I spent an hour on the phone this morning with Dave Hillis the relatively new President of Leadership Foundations. I was first introduced to LF many years ago through Reid Carpenter – a genuine cowboy and former Young Life leader.  As everyone says semi-seriously “If you were in Urban Young Life you moved to Leadership Foundations when you got older.  If you were in regular Young Life you moved to the Fellowship.” There is probably a good deal of truth in that. 
Anyway, for years the Leadership Foundations were local city initiatives with a wide variety of missions that often started with hosting prayer breakfasts and working with city leadership, pastors and ministries. Always a little vague and definitely varied in their approach from city to city, it was hard to pin down what exactly they were accomplishing and how they measured their results. Several years ago they created an association with a central office and wanted to establish a bit of uniformity (bad word) for the movement and figure out ways to set some standards regarding the work around the country and the world. It’s been a transition in many ways and there has been a leadership transition from Reid to Dave. 
Succession is always a challenge but it sounds like they have addressed it well without killing the founder or the founder killing the organization. As you know that happens all too often. They’ve done some rigorous work in defining which local LFs are in the development stage and which are established.  In other words it sounds like they have moved from the highly entrepreneurial stage to the managed stage.  If you want to know more contact Dave at (253)272-0771 or dhillis@leadershipfoundations.org.