How an Online Platform Aims to Diversify Nonprofit Board Leadership

Here’s some not-so-breaking news: Leadership in America’s nonprofit sector isn’t very diverse. This can hold true even when the organization in question serves predominantly non-white communities. A report by BoardSource a few years ago found that 90% of nonprofit board members and CEOs are white, while a quarter of boards are entirely white. These numbers have not changed much since BoardSource began tracking leadership diversity in 1994. A recent Bridgespan analysis also found that Black-led nonprofits win less grant money with more strings attached.

This doesn’t mean that some aren’t trying to move the needle, however. A few years ago, I connected with Virgil Roberts, a Black lawyer and former record executive in Los Angeles who founded the African American Board Leadership Institute (AABLI) to build a robust pipeline of qualified nonprofit leaders of color. Others, like Michele Kumi Baer, philanthropy project director at Race Forward, note that although there have been increases in diversity in programmatic roles, new funds for people-of-color-led organizations, and equity statements from foundations, “it is hard to tell from this vantage point how deeply people of different positions of power within philanthropic organizations are really being introspective about race and power in their daily practice.”

Rhoden Monrose, a Wall Streeter turned social entrepreneur, is taking on this entrenched problem with a unique platform called CariClub. Born in Saint Lucia, Monrose grew up in Harlem, New York, and attended Middlesex School before earning a scholarship to Trinity College. He got his start on Wall Street as a derivatives trader in 2009, working at Citigroup. After a half-decade, though, Monrose stepped away to launch CariClub, an online platform that gives young professionals access to philanthropic leadership opportunities—specifically, associate board member positions with well-known nonprofits and foundations. Since launching in 2014, CariClub has partnered with nearly 500 nonprofit organizations. The service is entirely free for nonprofits, with corporate partners paying an annual subscription fee.

“I worked on Wall Street for five years. I learned a lot. I also noticed that young professionals wanted to get involved philanthropically, but there wasn’t an easy path to get on the board, and certainly on the governing board,” Monrose told me in a recent interview.

Through his company, Rhoden is passionate about diversifying board membership, feeling indebted himself for his own scholarship and nonprofit experiences.

Remaking the Old Boys Club

Sometimes, it seems like age-old disparities come down to a simple matter of momentum, and CariClub is keen on disrupting a familiar story. “Often, there’s no way to get involved with these boards without personal connections. It’s an old boys club, if you will. So I saw the need to create a platform like CariClub to democratize access to these board roles,” he says.

An associate board operates alongside a governing board, and is made up of young professionals eager to work for a particular cause or nonprofit, often through fundraising, event planning and volunteering. While they don’t hold decision-making power, members often advise nonprofit leadership, and some go on to join a governing board.

Tapping his own connections in the finance world, Monrose said he was able to get some early meetings, including with billionaire Henry Kravis. And in just a few years, CariClub has been able to court top industry firms such as Citigroup, KKR, Davis Polk, Third Point and Berkshire Capital, among others. Central to CariClub’s mission is the idea of emphasizing just how valuable nonprofit board leadership can be for young professionals who might discover a new passion, learn and develop diverse leadership skills, and make an impact on their communities.

“Early adopter companies realized that this is great for leadership development and put money behind it because it’s going to make their employees more competitive. As we’ve grown, other companies have realized that if competitors are doing this, they need to, as well. But I don’t want to harp on the self-interested reasons… I’ve actually met the people we’ve placed, and it’s had a profound effect on their lives personally,” Monrose says.

CariClub young professionals gain access to its platform via their employers. Members can then engage with hundreds of opportunities based on individual interest. Monrose is particularly interested in placing members on associate boards to create a solid pipeline of young new leaders. If diverse leaders get involved when they’re young, they can reach governing boards much sooner. The typical CariClub member has between one and 15 years of post-undergraduate professional experience.

CariClub offers tiered pricing depending on the size of interested firms. Unsurprisingly, CariClub membership started out engaging mostly with finance companies, but has since broadened to professional and legal services. And the company is now making inroads in technology, as well.

Barely into his 30s, Monrose himself has already served on the alumni board of his prep school, and is currently on the board of fellows of his alma mater Trinity College and the associate board of Row New York, which uses rowing to empower youth and provide academic support. He talks about CariClub young professionals who’ve also had valuable experiences engaging in nonprofit leadership.

At last year’s Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) Scholars Thanksgiving event, Monrose connected with a Citigroup employee who was placed at SEO through CariClub. The young man ended up helping SEO raise some $150,000 that night, a record number. “Everyone was singing his praises, saying he was a great addition and that the entire event would not have been possible without his leadership. It was an out-of-body experience seeing someone who I had never met before have such a huge impact with an organization that I respect,” Monrose says.

Metrics for Change

Monrose was recently tapped to join Charity Navigator as a board member. Charity Navigator and CariClub came together to form the Community Inclusion Fund, a partnership that will infuse $500 million from corporate America into nonprofits working to address the systemic and cyclical problems that confront people in underserved communities.

The fund will have a special focus on communities with high concentrations of essential workers. In New York City, where CariClub is based, Black, Hispanic and Asian people make up more than 70% of the city’s essential workers, including those in transit, childcare, healthcare, cleaning services and the post office.

Charity Navigator, a trusted source for evaluating nonprofits, has always been key for CariClub as far as matching young professionals with vetted nonprofits. But Monrose is particularly excited that the organization has expanded its ratings from 9,000 core nonprofits to some 160,000 via a new rating system. Now, CariClub has a much larger pool of trusted organizations from which to draw.

Monrose soon shifts gears to discuss growing up in Harlem as a young Black man and an immigrant. “My mother’s greatest fear was always that one of her kids was going to be at the wrong place in the wrong time and have an encounter where she would lose them. Luckily, I grew up in a context where I could avoid most of these realities,” he tells me.

On the heels of a reinvigorated Black Lives Matter movement, Monrose felt compelled to ramp up his quantitative case and have concrete information to take back to clients. To that end, CariClub recently surveyed 1,000 nonprofits across the country to better understand the lack of diverse representation on their governing boards.

Among the findings were that more than half of the nonprofits surveyed feel their board doesn’t reflect the community they serve; 87% said that finding the right recruitment channel is their biggest obstacle; 83% were willing to increase the size of their board to increase diverse representation.

And while tackling some of these issues might seem daunting, the young social entrepreneur believes that the survey’s findings are actually cause for hope. “The No. 1 major problem in having a diverse board was about the pipeline. And we hear this a lot. But this time, we can say this will be solved. We are the pipeline, and we have talented candidates that would be happy to step aboard.”

In the coming years then, success for CariClub will be measured by the numbers. By the time Monrose runs the exact same survey in three to five years, he wants to eliminate the pipeline problem as the reason that boards lack diversity.

“If we do this right, if we do this well, there should not be this same pipeline problem. I’m also excited about the downstreaming as it relates to corporate board diversity, as well,” he adds.

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