Omahans on multiple nonprofit boards are older, more male than city, new analysis shows

On Jeff Kutash’s first day as executive director of the Peter Kiewit Foundation, a board member invited him to an event at Lauritzen Gardens, saying he would meet everyone who mattered in Omaha.

As he mingled, Kutash sensed something was off. Then he realized why: Every person he met appeared to be white, except for the people serving food. 

Where he had previously worked in Oakland, California, Kutash felt like the leaders he rubbed elbows with generally resembled the city’s residents. But in Omaha? 

“The city doesn’t look like its leaders,” said Kutash, now co-founder of a philanthropy consulting firm. 

And Omaha’s nonprofit leadership does differ from the city’s residents in several distinct ways, found a new Flatwater Free Press analysis of the 150 Omahans who serve on three or more unique nonprofit boards. 

These Omahans are far older than the city’s population, with an average age of 58, the analysis shows. 

The group is highly educated and highly ranked. More than half are CEOs or listed as the top executive at their job. They’re the heads of Fortune 500 companies like Mutual of Omaha, Union Pacific and Kiewit.  

And the majority are men.

This analysis builds on a study Kutash himself commissioned while at the Kiewit Foundation, which looked at the race, ethnicity and gender of the leaders of Omaha’s nonprofits, corporations and local government. It found that, in 2019, leaders involved with multiple organizations were overwhelmingly white and 85% male.

The Flatwater Free Press looked at nonprofits based in Omaha, with more than $250,000 in revenue, and, using IRS records from the most recent available year, identified a subset of 150 people serving, mostly volunteering, on three or more unique boards.

The Flatwater Free Press then analyzed the group for multiple demographics, including gender, age, educational background, job title and industry. This analysis does not include race or ethnicity because there is little publicly available data. (Click here to read more about how we reported this story.)

Since nearly two-thirds of that group are executives – CEOs, presidents and executive directors – it’s “not surprising and not ideal” that they’re more male, more highly educated and far older than the average Omahan, said David La Piana, a national expert on nonprofit boards and founder of a nonprofit consulting firm.

“Those people who are the big donors, or the people who connect to the most power or money, they get asked to be on another board and another board,” La Piana said.

It’s not unique to Omaha. Nationally, boards are becoming more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and gender, said Tara Huffman, chief program and strategy officer for BoardSource, an organization that researches nonprofits.

But, across the country, board members are still majority white, older and wealthier than the residents their nonprofits aim to help.

“It’s not to say that they’re not genuinely concerned or sincere in their commitment to the mission,” Huffman said. “But it’s still atypical that the board is reflective of the community that that organization is serving.” 

The old boys’ network

Carol Russell has served on the board of more than 80 nonprofits over the past half century.

She once managed cancer research studies at University of Nebraska Medical Center. Now she’s known for lending her time to dozens of Omaha nonprofits that support kids, promote the arts and work with senior citizens.

But when she started serving on boards, she could see that she was different from many of her peers. She could sense her contributions were viewed differently. 

“I just feel that, as a woman, we get patted on the head and say, ‘Oh, you do such a good job,’ but they don’t really acknowledge the impact that women have on the organization,” Russell said.

About 62% of the people serving on three or more boards in Omaha are male, according to FFP’s analysis. That’s a higher proportion than the city’s population, which is 49.7% male.

“When we look at the size of organizations, the ones with larger budgets are primarily men running them,” said Anne Hindery, CEO of the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands. “I think it’s kind of the way they’ve always done it.”

This is despite the fact that nationally, the nonprofit sector tends to feature more women, and women hold leadership roles in nonprofits more often than in the corporate sector, Huffman said.

Nationally, more than half of nonprofit board members surveyed now identify as female.

Things are changing in Omaha, too, Russell said.

“It’s kind of gotten away from what I call the old boys’ network,” Russell said, “but there’s still a lot of that that I see in the community.”

Russell said she often ended up serving on boards alongside the same people over the years as she moved between organizations, because their members suggest people they know. She’s also seen people in positions of influence from different demographic groups spread thin as they are asked to serve on numerous boards in part to boost diversity.

“It’s hard networking and developing a board outside of your sphere of influence,” Russell said.

The insular nature of some Omaha nonprofit boards may also box out younger adults from holding those positions of power.

None of the 150 people serving on three or more Omaha nonprofit boards are under the age of 35.

The city itself has a median age of 36, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those who serve on multiple boards are on average about 20 years older and range up to 85 years old.

The Nonprofit Association of the Midlands started tracking its board demographics a couple of years ago, Hindery said. That process revealed the association didn’t have any board members under 30.

“It’s really important to track the demographic changes of your board, of your clients, and of your community, because you definitely want to be reflective of who you serve,” Hindery said.

Not every Omaha nonprofit is stuck in this pattern of being older, more male and more affluent than the city’s population at large.

Black & Pink National, a nonprofit headquartered in Omaha that supports people impacted by incarceration, values having board members with similar lived experiences, said Tena Hahn-Rodriguez, interim co-managing executive director.

Many of the people impacted by the prison system are people of color, or part of the LGBTQ+ community, Hahn-Rodriguez said. Picking board members who belong to those communities helps Black & Pink know and meet their needs, she said.

“One thing that we have learned through almost 20 years of work is if you do not have leadership that holds the identities of the folks that you’re serving, you’re going to miss things,” Hahn-Rodriguez said.

Defining diversity

Diversity is a word that often has “no goal attached to it,” said Beth Gazley, professor of nonprofit management at Indiana University.

A nonprofit often prioritizes board members based on its purpose and clients. Some nonprofits seek geographic diversity, like people from rural western areas of the state, or diversity in job backgrounds.

“You got to start with, what’s the mission of the organization and what kind of viewpoints do you need on the board to advance that mission?” said La Piana, the nonprofit consultant.

Some organizations reserve seats on the board for people who have used their services, Hindery said. She serves on the board of Threshold, a homelessness coalition, which prioritizes having a board member who was formerly homeless.

One of Black & Pink’s board members previously used their services, Hahn-Rodriguez said, and now she meets people when they get released from prison.

“Having someone on our board who still is greeting people from the prison system weekly has a huge impact,” Hahn-Rodriguez said.

People who work for banks or philanthropic organizations are often desirable board members because they have expertise in managing money and fundraising, La Piana said. About 10% of the multi-board members analyzed by the Flatwater Free Press work in the finance sector, and another 16% work in philanthropy or for a nonprofit.

“Generally, people want powerful people on the board, people who can raise money and make connections,” said La Piana.

Omaha’s multi-board members are highly educated, according to their LinkedIn pages and website bios. About 93% have a college degree and more than half hold an advanced degree.

About half of them attended a Nebraska school for one of their college degrees, most often the University of Nebraska campuses in Lincoln and Omaha.

Omaha residents in general are much less likely to have graduated college, with 39.2% of people over the age of 25 holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to census data.

“They’re putting a priority on having the right connections,” Huffman said. “That gets interpreted as someone who looks a certain way in a particular field, and not like the people that you’re serving, or like the people that you’re providing housing for, or the people that you’re providing health services for.”

In recent years, there has been a nationwide shift to improve diversity in nonprofit leadership. Some research suggests that more diverse boards do positively impact a nonprofit’s performance, Gazley said, though it’s hard to track how demographics influence outcomes.

Around 2020, Hahn-Rodriguez saw a shift in Omaha to include more Black women in leadership. But that progress has slowed in the last few years, she said.

Omaha nonprofit inCOMMON has a target goal for its board of at least half people of color, and a quarter living in the specific neighborhoods it serves, said co-director Rachel Bahl. Right now, 63% of its board members are people of color.

Because inCOMMON’s work is “place based” around two neighborhoods with high proportions of minority groups, Bahl said, the nonprofit prioritizes a representative board and staff.

“One of our taglines is ‘transforming neighborhoods through neighbors,’” Bahl said. “For us as an organization, we don’t want to be the lead. We don’t want to come in and be some sort of ‘outside expert’ telling the neighborhood how things need to be done.”

Board interlock

Many of Omaha’s nonprofit boards are highly interconnected through shared members, a phenomenon researchers call “board interlock.”

Some boards have high levels of overlap because they’re affiliated with the same parent organization, like a hospital or university. In Omaha, the various nonprofits affiliated with Immanuel Senior Living have nearly identical boards.

Omaha’s city-centric organizations, like the Omaha Development Foundation and the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, are also interlocked, mostly with board members who are local business leaders, like Nate Dodge of the NP Dodge real estate firm, and Javier Fernandez, CEO of Omaha Public Power District.

Creighton University, located in downtown Omaha, also shares several board members with those city development organizations.

“I think that if we don’t have diverse boards, we end up in a silo, especially with how small the nonprofit circle is in Omaha … We can get into similar thinking because there aren’t enough outside perspectives,” Hahn-Rodriguez said.

Executives serving on six or seven different boards could be problematic, Gazley said, but that doesn’t mean the organization isn’t serving the people it’s meant to serve.

Those people who serve on several boards might not participate much in the individual work of the organizations, La Piana said, but they often offer name recognition and funding sources.

It’s benefited inCOMMON, said Bahl, co-director. As the organization has grown significantly, it has relied on the experience of seasoned board members who have led other nonprofits through growth periods. 

But the board is also strengthened by the diversity of its members, including those who hadn’t served on a board before, Bahl said.

Russell has seen something similar while serving on 80 different Omaha-area boards in the past half-century.

“I’ve met a lot of wonderful people that aren’t CEOs of the company or don’t have a family foundation, and they tend to be more of the dig in and get your hands dirty kind of people, rather than just coming to a board meeting,” Russell said. 

And if you’re giving your time and talent, she said, “that’s every bit as important as giving big dollars.”

This article was reported through a fellowship supported by the Lilly Endowment and administered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The Flatwater Free Press is solely responsible for all content.