decade, PASE’s course has offered lectures and practical discussions that merge the talents and experiences of professors with insights from seasoned nonprofit professionals from the PASE community. Class sessions provide a strong theoretical base for understanding issues facing nonprofits, while offering practical ways to improve critical aspects of management, including: strategic planning; financial management; human resources; fundraising; advocacy; board relations; and evaluation, among other topics. The Emerging Leaders course has yielded diverse, and uniformly positive, results for its over 300 alumni, including career advancement and increased long-term commitment to the youth-serving community.
Program Overview
Download the program overview to learn more about the content, timeline, cost and how to apply.
Application deadline has passed.
Applications for the 2027 cohort will open in Fall 2026.
2026 Strategic Challenge Projects
As part of the program, participants work in teams on a Strategic Challenge Project to explore a challenge or opportunity related to non-profit management or leadership. Through the project, the teams identify and carefully define a problem or opportunity, collect and analyze the information needed to address the issue, propose alternative solutions, and recommend a strategy to implement the preferred solution. Below are the projects from the winter 2025 cohort.
Team 1 Are We Measuring Transformation or Just Participation? A Holistic Framework For Impact
Quantitative data is important, but is it always just about the numbers? We wanted to explore ways nonprofits could capture more qualitative data and how including this can impact how we share and measure program success.
Team 2 Other Duties as Assigned: Preventing Overwork in Non-Profit Leadership
This project explores equitable practices to prevent overwork in nonprofit middle management. By examining the current state of the nonprofit sector and the effectiveness of organizational policies, we will offer practical recommendations to help nonprofits do their best work in service of their teams and the communities they serve.
Team 3 Emerging Leaders and Advocacy: Strengthening Organizations and Serving Communities
How can emerging leaders be successful advocates for their organizations & the communities they serve? We will explore the role of strategic alignment, communication, trust, and workplace culture in building a stronger organization. These components support leaders in bridging decision-making gaps between staff, leadership, program participants, and other community stakeholders.
Team 4 Co-owning Impact – Moving from Competition to Shared Responsibility for Student Success
Too often, partnerships between Community-Based Organizations operate in silos—passing along tasks, students, and challenges rather than working together toward shared outcomes. Co-owning Impact calls us to move beyond transactional relationships and step into true partnership, grounded in shared goals and collective accountability. When we stop protecting individual programs and start owning results together, young people don’t experience disconnected services—they experience one unified team fully invested in their success.
