Intro: This is the fourth of our interviews with nonprofit leaders around the Western North Carolina region.  Through this feature, we want you to get to know the person, their passion, and how they are working to strengthen our community. 

Photo © Benjamin Porter

ASHEVILLE - Ellen Clarke – who is celebrating her 25th anniversary as founding executive director of Western Carolinians for Criminal Justice – came of age during the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama.  She was inspired to dedicate her career to what is now known as “restorative justice.”  Like many current leaders in the nonprofit sector, Clarke came to her position out of commitment to a cause.  Recently, Clarke talked with us about what nonprofit leadership means to her, what she has learned, and how she’s tried to “stay ahead of the curve” in her field over the years. 

How did you get into the nonprofit field?

For me, the medium is the nonprofit.  It is the venue, the means to the work.  I began at Head Start then worked with people of faith, visiting inmates in prison.  Jail offers every kind of community issue you want to get involved in – disenfranchisement, racism, homelessness, healthcare, parental rights, you name it.  People in jail are the most disadvantaged citizens.

I came to Asheville in 1977 to work with a jail and prison ministry and in 1980 I was named to the Citizens Commission on Alternatives to Incarceration, a Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation project to address North Carolina’s crisis of prison overcrowding.  After two years of study, the commission recommended formation of local programs to provide community based sentencing of non-violent offenders.  That’s how Western Carolinians for Criminal Justice (WCCJ) was born.

What have been the greatest challenges and lessons learned for you as a leader?

WCCJ was started around the same time as several other local nonprofits – Pisgah Legal Services, the Mediation Center, Helpmate and Our Voice.  We were all creating new approaches to social service delivery.  We had to develop a place for ourselves at the table.  We were pioneers in that sense.

Building credibility and support were key.  WCCJ had to first get clear about its mission and then educate longstanding institutions including the courts and law enforcement about our new approach to serving people who had committed non-violent felony crimes.  Coming into a fairly closed system as an outsider was extremely contentious.  People were suspect of anything new.  People weren’t very knowledgeable then about what a nonprofit could do.  We were portrayed as do-gooders – but we were thinking outside the box in terms of punishment.

It took time to gain the skills to run an effective organization.  The need for a diverse funding base, the importance of sustainability, the importance of defining effective outcomes – these were not just concepts you learn in a workshop.  They really do apply and help you grow your organization.  There were no masters of public administration or nonprofit management programs available so I had to learn by the doing of it.

All the things we (nonprofit leaders) get grumpy about – evaluation, outcomes measurements – are extremely important.  It’s a fair trade-off.  If we’re going to the public for support through the legislature, a foundation, or a community fund drive, we have to be able to demonstrate our value.

What are the most important qualities of leadership?

• Passion for what you do.
• Authenticity – “To be rather than to seem” (N.C. State motto).  Doing what you say you’re doing. 
  
• Staying with something.  Be in it for the long haul.  We’ve outlasted some of our harshest critics.  Longevity builds trust.
• Be a giver in the community – in your church, with other community groups, political involvement, whatever.  We can’t always be askers.  Our challenge is that we can get whiny about nonprofit work, saying it’s hard, the pay isn’t good, “I gave at the office.”  But we need to give back in various ways including outside our jobs.
  

What do you consider to be some of your  successes as a leader?
 
I am so fortunate to have talented employees. I’ve worked hard to pay people well in order to retain folks.  We spend a lot on staff education and training.  These are corporate values in our organization.  (WCCJ now has 20 employees, including part and full time.)

Making the case with the legislature – that our treatment programs are more effective and less costly than prison.  That produced a recurring, direct appropriation from the legislature, which is our funding sustainability.  We built a relationship with our legislative delegation and learned how to communicate our case to them. 

Staying ahead of the curve – in the restorative justice field and in nonprofit organization management.  We have had three different nationally funded outcome evaluations that identified challenges we needed to address and also gave us the empirical evidence that our strategy was working. 

How do you stay motivated and get rejuvenated as a leader?

I love where I live.  I’m deeply enriched by my family.  I’m rejuvenated by the talented people I work with – they inspire me.  When I walk across our front porch (at WCCJ’s building) I see 10 to 12 women, all of whom I could have seen at the women’s prisons in Black Mountain and Raleigh.  We’ve figured out a way to give them something that’s much more helpful and restorative than jail time.  I absolutely love that.  I get rejuvenated by the immense courage of our clients, and their making progress against the odds.  I know that it is much harder being a client of our agency than being director…