The Hive Collective Podcast: Shifting Power in Nonprofits · Beth Ellen Holimon

Building Shared Values and Collective Governance with Sumona Majumdar

·45 min·4 clips

Shimona Majumdar explains how the pandemic forced her to rethink power and governance at Earth Island Institute.

The structure changes first. Sumona describes moving away from a concentrated decision pattern into six circles, each with three people. Eighteen people now participate. Before that, at most five decision-makers covered those areas, with plenty of overlap. Beth slows down on the human part. How does it feel for a CEO with an attorney background to stop sitting inside every circle? Sumona does not frame it as a loss of control. She says she felt excitement, because she knew her colleagues and trusted their skills, knowledge, dedication, and care for the organization. Then comes the catch. A facilitator warned that the new governance practice could add roughly ten to twenty percent more workload while people were still learning it. That is where the conversation gets useful. Sumona names the anxiety around staff well-being, growth, and newer staff still getting oriented. Shared governance is treated as something people have to carry, not a poster over the same hierarchy. Near the close, Sumona also refuses to make the change sound like one leader's win and points back to the team. The episode works best as a patient look at authority, responsibility, and trust moving outward without pretending capacity solves itself.

As heard by us

A grounded look at shared decision-making, centered on workload, trust, and sustainability.

Earth Island Institute comes across as an organization trying to make shared decision-making workable, not just aspirational. Staff-led circles are kept to three people, and Shimona Majumdar now sits in only one, which helps show the shape of the change.

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Why you'd press play

See how a nonprofit shifted decision-making to staff without losing the room.

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