In an earlier blog post Abolish the nonprofit Board? What do you think? I told the story of a social entrepreneur who, in starting a new public charity, decided to forgo standard wisdom and ditched his board.
He couldn’t really eliminate the board entirely — most states require board members in order to have a nonprofit corporation. To meet the requirement, he invited two friends to make up a three person board, including himself.
Why did he do this? Because he found as CEO of a previous nonprofit that the board was an incredible time sink for his attention. And that the board seemed satisfied with the status quo (quality programs delivered to a small cohort of needy kids) rather than demanding bolder action to meet what was such a bigger need.
Many of you commented, sympathizing with his plight yet worrying both about the long-term sustainability of the organization as well as the oversight to donors.
I promised I’d weigh in after giving you an opportunity to comment.
I agree with him on two accounts:
Boards can be a real drag on Executive Director time.
Boards are often timid and unclear on what value they create.
And where I disagree:
Boards protect the public’s interests
Nonprofit ownership belongs in the community, not one person.
Last Thursday I was part of one of the most provocative discussions I’ve been in for awhile.
The CEO of a year old start up public charity — I’d say he fit the description of a “social entrepreneur” — was describing his leadership and management framework to a group of top level corporate types. He was confident, brash, passionate about his mission, and business oriented. He referenced Jim Collins and Good to Great in his approach.
The business people loved him. Me too… until…
He explained how in starting this new organization he had learned many lessons from the previous organization he had founded (which had enjoyed both great program outcomes and growth).
Like the need for a clear business model
The importance of having great people in their jobs
A commitment to the mission, including not settling for too small an impact on a big problem
All good, and then..
Getting rid of unproductive time sinks, including the Board of Directors.
Whoa! Like throwing a firebomb into the room.
Hearing the collective gasp, he went on to explain. At the first organization he had founded, he spent 30% or more of his time managing the Board of Directors. A board that was complacent with the number of kids they were serving, which was barely a drop in the bucket of need.
So, this time around, he wasn’t going to waste precious time when there was important work to be done. Though he really couldn’t really abolish the Board (state law does require a board of directors for a nonprofit, usually with more than one trustee), he could make it small and manageable. Which he did by composing the board with two good friends and himself.
I noted that this is all perfectly legal. And frequently done. Think of the typical founder board, usually a family and friend affair.
Needless to say, lots of questions followed:
Don’t you need the Board to assist in fundraising? No, the business model is built on federal funds.
Who decides Executive Compensation? How do you ensure that you don’t get in trouble with the IRS over excess compensation? We do an regular market survey of salaries, I get paid under the top, and I recuse myself from the discussion and vote.
How do you build community ownership? Get contrary advice? We have an advisory board of community leaders and others.
Why didn’t you just create a for profit organization? Because this is the corporate structure I’m most familiar with and to leave open the possibility for philanthropy, even though the business model doesn’t currently depend on it.
What happens if something happens to you? That is a question, but my guess is that the board will find someone to replace me. Plus, as we grow, there will be staff under me who could step into my shoes.
I had lot of thoughts about this. But before I share them, I’d love to hear from you.
Last week I found myself in a very interesting conversation about the “profession” of fundraising.
A colleague was sharing ideas from a workshop she attended. The presenter had described a common situation that many directors of development experience.
You know the one. The development director has just laid out a carefully crafted strategy based on best practices and research. Immediately a board member or other leadership volunteer challenges the elements of the plan.
I’ve found that this scenario is very common when planning events or personal solicitation campaigns.
Usually, the challenge reflects the anxiety of the volunteer at being asked to step outside of his or her comfort zone. The volunteer/board member, fearful of the task ahead, comes up with dozens of reasons why the carefully developed strategy won’t work. Why, another organization he volunteered at just sent out a glossy letter instead of asking him to make phone calls.
So my colleague noted that the workshop presenter made the case that fundraising is a profession. One of the ways to tell a true profession is whether or not it has a body of knowledge that is “unique and specific to its practice and function.” (AFP). She made the case that fundraising does in fact have an established and growing body of knowledge.
The presenter then described a few scenarios of other professions with established bodies of knowledge where it would be unimaginable to find the amateur telling the professional how to do that job. Here are two that came to mind:
Could you imagine a board member telling the chief of surgery at a nonprofit hospital a better way to perform an upcoming operation?
Or a committee chair telling the head coach at an independent school a better way to train his basketball players? (Well, maybe you could imagine that, but you get the picture.)
So why do board members feel they can tell fundraising “professionals” how to do their job?
But here was my counterpoint.
Before we get a little self-righteous about all that profession stuff, maybe we need to look into the mirror.
Perhaps our board members don’t treat us as the professionals we are because we act like amateurs can do our jobs.
Case in point:
Why do development directors and executive directors act like their board members rose from the primordial ooze as trained fundraisers?
I find way too much agony and even anger in this profession at board members about fundraising. I’ve written about this time and again (see Banishing your expectation of board fundraising). How, if we believe that fund development is a profession, can we expect good-hearted people with no fund development background to spontaneously do our jobs for us?
We can’t both complain that we aren’t respected for the professionals we are and then simultaneously gripe and moan when the amateurs on our boards don’t act like professional fundraisers.
Find the willing, equip them with compelling cases for support, train them, and hold their hands all the way through the process. In essence, put those professional skills to work.
In one minute or less, explain to a complete stranger what a nonprofit board does.
Now make it sound interesting enough that they’d want to serve on it.
A few years ago I came upon a report on nonprofit governance with the following statistic:
90% of nonprofits find it ‘somewhat difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to find qualified board members (1)
In the last sentences of the report, the author made this observation:
“Additional research is needed to better understand the barriers to obtaining board members.”
I might be going way out on a limb here , but here are six based on my own experiences.
Six barriers to recruiting board members for nonprofits
1. We don’t have great “word of mouth” working for us on the rewards of board service, mainly because most board members don’t experience any. Instead of engaging board members in the exciting, strategic work of community change making, we stick them in meetings where they fuss over ministrivia or get reported at. Read More >>
I just heard another sad tale today of a nonprofit that ended up in a financial pickle that almost ended its vital community programs.
Apparently the executive director took on a grant obligation which required a big match and the board took the exec’s word that the money was there to back up the obligation.
While it is the rare day that I find myself quoting Ronald Reagan, here goes: “Trust but Verify.”
The relationship between a Board and its CEO would be pretty broken if there weren’t high degrees of trust both ways. Yet for a Board to be truly exercising its fiduciary role, it can’t always rely on the word of its staff. It’s a sorry thing to have to say that, but even the most trustworthy person may find his or herself (or a family member) in a situation that they believe merits directly bending the truth or using silence to avoid disclosing a problem.
There was absolutely no personal gain in this case and nothing illegal. But how many times have you read a newspaper story about the loyal employee, the one that everyone trusts implicitly, who turned out to have been embezzling money all those years. (Often to support gambling addictions – we’ve had too many of those in our state). And think “that can’t happen to us.”
Instead, think about how that might happen to you and take some preventive action.
In their PolicyGovernance (R) model, John & Miriam Carver suggest three ways that Boards can monitor the situation at their organization:
1. Ask for a report from staff
2. Engage someone from outside the organization to conduct a review (e.g. your auditor), or
3. Inspect it yourself.
Every Board needs to make sure that they are judiciously using ways 2 & 3 in addition to relying on staff reports. It’s a heck of a lot wiser to trust, when you’ve got the independent verification that everything is hunky dory.
If your organization is all-volunteer or has one or two staff, then board members, in addition to governing, also fill staff roles. These boards are usually described as “working” boards.
Working boards are often quite successful organizing direct service program activities and finding volunteers to staff them – after all, it is enthusiasm for the cause that stokes the passion of their volunteers. It’s not terribly hard to recruit volunteers to cut trail, recruit speakers or serve meals.
But raise money? Get out the newsletter? Serve as the IT department? Process the mail? Who wants to volunteer for those jobs?
A tough challenge for all-volunteer nonprofits is to find people to do the work that isn’t seen as fun. That’s why in most large organizations, these are the jobs staff are paid to do (and even paid staff moan about the difficulty of getting volunteers to participate in fundraising).
Here are five tips to help all volunteer boards accomplish important administrative and fundraising tasks.
1. Assign each board member and each committee a concrete goal to achieve.
You’ve got real work to accomplish — money to raise, memberships to renew, programs to deliver.
So don’t hand over fuzzy assignments to people or committees. If you need the fundraising committee to raise $25,000, make that their assignment. If you’ve got five open slots on the board, make sure that the nominations committee is given the task of finding five excellent new board members.
In working boards, never recruit board members “at-large.” Instead, recruit every board member for a purpose and give them an assignment… and by that I mean a significant outcome they are responsible for delivering.
2. Stop dumping everything on the board president… and conversely, board presidents please ask for help.
Too frequently, all of the critical jobs in an all volunteer organization default to the board president. Because we ask our presidents to be super humans, they don’t have the time to define volunteer jobs, find recruits or structure committee assignments. So they find it easier to “do it myself.’ How often have you heard that said! (I’ve even said it)
So, I find that a board governance committee is a great asset even in an all volunteer organization. Think of that committee as the board’s human resource department. Share with them the responsibility of building a great board… and great committee volunteers.
3. Make volunteer jobs manageable.
The “other-duties-as-assigned” catch-all is okay if you paying staff. But it’s virtually impossible to recruit unpaid volunteers to such open ended assignments.
Here’s an example. If you are chairing a conference committee, recruit an able team and split up the work. Make one person responsible for recruiting the speakers, someone else responsible for booking the facilities, another person for day-of logistics. I’ll bet that after two or three organizing meetings, your committee won’t even need to meet face-to-face. You can hold phone or email meetings to check in that everyone is on track.
4. Recruit volunteers who have technical expertise, high standards of personal responsibility and can manage themselves.
All-volunteer boards can’t afford too many volunteers who need a lot of handholding. That’s not to say that you don’t need to train new people to get them off to a good start (which is where committees come in) but make sure that the most important outcomes go to people you know will get the job done. It is okay to set high expectations and not to settle for any warm body.
5. Don’t assume that administrative, finance and fundraising tasks are never fun.
One of our problems in finding recruits is that we start out with the idea that these are loathsome tasks. And we recruit with that idea in mind.
But lots of people make a living — one they even enjoy — doing these jobs. Some are unique to nonprofits but others may be comparable to the for-profit sector. You’ll just need to train your volunteers in the special cultural and legal requirements of nonprofits.
6. Oh yes, have fun. And please thank your volunteers.
No one wants to keep coming back to an organization that doesn’t appreciate their help. Or where every task feels like a terrible burden. Make sure to take the time to socialize, celebrate and acknowledge the great work that you are doing.
There are volunteers are out there for you.
You just have to find them and give them something important to do.
P.S. You don’t have to put every volunteer on your board. Some people are very willing to do complex and time consuming tasks only if you don’t ask them to be on the board.
For the last week, every time I leave my house I step out to a front yard radiant with spring bulbs and flowers. A few years ago we ripped out the sad looking front lawn and replaced it with raised beds filled with summer perennials, spring bulbs and ground covers.
While I love all of my flowers, I think I love the spring bulbs most of all.
Last fall, as the flowers were fading and the temperatures falling, I dug the holes, dropped in the bulbs, a little organic bone meal, a little water, and waited for spring.
I plant the bulbs knowing that it will take months before I’ll reap the rewards. Yet I do it anyway, craving their beauty and anticipating their arrival throughout the coldest and snowiest months of winter.
And voila! here they are. First the crocuses, then the tulips and daffodils to take their place. I’m rarely disappointed (having learned to select varieties that the squirrels won’t eat).
Monday I was facilitating a planning meeting with some board members and staff of a nonprofit that I worked with on board development the previous year. Before our work together, the board was tired and ineffectively turning in circles.
We began our work together in in the fall, right around bulb planting time. In June, we elected five new community members who have been an incredible addition to the board, bringing hope, energy, new friends and growing commitment.
As I arrived at the meeting Monday, I stopped to say hello to one of the staff. He looked to the room where we were meeting and smiled, reminding me of the renewal of the board.
With the extremely poor financial condition that states are experiencing and the coming wave of dramatic cutbacks in state and local funding of services delivered through nonprofits (one colleague noted close to 15 nonprofits on the financial brink in her Florida community), one would think that boards would crave new thinking around program delivery, organizational structure, partnership or cost reduction.
But a conversation yesterday brought back to me a dynamic that I’ve been observing for many years: the role of boards as conservators.
A little background.
Yesterday I made my bi-annual trek to life portfolio company New Directions to discuss life in the nonprofit sector with their clients. New Directions clients are accomplished people in business or the professions who are designing the next stage of their life journeys.
My portion of the conversation was “The rewarding and confounding world of the nonprofit sector,” which is partly nonprofit 101 and partly DEEP THOUGHTS.
A fellow “interpreter of the sector” was the Executive Director of a capacity building (smallish, $500K budget) nonprofit. He mentioned that for the last two years he had been a co-executive director, a leadership team that resulted from a merger. He mentioned that the other ED was winding up his term and he would soon be the sole ED. When I asked how the co-directorship worked for him, he shared he really liked the arrangement, but his Board just wasn’t comfortable with the shared leadership model.
Boards as Conservators
At first a bit surprised by this tale, it reminded me that many boards are naturally suited to their role as conservators.
Here I’m using conservator in its definition as someone who conserves or keeps safe. Like a custodian, guardian, or protector.
The words we use to describe board duties — like prudent, loyalty, care, fiduciary — imply moderation and caution. Another word I might use would be “conservative.”
In my experience, most Boards of Directors are loathe, and rightfully so, to take big risks. In their conservator role, boards put the breaks on reckless spending. Because boards usually reflect the mindset of the communities they serve, they often restrain choices, decisions or actions Read More >>
My colleague Cheryl DelPico of New Roots Providence floated a brilliant idea by me a few weeks ago that I’d to share with you. She was commenting on a “Meet the Funders” forum she had attended.
One of the corporate community relations managers said “The only thing nonprofits ask from us is money. We can help them in other ways as well.” The community relations manager was thinking about volunteers, or some inkind contributions or even board members.
Which got Cheryl to thinking. Yes, many corporations are eager to place their employees, especially current or up-and-coming leadership, on nonprofit boards. And that’s great.
Her concern was that often those individuals come to nonprofits with little-to-no board experience. Training them is left to the already time and resource stretched nonprofit. And with the majority of nonprofits in the US well under $1 million in annual budgets, most don’t want to invest a lot of money training volunteers who may not stick around.
What if, as is happening in some programs across the US, businesses made it their responsibility to ensure that their potential board volunteers were fully trained in the highest practices of nonprofit governance, before they were placed on a board of directors.
What would be included in that training?
Well, certainly the program would include basic fundamentals of boards, such as legal obligations of board members, the special responsibilities and privileges of tax-exempt public charities, the responsibilities of governance, etc.
But I’d also include a number of other topics in my training program, such as:
the unique financial structure of nonprofit organizations and how it affects what board members look at
an indepth look at conflict of interest
creating dashboards or key performance indicators to monitor nonprofit health and plan for the future
making community connections
establishing annual board objectives and workplans
evaluating societal outcomes, or how do you know if you are really doing any good
self-management and discipline
managing change and facilitative leadership
policy development
the ideal board meeting
I’m not talking about a two hour training program. Maybe two days.
My training would include working a few cases, attending a few board meetings and analyzing them against best practices, simulating a board meeting that includes a contentious organizational issue… practical experience.
Why would a company want to invest in a training this rigorous? Because your employees will be much more useful to the organizations they serve and because they’ll be more fulfilled in their service. Because they’ll learn some valuable skills that can spill over to their jobs and their own leadership. And because you’ll be making a very valuable contribution to the organizations your employees have chosen to support.
P.S. I’d love to hear about businesses that are already running these programs and how they work. Or other non-monetary ways that businesses can help nonprofits. For example, if your company is running a organization development or human resource based training program that isn’t specific to technical expertise in your line of business (e.g. team development, project management, implications of new labor laws), why not hold a few slots for some of the nonprofits you support and invite them to your training.
, but here are six based on my own experiences.
