Char Mollison

Char Mollison has over 35 years of experience leading, managing and advising nonprofit organizations. She been a member of the adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University since 2005 and was named Senior Fellow of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies in 2018. She is also Senior Fellow at the Center for Nonprofit Management, Philanthropy and Policy and a member of the Affiliated Faculty at George Mason University. She teaches courses in nonprofit management, philanthropy, executive leadership, ethics, governance, and international NGO management and policy. She has held senior positions at the Council on Foundations, an association of grantmakers, and at Independent Sector, a coalition of US-based nonprofits and philanthropies.

She began her career at a national women’s rights organization called WEAL. As a consultant, she has advised staff executives and boards of many nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad, including Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America, China, Africa, Central Asia, and Bangladesh. Recent advising includes the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, Citizens Climate Lobby, and the Public Leadership Education Network. In 1994, she was appointed a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on the subject of nongovernmental organizations and civil society. She serves on the boards of the Wise Giving Alliance of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which sets accountability standards for nonprofit organizations; CAF America, part of a global network of the UK-based Charities Aid Foundation which manages the international grantmaking of corporate, foundation and individual donors; and Palisades Village, a neighborhood-based nonprofit to help older people stay in their own homes as long as possible. She was a founding board member of Partners of Tanzania’s Relief and Development, a nonprofit that supports programs in some of the poorest, rural areas in Tanzania. An opera and baseball fanatic, she gives talks about opera to other fanatics and follows the minutia of the Washington Nationals baseball team.