commentary – Lele Muthali

Faith, Leadership, and Service: The Moral Compass for Navigating Complexity in Social Impact

Leadership in social impact work is tested not only by regulations and strategy but by moral and relational complexity.

Faith-based principles, particularly those emphasizing service, can guide leaders through crises. Robert Greenleaf’s concept of “servant leadership” asserts that authority emerges from nurturing, protecting, and empowering others rather than from positional power.

In practice, a leader navigating a contested board decision may face pressure to prioritise ego or personal alliances. By applying a servant-leadership lens, they focus on safeguarding staff, maintaining community trust, and aligning decisions with organisational purpose. Scripture reinforces this ethos: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). This principle translates into everyday governance: listening actively, mediating disputes fairly, and prioritising mission over personal gain.

Examples abound in nonprofit management. During funding shortfalls, a servant leader may choose to protect staff salaries rather than discretionary perks. In programme design, they may incorporate community voices into decision-making processes. These choices demonstrate that ethical leadership is not abstract; it is manifested in concrete acts that uphold dignity, trust, and sustainability.

Learning: Complexity is inevitable in social impact work. Leaders guided by service, humility, and ethical conviction can navigate turbulence without compromising purpose, strengthening both organisational resilience and community well-being.

-Lele

Governance Is More Than Structures: Fiduciary Duty, Leadership Clarity, and the Heart of Accountability

Good governance is often mistaken for compliance — ticking boxes on legal requirements or producing documentation for audits.

Yet effective governance is a lived practice, grounded in fiduciary responsibility, clarity, and relational trust. South African law codifies these duties in Section 76 of the Companies Act, requiring directors to act with care, skill, diligence, and good faith. But most governance failures arise not from ignorance of the law but from poor execution: ambiguous roles, opaque decision-making, and interpersonal conflict.

Consider a nonprofit addressing water and sanitation in informal settlements. If board authority overlaps with management responsibilities, staff may receive conflicting instructions. Donors may hesitate to fund initiatives, and beneficiaries may experience service gaps. Comparative research shows that the strongest organisations adopt hybrid accountability models — combining legal compliance with relational trust, transparency, and inclusion. These models ensure that legal frameworks are applied in ways that are adaptive, responsive, and mission-aligned.

Practical strategies are instructive:

Clear charters and role definitions delineate responsibilities, preventing confusion between boards and management.
Communication protocols and regular reporting embed transparency into daily operations.
Board training on fiduciary duties ensures directors understand not just legal obligations but ethical stewardship.
Feedback mechanisms from staff and stakeholders provide continuous insight into operational realities.

An analogy clarifies this further: governance is like an orchestra. Legal structures provide the score, but trust, coordination, and leadership create harmony. If musicians (staff) are ignored or instructions are unclear, the music falters, regardless of how well the score is written.

Learning: Governance is not self-perpetuating; it must be earned and practised continually. Organisations that actively cultivate transparency, humility, and inclusion ensure that legal structures translate into meaningful accountability and impact.

-Lele

Nina Manzi and the Power of Collective Assets: Safeguarding Community-Based Achievement

Community development often risks being defined by deficits — what a community lacks rather than what it already possesses.

Nina Manzi NPC challenges this narrative, exemplifying the transformative potential of asset-based community development. By identifying and leveraging community strengths, residents, artists, and stakeholders co-create sustainable projects rooted in dignity, resilience, and shared purpose.

Yet this approach raises important questions: How can collective achievements be protected from internal conflict? How can marginalised voices meaningfully participate in governance? South African nonprofit law recognises directors registered with the CIPC as the only legally empowered representatives of an NPC. Excluding them from decisions can render actions invalid, as seen in Lynn & Main Inc v Naidoo (2006). But legality alone is insufficient. True stewardship requires inclusivity, particularly of voices that are often marginalised — such as those experiencing homelessness, women in informal settlements, or youth groups — in membership structures or advisory boards.

Practical examples illustrate this principle. Imagine a Nina Manzi-led community arts festival. While a core board oversees budgeting, programming, and artist selection, incorporating input from participating artists and local residents ensures the festival reflects the community’s priorities. Conflicts among leaders — whether personal, ideological, or generational — must not eclipse the shared gains. Governance tools such as charters, dispute-resolution mechanisms, and transparent reporting protect both organisational legitimacy and communal trust.

Internationally, parallels exist. In Brazil, community-driven cultural initiatives in favelas succeed when residents, artists, and NGOs co-manage spaces, demonstrating that shared ownership leads to long-term sustainability. Conversely, initiatives that ignore local voices often fail, despite substantial funding.

Takeaway: Community assets are fragile yet invaluable. Protecting them requires inclusive governance, transparent leadership, and shared stewardship. Only by embedding these principles can organisations like Nina Manzi ensure that collective achievements empower the very communities they serve.

Safeguarding Community-Based Achievements

Nina Manzi NPC exemplifies the transformative potential of asset-based community development. This approach focuses on leveraging community strengths rather than highlighting deficits. When residents, artists, and stakeholders collaborate, they co-create sustainable projects rooted in dignity and resilience.

Legally, South African nonprofit law recognises directors registered with the CIPC as the only empowered representatives of an NPC. Excluding these directors from governance decisions can render actions invalid, as illustrated in Lynn & Main Inc v Naidoo (2006). Beyond legality, governance must reflect inclusivity. For Nina Manzi, this could mean incorporating marginalised voices, such as those experiencing homelessness, into membership structures or advisory boards.

Practical examples abound. Imagine a community arts festival led by Nina Manzi. Decisions about budgeting, programming, and artist selection are informed by a core board but also incorporate feedback from participating artists and community members. This co-creation ensures relevance, accountability, and shared ownership. Conflicts among leaders — whether personal or ideological — must not overshadow collective gains. Tools such as charters, clear dispute-resolution processes, and transparent reporting protect both organisational legitimacy and communal trust.

Learning: Community assets are fragile and invaluable. Protecting them through inclusive governance and shared stewardship preserves achievements while empowering the very communities they serve.

-Lele

Trust, and Human Dignity: Employment Clarity as the Bedrock of Ethical Impact Work

In the social impact sector, passion is abundant. People join nonprofits, community initiatives, and development programmes not for wealth or status, but because they believe in something larger than themselves.

Yet passion, while powerful, is not enough. Goodwill cannot pay rent, sustain families, or shield staff from exploitation. To build organisations that truly serve communities, we must also build workplaces rooted in clarity, fairness, and security. At the heart of this is something often treated as administrative red tape: the employment contract.

Contracts are not just paperwork. They are instruments of dignity. They affirm to staff: you are recognised, your contributions matter, and we are committed to treating you fairly. When contracts are absent, the result is not just legal vulnerability for organisations — it is erosion of trust and dignity for employees.

The Legal Foundation: More Than Compliance

South African law is unambiguous about this duty. The Labour Relations Act (LRA) safeguards against unfair dismissal and retrenchment, requiring consultation, fair selection, and severance (Section 189). The Basic Conditions of Employment Act sets out minimum standards such as working hours, leave, and remuneration. Courts have repeatedly reinforced the principle that even without formal contracts, the existence of an employment relationship creates enforceable rights. In McInnes v Technikon Natal (2000), the court held that oral assurances and conduct could establish a binding employment relationship.

This legal framework reflects a deeper ethical truth: when organisations fail to provide written contracts, they fail to protect both staff and themselves. They leave workers uncertain of their rights and expose themselves to reputational and financial risk.

But the question goes beyond legality. What does it mean for an organisation to claim it upholds dignity and justice in communities if it cannot uphold the same principles for its staff?

When Clarity Is Missing: Real-World Consequences

Imagine a nonprofit employing community health workers during a vaccination drive in KwaZulu-Natal. Staff work long hours in unpredictable environments, often dealing with distressed families. Without formal contracts, confusion abounds: Who is responsible for transport costs? How much overtime counts as payable? What happens if a worker is injured? The absence of clarity creates fertile ground for frustration. Workers feel undervalued, supervisors struggle with inconsistent expectations, and morale dips. Ultimately, the campaign’s effectiveness is compromised.

This is not unique to South Africa. In Kenya, thousands of community health volunteers — who form the backbone of rural health services — went on strike in 2017, protesting years of unpaid stipends and lack of contracts. The disruption left entire regions without frontline health services. What began as a labour rights issue became a public health crisis.

Closer to home, South African NGOs have faced similar disputes. In some cases, staff retrenchments without proper consultation or severance sparked grievances that damaged the organisation’s reputation among donors and the public. These examples underline a critical principle: when staff are treated as expendable, communities eventually pay the price.

The Transformative Power of Contracts

The solution, however, is surprisingly straightforward. A simple, well-drafted contract can transform the workplace environment. Contracts should outline:

Roles and responsibilities — What exactly is expected of the employee?
Hours and remuneration — When and how will they be compensated?
Leave and benefits — What entitlements exist, and how can they be accessed?
Grievance procedures — Where can staff turn if issues arise?

Take the same vaccination campaign. With contracts in place, staff know they will be reimbursed for transport, receive protective equipment, and be supported in case of illness. Supervisors can manage performance fairly, based on agreed responsibilities. Donors, too, see the organisation as credible and professional. A document that might have been dismissed as administrative suddenly becomes a foundation for trust, accountability, and dignity.

An analogy may help here: contracts are to organisations what seatbelts are to cars. Many drivers believe they will never crash, but without seatbelts the risk of injury skyrockets. Contracts, like seatbelts, may seem unnecessary when everything runs smoothly — but when crises emerge, they prove indispensable.

Beyond Contracts: Building a Culture of Respect

While contracts are essential, they are only one part of the solution. Ethical employment requires a broader culture of clarity and respect. Practical measures include:

Clear onboarding processes that familiarise staff with rights, policies, and expectations.
Regular performance dialogues that create space for feedback, recognition, and growth.
Transparent communication channels where staff can raise issues without fear of retaliation.
Training for managers on labour rights and conflict resolution, reducing the risk of misunderstandings escalating into disputes.

Some organisations go further, embedding staff dignity into governance. For example, the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa built strong internal democratic structures, ensuring that members and staff had a voice in shaping strategy. This not only protected employment relationships but also aligned the organisation’s internal culture with its external mission.

The Bigger Picture: Integrity in Impact Work

Employment clarity is not a bureaucratic chore. It is a litmus test of integrity. If a nonprofit preaches justice, fairness, or dignity but fails to treat its staff with the same values, its message rings hollow. Communities are perceptive; they notice when organisations fail their own people. Funders, too, increasingly demand evidence of sound employment practices as part of due diligence.

Social impact cannot thrive on goodwill alone. Contracts are part of the infrastructure of trust. They create stability for staff, reduce organisational risk, and build credibility with partners. Most importantly, they affirm the humanity of those who dedicate their energy to social change.

The heart of social impact work lies in dignity — not only the dignity we aim to restore in communities, but the dignity we must uphold within our organisations. Written contracts, far from being administrative burdens, are powerful tools of recognition and trust. They protect employees, strengthen organisations, and safeguard the integrity of the sector itself.

The real question is not whether organisations can afford to issue contracts. It is whether they can afford not to.

Learning: Social impact requires more than good intentions. Contracts protect dignity, enable trust, and ensure that organisations can serve our communities with integrity.

-Lele

The Invisible Weight of Implementation: Why Ground-Level Voices Must Shape Organisational Decisions

In the world of development and social impact, strategy and implementation often feel like parallel universes.

Policies, frameworks, and budgets are produced in boardrooms, while in communities the realities of daily life unfold — complex, messy, and often resistant to neat solutions. The paradox is striking: those most responsible for making strategies succeed — programme staff, community liaisons, field managers — are frequently excluded from the very decisions that determine their success.

This disconnect is not just an ethical oversight. It has legal, operational, and human consequences. The South African Companies Act, for instance, requires directors to exercise care, skill, and diligence. But what does diligence mean if not engaging with the people closest to the work? In Fisher v Langeberg Municipality (2006), the court held that decisions made without consulting affected stakeholders can be challenged. The law echoes what practitioners already know: governance without implementation voices is governance half-done.

The Distance Between Strategy and Reality

Take, for example, a first-of-its-kind WASH enterprise development programme in South Africa. The executive may design a curriculum aligned with international standards and arrange for business training. On paper, it is impeccable. Yet when field staff attempt to roll it out, they encounter problems: language barrier with international facilitators, participants’ unreliable access to virtual resources, the effect of climate and agricultural cycles on WASH, or workshop materials mismatched with local context. The programme stumbles not because the strategy lacked logic, but because it lacked lived insight.

This is not unique to WASH or enterprise development. In education, and health, similar stories repeat. A well-funded water project in the Eastern Cape once installed boreholes in villages but neglected to consult women — those primarily responsible for collecting water. The pumps were placed far from daily routes, reducing usage and frustrating the very community they sought to help. By contrast, in Bangladesh, BRAC’s community health programmes thrived precisely because they embedded local women as “shasthya shebikas” (health volunteers), ensuring strategies adapted continuously to ground realities.

What emerges is a clear lesson: implementation teams are not simply executors of strategy — they are knowledge bearers. To ignore them is to build plans on sand.

The Legal and Ethical Dimensions

South African governance law implicitly acknowledges this reality. Section 76 of the Companies Act holds directors personally liable for reckless or negligent decisions. But can a decision truly be “informed” without operational consultation? Case law suggests not.

Globally, this principle is mirrored. In India, the Supreme Court struck down policies that excluded local panchayat councils from development planning, recognising the constitutional principle of subsidiarity — that decisions should be taken as close as possible to those affected. In Kenya, the 2010 Constitution explicitly requires public participation in local governance, embedding the same ethos into law. These legal frameworks reinforce a universal truth: excluding ground-level voices is not just impractical; it is often unlawful.

Practical Encounters: When Voices Are Ignored

Humanitarian Aid in Haiti (2010): Following the earthquake, international NGOs deployed massive resources but failed to adequately consult local communities. Shelters were built in locations vulnerable to flooding, and food distribution bypassed local networks, undermining trust. Studies later showed that programmes with the highest impact were those run by grassroots organisations who knew the terrain.
South African School Nutrition Programme: Designed to provide meals to vulnerable learners, it initially stumbled because delivery schedules clashed with school timetables and local supplier capacity was underestimated. It was only after consultation with school principals and kitchen staff that the programme stabilised.
HIV/AIDS Response in Uganda: International funders once insisted on abstinence-focused programming. Local health workers, however, observed that such programmes ignored cultural realities and did not reduce infection rates. When local NGOs pushed for comprehensive sex education and community-driven messaging, outcomes improved dramatically.

These examples raise a critical question: Why do organisations continue to repeat this pattern of exclusion when evidence consistently shows the costs?

From Compliance to Culture: Embedding Ground-Level Voices

Solutions do exist, and they extend beyond compliance. Legal frameworks provide the baseline, but culture determines practice. Organisations can move towards inclusivity by institutionalising mechanisms that bring field perspectives into governance.

Regular consultation sessions: Programme staff should feed into board discussions quarterly, not as guests but as essential stakeholders.
Participatory decision-making: Communities themselves can be involved through advisory councils or membership models. For instance, Shack Dwellers International integrates residents into governance, making them co-architects of housing solutions.
Rotational board immersion: Imagine if every director spent one week per year shadowing field staff. The insights gained could recalibrate priorities in profound ways.
Feedback loops: Implementation challenges should not remain buried in reports. Dashboards or town-hall meetings can make them visible to leadership in real time.

An apt analogy here is that of an orchestra. A conductor (the board) may hold the score, but without the musicians (field staff), the music cannot exist. And crucially, the musicians often have practical insight into acoustics, timing, and expression that the conductor cannot perceive from the podium. A symphony only works when both are in conversation.

Towards Sustainable Development Practice

Excluding ground-level voices not only undermines programme success but also corrodes organisational trust and credibility. Staff who feel unheard are less motivated; communities treated as passive recipients disengage. On the other hand, inclusive decision-making fosters commitment, innovation, and sustainability.

Development success, then, is not about perfect strategies but about adaptable systems that integrate lived realities. Boards must ask themselves:

Who is missing from this decision?
What might implementation staff or community members see that we cannot?
How do we embed their insight not as an afterthought but as part of our governance DNA?

The answers to these questions could transform development work from fragile interventions to enduring change.

The invisible weight of implementation rests on those who must turn plans into practice. To exclude them from decision-making is to risk irrelevance, inefficiency, and even illegality. Strategy alone is theory; reality lives in the field. The task before us is not simply to acknowledge operational voices but to systematically embed them into governance, ensuring that organisations act with both vision and humility.

The real measure of development success is not how well strategies are written but how deeply they resonate with — and are shaped by — the people tasked with bringing them to life.

– Lele