Episode Summary

Ask a nonprofit leader about advocacy and you will usually hear one of two things: there is no time for it, or it is lobbying and therefore off limits. Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle, Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Charlottesville, Virginia, takes both apart. Advocacy, she argues, is simply legislative education, and the line that actually matters is a bill. If you are pushing a specific piece of legislation you are lobbying, which you are still permitted to do so long as you track it, report it and keep it proportionate to your mission. Everything short of that is relationship building, and her argument is that the sector's real problem is not legal exposure but invisibility. Doyle also talks about following a fifteen-year executive director, chairing her regional chamber of commerce and why she treats collaboration as a competency rather than a personality trait. Listeners will walk away knowing what they are actually allowed to do, and where to start on Monday.

About Mariane

Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle is Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, the Virginia association that serves as a learning partner, advisor and legislative voice for nonprofits across the Commonwealth, and which marks its twentieth anniversary this year. She stepped into the role in 2024, following a predecessor who had led the organization for fifteen years. Her background is education. She has taught in higher education for roughly twenty-five years, and her doctoral research examined the career pathways of women in K-12 administration, where she found that women tend to take a meandering road to end up exactly where they need to be. She has been nonprofit adjacent her whole career, starting as a volunteer at the Braille Institute in Southern California. She also chairs the Charlottesville Regional Chamber, a habit she traces to a childhood spent tagging along to Chamber after-hours events with her father.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium

• Mariane's LinkedIn | Center for Nonprofit Excellence

• Mariane's appearance #358, What Nonprofit Leaders Need Now: Guidance from Four Sector Experts

• National Council of Nonprofits, to find the state association where you are

• CNE's 20th Anniversary Philanthropy Day Luncheon, Wednesday, October 28 in Keswick, VA

• Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, and his new Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI, out October 20

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