Navigating Uncertain Times in Nonprofit Management

Published Date September 10, 2025
News Type Public Address

Glenn College graduate and Cleveland Clinic assistant director of development Hannah Zoldesy works the Bike to Cure jersey patch station for VeloSano, a fundraising movement to beat cancer.

By Joan Slattery Wall  

Faculty teaching nonprofit management at the Glenn College give students a realistic approach to the sector’s challenges — including ethics, artificial intelligence, politics, funding and ambiguity — and then give them the tools and confidence to find solutions.

“A comprehensive education in nonprofit work is essential,” said Hannah Zoldesy, a Glenn College graduate who was hired immediately post-degree in a development position to seek major donors at the Cleveland Clinic, where she is now assistant director of development. “Even if you want to do the most specific role, you need to know what’s going on around you. Nonprofit work is a team sport.” 

Lisa Mann, associate chair of philanthropy at Cleveland Clinic, said Zoldesy’s optimism and desire to work hard convinced her that she could handle the demanding first year in a major gift officer role.

Nonprofit Curriculum for Students and Professionals

Learn more about the Glenn College’s new graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management as well as the graduate Minor in Nonprofit Management and undergraduate Minor in Nonprofit Management.

“You can’t always control how much experience you do or do not have, but you can control how you show up,” Mann said. “From the time Hannah submitted her application throughout every interview and follow-up, Hannah demonstrated that she could both listen and guide a conversation. I was confident that Hannah would approach meetings with donors with the same professionalism she showed in her interviews. A first meeting with a potential donor and a job interview aren’t all that different: You need to build trust, make a case, ask hard questions and agree on next steps.”

Zoldesy said multiple factors in her Glenn College degrees — she earned a BA in Public Management, Leadership and Policy and a Master of Public Administration — prepared her for her career. 

For one, she appreciated the realistic view of the field that faculty such as Associate Professor Erynn Beaton instilled in her. 

“What was unique about her class is that it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. She went into the heart of the problems in the nonprofit sector,” Zoldesy said. “She made us see why we wanted to be part of the group that helped to solve those really complex issues.” 

Beaton strives to teach students how to be entrepreneurial and use independent and critical thinking in preparation of addressing the growing unpredictability and ambiguity in the field.  

“It’s more like working in a small business,” said Beaton, whose degrees in business helped her navigate her career in the nonprofit field and study management as a way to understand nonprofits.  

Students need to be able to think for themselves, investigate an issue and make their own judgments.

Erynn Beaton
Associate Professor

Zoldesy said she also benefited from the field experiences of faculty and instructors who enabled her to see the connection between curriculum and practice. 

That experience provides insight for teaching, research and keeping a pulse on what the sector needs in graduates’ skills. Beaton, for example, sits on the Ohio Attorney General’s Charitable Advisory Council, informing the attorney general about issues that affect the nonprofit sector and advising on state regulations. At the request of the attorney general’s office, she worked with students to provide reports on how the pandemic impacted Ohio nonprofits.  

In addition, in partnership with the Association of Fundraising Professionals, she and Associate Professor Megan LePere-Schloop issued a report addressing sexual harassment in the profession that included findings from a study of the fundraising workplace and a set of resources for taking action. 

Practitioners who have been in the field want to know what the research says about the nonprofit sector. 

Erynn Beaton
Associate Professor

LePere-Schloop, who has received the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university’s highest teaching honor, said her work in nonprofits made her recognize patterns of challenges across the sector and led her to pursue solutions through a career in research and academia.  

Among her research and teaching emphases: AI governance, internal organization dynamics, trauma and burnout, and justice philanthropy. 

“Our faculty are really willing to grapple with not only ways to make these organizations function as efficiently as possible but also how we can be critically thinking about their work,” LePere-Schloop said. “By that I mean not only valuing the work the nonprofit sector does produce but also recognizing that just because you have a good intention, that’s not necessarily what happens in reality.” 

Glenn College lecturer Erin Scott conducts a walkthrough for a professional development event she produced for The Columbus Foundation.

Lecturer Erin Scott, a Glenn College graduate who is director of capacity building and community knowledge at The Columbus Foundation, leverages her nearly 20 years of experience to teach courses related to financial management for nonprofit CEOs and governance and board management, but her favorite is the undergraduate course, Introduction to Nonprofits. 

“The course content has evolved over the last 10 years, and some of the most intriguing and challenging conversations I’ve ever had have been within those four walls with our Ohio State students,” she said. 

Students need to be prepared, she said, to help nonprofits reckoning with new operations and financial models and trying to generate and predict new forms of revenue due to federal funding cuts. 

“In the classroom, I emphasize the importance of understanding budgeting and not being intimidated by finance. Students from all socioeconomic backgrounds sit in our classrooms, and for some, this proximity to understanding money and wealth is new and overwhelming,” Scott said.  

I try to empower students and remind them that they are in the room for a reason, and they have just as much of a right and responsibility to manage multimillion-dollar budgets as anyone else.

Erin Scott
Glenn College lecturer

Zoldesy said the college also offered opportunities to gain practical experience herself: She had internships with the Ohio Environmental Council and Ohio Animal Advocates and completed projects in which she helped Contemporary Theatre of Ohio develop a fundraising plan and worked on volunteer recruitment and philanthropy with Community Refugee & Immigration Services.

“What I loved about the Glenn College is they put you in the field. You’re talking with the people who you might be working with in the future or who know the people you might be working with in the future,” Zoldesy said, adding that those experiences and her education have inspired her to be a resource for current Glenn College students. “I think that’s something that not many programs can offer.”

Nonprofit Management Faculty at the Glenn College

Glenn College nonprofit management faculty include (from left) Associate Professor Megan LePere-Schloop, Associate Professor Erynn Beaton, Professor Brian Mittendorf, Professor Stephanie Moulton, Assistant Professor Long Tran and Assistant Professor—Provost’s Fellow Greg Wilson. (Credit: Majesti Brown)

Associate Professor Erynn Beaton 
Beaton studies the ways in which the nonprofit sector and its organizations combat, reflect and sometimes reproduce structural inequalities. Her research builds organizational theory by holding up nonprofits and the nonprofit sector for critical inspection. An editorial board member for the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, she received the journal’s Best Reviewer Award in 2024. She is an appointed member of the Ohio Attorney General’s Charitable Advisory Council, providing guidance about issues impacting the state’s nonprofit sector.  

 

Associate Professor Megan LePere-Schloop 
LePere-Schloop’s research, using both computational and qualitative methods, contributes to the fields of public affairs and organization studies. Her solo and team research on nonprofit organizational fields explores how United Ways and community foundations respond to environmental challenges including demographic shifts and evolving fundraising and managerial norms. She serves in elected positions as ARNOVA’s executive committee chair of the Data and Analytics Section and as Best Article Award chair of the Academy of Management’s Public and Nonprofit Division. In 2020, she received the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.  

 

Professor Brian Mittendorf, H.P. Wolfe Chair in Accounting 
Mittendorf specializes in nonprofit accounting, managerial accounting and the role of accounting in supply chain management and teaches courses on financial statements for nonprofit and governmental organizations at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Management Science and the RAND Journal of Economics, and serves in editorial board roles for Management Science and Production and Operations Management.  

 

Professor Stephanie Moulton, Associate Dean for Faculty and Research 
Moulton’s areas of expertise include housing and consumer finance, policy implementation and management, and program evaluation. She works directly with government and nonprofit organizations to evaluate and improve public policies and programs. Moulton is currently co-editor for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Prior to her academic career, Moulton worked in the nonprofit sector, designing and managing housing and community development programs at the local and state levels. 

 

Assistant Professor Long Tran 
Tran conducts research on public and nonprofit management, especially questions pertaining to organizational collaboration or individual citizen engagement. He is the committee chair for ARNOVA 2025’s Global Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Research Award. Outside academia, he has had pro-bono research and consulting experience at many local nonprofits and international development organizations, including BoardSource, Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development, German Agency for International Cooperation, Humane Society of Grand Bahama, OtterCares Foundation, United Nations Development Programme, U.S. Agency for International Development’s International Development Innovation Network and the Vietnam Society. 

 

Assistant Professor—Provost’s Fellow Greg Wilson 
Wilson’s research examines how and why the nonprofit sector, itself, is racialized and how this system impacts the work of nonprofits led by people of color, particularly those led by African Americans. His teaching interests are in nonprofit organizations, management and leadership, race and inequality, mixed and qualitative methods, and technical communication. In addition to research and teaching, outside of the Glenn College, Wilson is a courtesy faculty member with Ohio State’s Department of Sociology and a Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also consults for nonprofits on leadership and philanthropic strategy. 

 

Read the latest edition of Public Address, the Glenn College magazine.