When an executive comes from the private sector to a nonprofit, the usual understanding is that he or she is there to inject some business discipline. When I arrived at the American Red Cross, there were certainly problems to be tackled. The books were closed on FY08 just six days after I started, with a $209 million operating deficit. The organization had been running deficits for some years, borrowing just to provide working capital, and we were more than $600 million in debt. Frankly, we were not very good at fundraising. Yes, we had a terrific brand—the second best-known in the world—but even that needed refreshing.
A version of this article appeared in the March 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review.