“The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’ “

Since then, the gap between the rich and poor has only widened in the US.

The rich and poor rarely live in the same neighborhoods anymore.   Heck, the well-off don’t even need to mingle with the less fortunate or use public services if they don’t desire, with private schools, private beach clubs and swimming pools, private country clubs, gated communities and isolated vacation enclaves.

So, if you are an affluent individual who never sees the poor or has no need to associate with the less-well-off, and if you are relatively immune from the cutback in government services, how do you come to understand the desperate lives most people live each day?

I worry about the impact of this social isolation on philanthropy.

Yes, as the sheer numbers of the affluent continue to grow, charitable giving grows. But where does the money go? What institutions, serving what classes of people, benefit from this giving?

If we are most influenced by the people we hang out with, and the wealthy don’t know the poor, and the poor don’t have access to the wealthy, will we continue to see great stratification in resources among the nonprofits that serve the less-well-off and those that serve the poor?

At the AFP Massachusetts Chapter conference last November, I listed to a panel of development directors from prestigious private universities and medical institutes share details of their billion dollar growth campaigns. They noted they were aided by close to 200 fundraising staff.

As I listened, I couldn’t help thinking about the homeless outreach program and food pantry I consulted with, that, with just about 3 staff members, none in development , is serving the exploding food needs of individuals and families in my city. In just over a year, they went from serving 250 people a month to over 6,300, half of whom are children.  Their total income? According to their 2010 990 it was $176,848.

Obviously, not all of those with great wealth have turned a blind eye to the poor — the Gates come to mind. But as a profession, we need to be at the leading edge of a sector wide dialogue about how to help the isolated affluent discover and fund the other extraordinary and deserving nonprofit institutions — those that serve another segment of people who also deserve great education, great art, food on the table and a place to call home.

We owe this to our neighbors. And to the legacy of Dr. King.

“In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

***************************************************************************

TO:                 Board of Directors

FROM:           Gayle L. Gifford, Chair

RE:                  Board Meeting

Thank you to A…  for graciously sharing his home for what promises to be a delectable board meeting.

The meeting postprandial will be a lively humanities conversation with our special guest, Christopher Lydon, former host of WBUR’s The Connection and Radio Open Source, now live from the Watson Institute at Brown U. Chris is very eager to learn more about our Council and connect with board members. Personally, I can’t wait to pump him for his vast experience in “curating [humanities] conversations” over the airwaves and now in cyberspace.

Of course, before we can get to Chris and refreshments, we’ve got a board meeting to devour.

• Our main course is a discussion, feedback and approval of the goals and programming direction for FY 2008 which RKA, our Executive Director, will be presenting followed by approval of a working budget for FY 2008 that reflects those priorities and outcomes. (Alas, it remains a working budget until Congress finalizes the budget).
• Side dishes include a proposed bylaws change on the residency requirement for Board members and feedback from the Governance Committee on Board self-assessments.
• Of course, no meeting would be complete without THE CONSENT AGENDA which includes the thoughtful recommendation of grant awards from the Grants Committee, receipt of staff and board committee reports, and final approval of the FY 2008 Board & Board Committee Objectives.

Please arrive so that we can start on time (no excuses, we are back in Providence!) and preserve ample time to savor the planned conversations.

Bon Appétit

**********************************************************************************************************************

Okay, so the memo may be a little cutesy.

But the reason I wanted to share this with you is that I think it is good practice for the board chair to frame the upcoming meeting for the board. This memo was sent out in advance along with the packet of materials for that upcoming meeting.

My memo also illustrates some of the practices that make for a better board meeting:

• Use of the consent agenda to quickly dispose of noncontroversial items, items where the authority for action has been delegated to a committee, or items discussed at a previous meeting that just need a final vote. Of course, any member can ask that an item be taken off the consent agenda for a more complete discussion.
• Most of the meeting spent on a few substantive issues.
• A conversation with someone really interesting from outside the organization but very relevant to the mission.
• And what you can’t see in the memo,  good food and social time.

And a few practices that make for a better board and organization:

• Clarity on goals and objectives for the coming year
• A budget that reflects those priorities
• Intentional board practice, including deployment of a governance committee, board self-evaluation, and learning from that feedback.

What does your board meeting look like?

So what does a Treasurer do?

It’s pretty common practice for the Treasurer to chair the Finance Committee and present a report of the financial condition at the Board meeting, usually taking the statements that have already been prepared by the staff financial officer and reporting them to the Board. Treasurers tend to focus on the issues that matter to them most. For some, that’s cash position or year-to-date to budget. For others, it’s how the organization is doing compared to last year. Sometimes corrective action is recommended.

While monitoring the financial condition is a basic role, I have higher aspirations for the ideal  Board Treasurer. I see this individual as the facilitator of a financial brain trust within the Board (through the Finance Committee) that can help the organization think very strategically about the relationship of mission to money, both short and long term.

So here are a few items I’d like to add to the Treasurer’s job description:

• facilitate strategic thinking within the Board about short- and long-term financial vitality
• develop financial literacy among all the directors
• establish a dashboard or set of key performance indicators that tells the Board at a glance how the organization is doing on critical measures (after facilitating a discussion with the Board on what those critical measures are)
• regularly report to the Board on that dashboard

Along with these basic duties:

• ensure prudent asset management in accordance with financial objectives and Board-approved policy
• ensure that staff implement strong internal controls
• oversee development of and monitor compliance with Board-approved financial policies
• chair the Finance Committee and ensure that it achieves annual goals and objectives
• ensure that staff properly receive and give receipts for all moneys due and payable and deposit all moneys in the name of the organization in authorized financial institutions

What’s in your Treasurer’s job description? I’d love to have you share.

Related posts:

Three things your Vice President could do

You’re not the boss of me – Board Chairs and CEOs

What are you waiting for?

You owe it to your new ED and to your organization to complete this review ASAP.

As a Board, this interim evaluation can answer the questions that should be on your mind about this new hire:

• What impact has this Executive Director had in their first months in office?
• How well has the ED fulfilled our expectations at this point in time? (Caveat: How clearly were those communicated to the ED at the time he/she was hired?)
• How is this Executive Director perceived among key stakeholders outside of our organization? Inside of our organization?
• Have we established the ideal relationship between the Board and the Executive Director? What do we need to do to create that?
• Is this an Executive Director we want to keep? If yes, what can we do to ensure that happens? If not, what are our next steps?

Your new ED is likely hungry for formal feedback. A well-constructed review also provides an opportunity for your new ED to answer some questions of his or her own:

• Is this job all that I expected? Is it a position that I want to continue serving in?
• What does the Board appreciate about my performance to date? My staff? Other constituents?
• Are there areas for improvement in my performance?
• What is working well about my relationship with the Board? Individual board members?
• What can be improved in the way we work together? How?
• What does the Board want me to accomplish in the next year? Over the next five years? How does this mesh with what I’d like to accomplish?
• What do I need from the Board to succeed in this position?

You’ll find a sample review process in our free Toolbox.

While you can’t avoid every risk or foresee everything that could go wrong, you can take a thoughtful approach to planning for risks that could imaginably happen — and some of  the one you couldn’t imagine .

A handy resource is The Nonprofit Risk Management Center, which has a free newsletter published three times a year, a library of free articles and other tools you can purchase.

According to the Center, you can start preparing for risk by 1) completing an inventory of what might go wrong, 2) planning for how you’ll prevent or respond to that potential harm and finally 3) safeguarding your organization from financial ruin in the event something bad still happens.

The Center groups the risks you should inventory into four categories:

1. People
2. Property
3. Income
4. Goodwill

Your insurance company, the Nonprofit Risk Management Center, and even professional associations like the Public Relations Society of America can be instrumental in helping you figure out what to worry about (as if we don’t have enough worries already) and how to implement adequate safeguards.

You can get started by taking the short tutorial on the Center’s website.

Last week‘s news brought us two cases of embezzlement from nonprofit coffers. The first was the theft of $1 million over eight years by the controller of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. The theft was noticed by a super vigilant bank employee who questioned the signature on a check. (Note to bank —give that employee a big thank you from all of us. Note to store checkout clerk—could you maybe look at the signatures on credit cards now and then.)

In the other incident, the board chair of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce was implicated in misappropriating $2.3 million in funds from the Albert Ellis Institute, of which he was the President and Director of Administration.

How could this happen, you might be asking yourself?

To quote from an editorial in the Hartford Courant:

“The [Mark Twain House] case presents a hard-earned lesson for the Twain House and other nonprofits. It isn’t the kid driving the van who embezzles from a company; it’s almost always a trusted, well-placed employee. “

Both cases should make you jump now to evaluate the effectiveness of the internal controls at your organization.

While it’s not always possible to prevent theft from occurring, you can create controls that limit the damage and increase the chance of early detection — not the year or more in the two cases mentioned above.

The United Way of Central New Mexico has a free online Internal  Controls Tool Kit to get you started.

- Richard Chait et al in Governance as Leadership

If your board is like many in the US, July and August might be time for a scheduled break from board meetings. Maneuvering around vacation schedules so the board can still make quorum seems a futile exercise, so many boards just skip meeting in these summer months (in other parts of the world, your break may be at another time on the calendar).

But this is a good time to ask, how often does our board really need to meet?

In many organizations a monthly schedule is sacrosanct. Why?

A common rationale I’ve heard for keeping to a monthly schedule is that board members will be less engaged in the organization if they don’t show up each month. But I wonder if too many of us are unwisely using the board meeting as the only touch point with board members. (Asking directors to a meeting that isn’t a good use of their time won’t build director passion and engagement, no matter how often they meet.)

When you’ve cleared the board meeting agenda of the clutter of committee reporting, gotten adept at dashboard monitoring and instituted a consent agenda to efficiently deal with  routine, noncontroversial actions, your board may find itself  facing a very BIG question: what is the real governing work that this board has to do?

That’s when you might find that you don’t need so many board meetings after all.

A useful way to determine how many board meetings you might need is to draw up an annual board meeting plan.

First, schedule the dates of the action items that you know your board routinely needs to accomplish, e.g. electing directors and officers, holding the annual board meeting, reviewing your 990 and audit, approving your annual budget, discussing your Executive Director’s annual workplan or performance review, or approving the annual board workplan.

Then consider what other big items the board needs to tackle this year. Maybe it’s a review of the assumptions behind your strategic plan. Maybe it’s a thoughtful inquiry into those most difficult questions, like what’s the impact that we are trying to have? how will we know?

Decide at what meetings you’ll schedule these important discussions.

If you find that your board meeting schedule shrinks, that’s okay. I’ve found that meetings that have no significant governing tasks are an open invitation to board micromanaging.

Charity watchdog Wise Giving Alliance of the Better Business Bureau sets a minimum of three board meetings a year in its Charity Accountability Standards.  Some organizations may need a bylaws change to have more flexibility in board meeting scheduling.

You may find that with fewer meetings, board members will be up for a longer meeting where they can get much more accomplished or tackle bigger discussion questions.

If you are meeting much less frequently, you’ll need to be even more attentive to building that board team and keeping members informed and engaged. Some things to consider:

• Plan out social time at that longer board meeting so that members can get to know each other.
• Or consider other ways to help board members learn more about each other. Blue Avocado is promoting  the 7X7 where a board member gives a 7 minute briefing followed by no more than 7 minutes of questions.
• Develop a communications plan for keeping directors up-to-date between meetings. I’m a fan of the Executive Director’s eNewsletter to the board with quick updates on items of interest, links to important information or events.
• Craft a plan for engagement with each individual board member… what will each member do this year to advance the organization? That might include committee work, but what else? And what support will they need from staff or each other?

I’d love to hear from those of you who have trimmed back the number of board meetings. How did you solve the “engagement” question? How do you keep board members sufficiently informed between meetings?

I love participating in the day because each time I get a fresh business person’s perspective on the nonprofit sector.

This past Thursday, during a discussion about board roles and responsibilities, one of the participants asked if the following situation was typical:

“I went onto the board of a few nonprofits as part of the expectation of my job. It seems it wasn’t enough that I was attending board meetings, and bringing with me a pretty significant corporate gift and my own personal donation. In no short order, I started getting all kinds of additional requests from the staff … like attending events to requests to help open doors or solicit others. They acted like all of this was expected of me.

“I was overwhelmed by the hidden expectations of serving on a board. I had no idea what I was getting into.”

I’d say, unfortunately, that this was the norm, wouldn’t you? Obviously the organization failed to disclose to the board member when he was being recruited what they expected of him.  But even if they had, I’ll bet that he still would have received many more requests than he bargained for.

Why is it that once an individual joins a board that staff feel that the board member has made an open-ended commitment to their organization? “It’s their job to…” I hear staff say all the time.

While I love my board members to be thinking 24/7 how their daily contacts might also benefit my organization, realistically, I get it that my organization is likely 2nd or even 3rd on my directors’ priority list for their time, with family, work and maybe even play, ahead of me.

It’s time for our sector’s staff to stop acting like board members are indentured servants and remember them for the volunteers that they are. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter how much time they do put it, it’s never enough.

Take the board member who just did a full sprint on a project you gave them. I’m sure they’d like to take a deep breath before jumping into something else. If you immediately go after them for another time-consuming project, you’re very likely to make that board member feel that the time commitment is too much… and the risks of losing that board member are pretty high.

So what to do? Here’s a tip that the New Directions exec offered.

Instead of continuing throwing unexpected requests to your board members, sit down with each one and disclose the full list of  requests and tasks that you’d like that person to  take on that year. Then negotiate what your member is willing to commit to. Be realistic.

And once you’ve reached an agreement, stick to it. That way, your board member will feel successful, not overwhelmed. And you won’t be disappointed by what your board members can and cannot do.

Once this exec did that with his organization, he said that he felt much more in control, and much happier about his board service. Which is what we all wish for, right?

P.S. This board member also learned to limit his board service to no more than 2 boards at a time.

And of course, we’re here to help you right-size the expectations for your board.

Related posts:

Can mere mortals be successful board members?

Remember that your board members are volunteers too.

In many nonprofits, the vice president of the board of directors is the heir apparent, slated to move into the top leadership position when the current president’s term ends.

So why doesn’t this upcoming leader have anything to do?

The laws of most states don’t require nonprofits to even name a vice president as one of their statutorily-mandated officers.

Tradition holds that nonprofits create a vice president position so they’ll have someone ready to step in should the president be unable to complete his or her term – in the same way we have a vice president of the United States. But your bylaws could just as easily mandate another officer to fill this role.

So rather than taking a perfectly capable board member and only ask them to hold their breath waiting for the president to expire, wouldn’t it be a better use of the VP’s talents to have something worthwhile to do? Especially if part of the process of choosing a VP is to groom that person for leading the board?

Here are three ways to use your VP:

1. Chair of the strategic planning committee

When I asked my networks about experiences of using the VP for something worthwhile, I received only one response. My Chicago-based colleague, Bonnie Koenig of Going International, said she’s seen vice presidents who are charged with carrying forward strategic planning and thinking in their organizations.

What a great idea. Why not make the vice president the chair of strategic planning. Strategic planning should be an ongoing process, not just a task that rolls around every three or five years. By doing so, you can improve the chances that your board is always looking forward. The committee can be the keeper of the strategic flame, promoters of the strategic plan, and surveyors of the changing landscape. I can’t think of a better way to groom your next board chair. And you improve the changes that you’ll have a leader who really understands and can champion your way forward.

2. Chair of the board’s governance committee

I promote this role for the VP. As the governance committee is charged with ensuring a fabulous board, again, this seems like another great place to train your board’s upcoming leadership. Tasked with recruiting great candidates, making sure bylaws and committees are suitable to the work ahead, mentoring board members and holding them accountable, governance committees have a critical role in creating excellent boards.

Given that the governance committee must have already decided that the VP would be the best next president, I don’t see many downsides (as long as the governance committee members are elected by the full board).  The VP could always recuse him or herself from evaluation of officers, if needed.

3. Project manager for the executive director’s annual performance evaluation.

Too many organizations put this vital task off and never get it done. It’s a lot to put on the President’s already busy plate, but that’s where it tends to fall. So why not have the VP be in charge of managing the process.

Note, I say “project manager.” I don’t mean to imply that the VP would ever conduct an evaluation all by his or herself (nor should presidents). Pull a small board team together to work with your executive director to create a true learning experience that gathers input from many constituents. And please ensure that the full board is in agreement on expectations, performance and next year’s objectives.

So stop wasting such a valuable resource. Find something for your VP to do.

P.S. I’d love to hear other ways you’ve put your vice president to good use. Please share any personal experience you’ve had with new roles for the VP.

“If you are really stuck, you can ask people who know people to help you brainstorm (more about that in a later post).”

As promised, let me say a bit more about asking for help.

It’s ideal to have your next board recruits ready-to-pick from an in-house farm team of committees volunteers, and donors. But most boards that find themselves asking for our help to build a stronger board haven’t created that team (if they had, they probably wouldn’t need our help.)

Even if you have built a farm team, it may be pretty homogeneous, lacking the rich diversity of backgrounds, ethnicity and experiences that you desire.

So, many boards can benefit from recruiting members beyond their inner circle. Here’s an example of how one organization went about it.

I’m working with a neighborhood scale organization that through a series of circumstances, has a board of just a few members. With very few paid staff, this organization needs a true working board willing to take on a number of projects itself. So it is interested in recruiting board members and also volunteers to roll up their sleeves and take on some very practical assignments.

Once we clarified the work ahead, we developed ideal candidate profiles and translated those into  a “Call for Board members.” Knowing who we were looking for helped us think about who we wanted to ask for help.

Who we invited.

We brainstormed a list of everything that we could think of, whether we knew them or not, who might know someone who had the qualifications that we were looking for. We made sure that this list reflected the diversity of perspectives we were looking for.

We included the clergy or social action committee chairs of local houses of worship.  We included particularly active past board members, volunteers or donors. We added the names of program partners, local elected officials, the nearby colleges, the neighborhood association, PTOs, local businesses, neighbors, and even friends of board members.

By the time we were done, we had a list of 20-30 people to ask for help.

How did this list differ from people we might have considered candidates for the board? Some of them might be great board candidates. But we knew many were already committed to other organizations. But that’s why we knew they could be helpful… because they were active and knew people we didn’t know.

Instead of a big commitment, we hoped they could give us an hour of their time.

How it worked.

Most were invited to a brainstorming session but a few we put aside to talk to in person (e.g. elected officials). Board members divvied up the names and sent out invites through email, by phone, or even a more formal letter (the method depended on how well the current board knew each person). Each person received a one page backgrounder on the organization and the call for nominations.

About 15 people came to help! We had food and beverages, gave them a quick tour of the facilities, and then the Executive Director and Board Chair gave them more background on why we were looking and who we were looking for.

We handed out a nominations sheet, asked them to list people they thought would fit our categories and why. And of course, we asked them to let us know whether they would be willing to help us contact any of the people they recommended (most did). We gave them the option of recommending people for the board or even a committee assignment.

This group was so eager to help out that we must have received 100 names that night. One of the helpers even contacted by text  a person she was recommending while we were sitting there and got a quick response back that this person would be very interested in hearing about the board. (The committee is right on it).

Another helper volunteered herself, even though we truly weren’t trying to put people on the spot or ask them to be board members. Both nominees fit our profile perfectly!

Not only did we get names, but we also received many new leads for volunteers and inkind services. And we introduced a dozen new people to the organization who didn’t know much about it before.

Other options

Some organizations choose to do this process in two steps: 1) bring a group together to explain what they are looking for, then after giving them a week or so to think and maybe even put out a few feelers, to 2) bring the group back together to offer names and vet candidates together.

Some organizations put outside people on their nominations committee to achieve the same purpose.

Next steps

Don’t forget to send out thank you notes right away, letting people know how grateful you are for their help and that you’ll be following up with them.

A week later, we gathered together to look through all the recommendations. One of the board members volunteered to put all the prospective candidates into a spreadsheet by name, background, who referred them, any contact information that we had, and more columns for follow up.

The board identified about 5 or 6 priority candidates to talk to right away.

But every name is important. So each board member agreed to call a person who came to our brainstorming session to thank them again and to get a little more background information about each person they suggested. (And any contact information they might have).

Then the Board members will get together again to make a short list of candidates for this board cycle. And to connect with other recommended people for volunteer needs for for future committee work (once the chairs are recruited).

One thing that I’ve found to be true over and over again: many people are willing to help, if you just ask them.

Here are a few related posts:

Recruiting board members? Make a list

Six Roadblocks to Board Recruiting

Helping Working Boards Work Better, Here’s a Start