I object to the assumption that equivalent sized organizations are equally difficult to run.
Compare the rate of companies that existed 5 or 50 years ago and don’t exist now vs the rate of midsized or larger charities that existed 5 or 50 years ago and don’t exist today. If they where equal you could argue running them was equally difficult. However, because utter failure is not equally likely clearly it’s not equally difficult.
You can use other metrics like the rate CEO’s are replaced and they also show it’s just a much easier job.
So, if the org is more likely to survive and you’re not as likely to be fired that’s clearly an obvious threshold for success at the job. Unless you’re going to suggest only more capable people run charities or something.
PS: I then tried to suggest why this was the case, but that’s not central to the argument.
I don't think they are exactly equivalent. It's certainly not true that all 1000 person orgs are equally difficult to run (regardless of sector). I didn't claim that.
However, I do think there is an aspect of complexity that is inherent in scaling and reach which is just unavoidable. If you operate in multiple countries/jurisdictions. If you have multiple locations & plants. If you have distinct branches with different goals. If you operate in multiple languages. etc. etc. These things are inherent complexities, and as you get bigger, they are harder to manage well.
I see what you are getting at, but I don't think failure rate is a particularly useful comparison, for two reasons. (1) (as noted before) charities can survive mismanagement for longer, typically. (2) Lots of organizations have a sort of "useful lifetime", not everything is going to become a multigenerational organization, and that's fine. I would argue that due to types of mission, charities skew longer here (e.g. the work is often unlikely to ever go away) than corporations.
Fundamentally what I was objecting to was the idea that charities are somehow inherently easy to run, so they should do fine with people who either aren't skilled or are incredibly self-sacrificing (you'll mostly find the former). That's just crazy to me.
So I don't think anything you've brought up invalidates what I said; it just points out an orthogonal problem - that it is harder to evaluate "good management" in the context of charities. Not that it wasn't already hard to evaluate.
Compare the rate of companies that existed 5 or 50 years ago and don’t exist now vs the rate of midsized or larger charities that existed 5 or 50 years ago and don’t exist today. If they where equal you could argue running them was equally difficult. However, because utter failure is not equally likely clearly it’s not equally difficult.
You can use other metrics like the rate CEO’s are replaced and they also show it’s just a much easier job.
So, if the org is more likely to survive and you’re not as likely to be fired that’s clearly an obvious threshold for success at the job. Unless you’re going to suggest only more capable people run charities or something.
PS: I then tried to suggest why this was the case, but that’s not central to the argument.