There is an old adage, you’re only as good as your word. For nonprofit leaders, you’re only as good as your reputation. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. 

A nonprofit CEO’s reputation is an asset. Like any asset, it can appreciate in value, like Labubus, or depreciate remarkably quickly, like the bunch of bananas I bought this morning.

The CEO’s and organization’s reputations are nearly impossible to separate. When one rises, the other follows. When one takes a hit, both feel the impact. Look at blood-testing scammer Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos or John Schnatter and Papa John’s. When audio surfaced of Schnatter using a racial slur during a company conference call, customers boycotted and stock tanked. Papa John’s had to bring in the big guns, literally. 7-foot, 325-pound Shaquille O’Neal was hired to restore trust and save the brand.

That’s why reputation management, or the strategic practice of building, protecting and strengthening how people perceive a leader, is imperative. A CEO’s reputation is a nonprofit’s lifeline.

The best time to build a reputation was yesterday

My 8th grade basketball coach was a fan of legendary college basketball coach John Wooden. He had sweatshirts made for my team, and on the back was Wooden’s famous quote, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” 

Reputation management is no different. Many people think it is just crisis management, but the real work happens long before the crisis. 

Start today. Do the following audit to answer the question, “Does my CEO need reputation management?”

• When you do a Google or AI search on the CEO, results reveal little about who they are and what they stand for.
• Their LinkedIn profile and other social accounts are outdated or don’t exist.
• They have never published an op-ed or spoken publicly about issues affecting their organization and sector.
• Everyone knows my organization; nobody knows our leader.

How do you build a reputation anyway?

Start with the audit, and be honest with your assessment. Ask what key audiences think about your CEO. Ask what you want them to think. The gap between those two answers helps shape your reputation management strategy. 

From there, visibility becomes critical. Effective CEOs share ideas, participate in industry conversation and contribute meaningful commentary on the issues their organization is working to fix. Your CEO doesn’t need to be a celebrity, they just need to be credible. Media relations is crucial. Strong relationships with reporters help position a CEO as a trusted source and not just someone seeking coverage when they have news to announce. Over time, the visibility reinforces personal and organizational credibility (remember, you can’t have one without the other).

Another piece of the reputation management puzzle is a social media presence. For the sake of this post, let’s focus on LinkedIn. For most nonprofit leaders, it’s the most direct channel to donors, potential board members, peers and even reporters. A thoughtful, active presence with high engagement can build recognition and trust in ways few other things can. 

Start your preventative maintenance

Think of reputation management as preventative maintenance. It’s a lot easier to update a LinkedIn profile, build media relationships and establish thought leadership than it is to rebuild a reputation once it has been damaged. Shaq was the solution to Papa John’s reputation problem because he had spent decades building a presence and reputation that people trusted and believed in (and he likely was not as cheap as a Papa John’s pizza). Your organization’s CEO does not need to be Shaq, but they shouldn’t be invisible, either.