Summer Is a Leadership Test

Summer Is a Leadership Test. Most Nonprofit CEOs Don't See It Coming.

Every summer, something quiet happens inside nonprofit organizations.

It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't show up in a board report or trigger an alert in your project management system. It looks, from the outside, like a normal stretch of business, a little slower maybe, a little more relaxed.

But underneath the adjusted calendars and the out-of-office replies, something is actually being decided about your organization's marketing direction. About what holds and what doesn't. About whether you come back in September with momentum or without it.

Most nonprofit CEOs I work with don't see it as a leadership moment. They see it as a scheduling inconvenience.

That distinction is exactly where things go wrong.

The Real Problem Isn't the Vacation Schedule

Here's what summer actually looks like inside a nonprofit marketing operation:

Someone is out. Work gets redistributed. A standing meeting gets moved, then moved again. A team member who doesn't normally touch a certain piece of the marketing is now responsible for it. Follow-up happens over text instead of in a scheduled conversation.

None of it feels dramatic in the moment. Everyone is doing their best. The work is getting done.

But here's what I've learned after 20 years of working inside nonprofit organizations: when work gets redistributed without explicit direction, the task transfers but the standard doesn't.

The person stepping in focuses on what's in front of them, the deliverable, the deadline, the immediate ask. What gets lost in the handoff is the judgment behind the work. What good actually looks like. What the work is supposed to accomplish. Why it matters right now, in this season, for this audience.

And when that judgment isn't transferred, when the only thing that moves is the task, the work continues but the direction quietly loosens.

By the time September arrives, something feels off. The messaging doesn't feel as sharp. The results are harder to explain. The team is moving, but not toward anything clearly defined.

That's not a summer problem. That's a leadership clarity problem that summer exposed.

What Your Leadership Team Actually Needs From You

I want to be clear about something: this isn't about being more involved in your marketing during the summer months. It's not about adding oversight or sitting in on more meetings or second-guessing your team.

It's about transferring clarity before things get complicated, so your leadership team can make good decisions without needing you in every room.

There's a meaningful difference between telling someone what to do and giving them the judgment to do it well. Summer is when that difference shows up most clearly.

Here's what I've seen work consistently, and what I share with the nonprofit CEOs I work with:

Give them the standard, not just the task.

Before work gets redistributed, name what matters most about it and why. Not a lengthy briefing. Just one clear statement that answers the question: what does good look like here, and what is this work actually trying to accomplish right now?

That's the piece that travels with the work when you're not in the room. Without it, your leadership team is making judgment calls without a filter. With it, they're executing against a clear standard you've already set.

Give them a decision-making framework.

Judgment calls will happen this summer. Situations will arise that weren't anticipated when the work was handed off. The question isn't whether your leadership team will face those moments, it's whether they'll have the language to navigate them well.

A simple phrase goes a long way: "When you're making calls on this, here's the filter I'd use." That one sentence does something important. It tells your leadership team that you trust them to decide, and it gives them the frame to decide well.

Name the moments that need you.

Not every decision requires your involvement. But some do. The clearest gift you can give your leadership team before summer starts is knowing which is which.

"Check back with me before anything significant shifts" isn't about control. It's about protecting the standard at the moments that matter most, and making sure your leadership team knows they have the clarity and the permission to handle everything else.

The Summer Standard Most CEOs Never Set

Here's what I've observed in the organizations that come back from summer with momentum intact:

It's rarely about who was available or how few people took time off. It's about whether the CEO treated summer as a leadership moment before it became a scheduling one.

The leaders who do this well aren't more involved in the day-to-day. They're more deliberate about what they communicate before stepping back. They understand that their job isn't to be in every room, it's to make sure the direction they carry is clear enough to live in those rooms without them.

That's a different kind of leadership than most nonprofit CEOs were taught. It's not about presence. It's about clarity.

And clarity, transferred well, is what keeps an organization moving steadily forward, even when the calendar is complicated, even when the team is stretched, even when summer does what summer always does.

What September Will Tell You

Six months from now you'll look back on this year.

Not at the reports or the campaign results. At yourself, at whether you led in a way that gave your organization something real to build from during the months when it would have been easy to let things coast.

The organizations that hold steady through summer aren't the ones where every detail got managed. They're the ones where leadership teams were given enough clarity to redistribute work well. Not just efficiently, but in a way that kept the standard intact.

That decision is available to you right now. Before the juggling starts. While there's still time to get ahead of it.

Lead it deliberately.

Cindy May is the Founder and CEO of Cindy May Marketing. With more than 20 years inside nonprofit organizations as a trusted partner, interim CEO, VP of Marketing, board chair, and strategic advisor she has done the marketing work, built the teams that execute it, and led the strategy behind hundreds of organizations navigating growth. Today she helps nonprofit CEOs lead marketing with clarity so growth becomes steady, measurable, and confidently led.

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