Can mere mortals be successful board members?
Posted by Gayle Gifford on July 11, 2008
I’ve been thinking a lot about our expectations of volunteer board members and at times I do have to wonder if any mere mortal is up to the task.
We expect board members to:
- Give us time, lots of it. (Most nonprofits want attendance at a monthly board meeting, a monthly committee meeting, and whatever out-of-meeting time it takes to achieve the tasks a board member has been assigned.)
- To develop an in depth understanding of the technical issues facing this particular organization
- To understand the nonprofit’s financial structure AND to read complex (and sometimes incomprehensible) financial statements
- To understand the laws and regulations governing public charities
- To be strategic thinkers and prescient forecasters
- To connect us with community resources
- To advocate for our organization
- To attend our special events
- To attend events that others are holding to represent our organization
- To know and support staff
- To evaluate the Executive Director
- To schmooze donors
- To ask donors for gifts (and we usually want those to be large)
- To be masters of group process
- To show leadership and to speak up
- To lead others
- To understand complex parliamentary procedures such as Robert’s Rules of Order
- To expose themselves to some legal risk
- To be responsible for the futures of real people, whether clients or staff
- To hold each other accountable
That’s my quick list for a Friday afternoon. What have I forgotten?
glg
Tags: nonprofit boards, nonprofit governance, Volunteering
This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Better Boards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Peter A. Mello Says:
Not just mere mortals, they have to be leaders.