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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

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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?

I’ve seen too much that can go wrong:

• An overbearing, micro-managing board chair can make a CEO absolutely miserable, driving many a CEO out of his or her organization.
• It’s too tempting for a Board chair to make decisions when asked by the CEO that are rightly those for the full board’s deliberation.
• There is something about the elevation of the position that enables a board chair, when asked by the CEO, to offer advice on issues that he or she isn’t really sufficiently qualified to answer.
• Executive directors can skillfully use their relationships with board chairs to bypass consultation with the full board.
• Board chairs are too willing to set the priorities for the Executive Director, instead of consulting with the full board on where it would like the focus to be.
• Executive directors can avoid responsibility for tough management decisions, passing them off to the board chair to make.

It’s hard to get strong board member engagement when important issues come to the board already decided. Or even worse, when the board is kept in the dark on important issues — only to unearth them at a later date.

In my board playbook, the full board and only the full board is the boss of the executive director. But then I’m a big advocate of many aspects of John Carver’s policy governance ® model where the board instructs the CEO only through the creation of policies that outline priorities and frame management decision boundaries.

I believe that we would have much stronger boards if the board chair spent more of her or his time mentoring and engaging the other board members rather than focusing all of his or her attention on the relationship with the CEO. And vice versa… rather than expending so much energy on the board chair, a CEO’s time would be better spent building relationships with and enabling other board members.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t reasons for a strong partnership between the board chair and the executive director. Often board chairs will team up with the CEO for community or government relations, or donor cultivation and solicitation. CEOs should consult with their chair when they aren’t sure whether an action or decision falls within their prerogative or if it is one that needs full board consultation.

I’ve heard board chairs say that they have a good mentoring relationship with their CEOs. While I don’t doubt that is true in some cases, I wonder if that is a good thing or not. I’d much rather see a CEO assemble his or her own kitchen cabinet or find an experienced colleague to serve as the mentor than to invest that responsibility with the board chair. Besides, I happen to think that we’ve made the job of the board chair so impossibly big that few want to take it, and that this practice is one of the primary reasons for that.

But that’s what I think. How about you?

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. We barely train them or engage them. Too many board members are never sure of what they should be doing – especially if they’ve never served on a board before.

2. In a quick troll through Google, you can find multiple references from for-profit employers complaining about the hard time they have finding qualified employees. So, if wages aren’t sufficient to surface quality people, how about recruiting for a job that has long hours, high responsibility and no pay!

3. Too many nonprofits wait until the last minute to look for board members. It takes months, sometimes even years, to identify, find, cultivate and qualify individuals with the skills, knowledge and passion that you want in a board member.

4. We keep going to the usual suspects and then complaining that the same people are on too many boards. How is it that those chamber members were never reached, even within the organizations where they were already volunteering? Sadly, that Urban Institute report noted that boards are overwhelmingly made up of non-Hispanic whites and individual between the ages of 35 to 65.

5. Board jobs are complex, confusing, we expect too much of too few directors and we provide little support. I don’t know about you, but I’ve served as chair of a board or committees where I estimated that I volunteered, on average, close to 8 hours a week. Granted, those were organizations I loved and I took on a leadership position where lots of change was happening. But I have lots of flexibility in my job (which is in the nonprofit sector already) and my kids are now grown. But how many individuals can give even a fraction of that kind of time?

6. As a sector, we haven’t done the best job making the case for board service – especially when most people only hear about boards when there is a local scandal or government investigation.  The survey’s author even put out a call to the sector and its supporters: “sound practices and policies must be coupled with investment in people, by helping nonprofits obtain individuals willing and able to serve…” (emphasis added)

It’s unlikely that it will ever be “easy” to recruit qualified board members – and it probably shouldn’t be. Every organization needs to take its time to find and train qualified, passionate people who care about the mission and have the knowledge and skills needed at any given time. But it certainly would be nice to have a large pool of eager and ready recruits from which to choose, wouldn’t it?

* I went with: Nonprofit boards make sure that their organizations make a real difference in the quality of life in their communities and see to it that those organizations are both worthy and trustworthy of community support. You be the judge.

P.S. If you are in the 10% that isn’t having a difficult time recruiting board members, I’d love to hear from you.

(1) That number came from research by the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy of The Urban Institute. Titled Nonprofit Governance in the United States, Findings on Performance and Accountability from the first National Representative Study, the report analyzed feedback from the chief executive officers/executive directors of over 5,100 US nonprofits of various sizes.

This post is part of a longer article you’ll find with many others in the Articles section of this website.

Your founders most likely shared powerful dreams…

They saw people who were hungry and set out to feed them.

They saw people stricken by disease and were compelled to heal them.

They were outraged by the burning river and resolved to make it clean.

They saw a community without spirit and promised it art and music.

They saw their heritage at risk and vowed to preserve it.

Imagine those founding days of your organization.

Can you picture the founders, conspiring around a kitchen table? Can you hear them talking? Passionate, outraged, inspirational? Can you see them working tirelessly, day and night, in service to their cause, despite overwhelming obstacles, hungry to make a difference?

If you polled your board members today and asked why they serve, would they echo the passion of your founding vision?

Or would they describe their purpose in more mundane terms — attending meetings, monitoring finances, raising money, creating policies, supervising the CEO?

While these routine tasks are important components of the Board’s duties, they only have value as they enable the means to achieving the greater vision.

It’s not enough to outfit and command a tight little ship. That ship has to deliver its passengers to their desired destination or you’ve failed your mission.

Ultimately, your performance as a board isn’t judged by the health of your balance sheet, or the sparkle of your facility, no matter how important these may be.

The real measure is the difference you make in the lives you save, the natural resources you protect, the beauty you create, or the spiritual comfort you provide.

Whether you describe it as a vision, a mission, or just your promise to your community, achieving that vision is what truly matters.

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Adapted from the opening chapter of Gayle’s book How Are We Doing? A 1 Hour Guide to Evaluating Your Performance as a Nonprofit Board

• A critical mass of directors, including key leadership, perceive a need for change.
• The rest of the board is willing to go along.
• Directors find an inspiring new vision to rally around.
• Directors are actively involved in and agree with the “diagnosis.”
• Directors believe that the change is possible and will make life significantly better.
• Directors are open to trying new ways of acting.
• Directors believe that the benefits of change outweigh the costs.
• Directors are willing to, and learn, the new skills needed to perform the new behaviors.
• Directors believe that they personally can do it differently.
• The Board itself supports and reinforces the change over time.
• Directors are willing to commit the time to working on the change and to changing over time.
• Directors trust each other (and the change agent).
• Directors are willing to commit resources to support new ways of behaving.

What else have you found necessary to enable major improvements in your nonprofit board of directors?

And if you are thinking about launching board development, you might want to start by assessing just how many conditions for successful change are already in place.

For more about behavioral change and organization development, check out this helpful summary of Change Theory courtesy of University of Twente, Netherlands.

These words emerged from a workshop I facilitated this morning called “boards that lead.” To get us started I asked everyone to think of a great board experience they have had and then to share one word that characterized that experience.

In just a few minutes, the 40+ board members, executive directors and staff who attended shared the words above. Together, they described the perfect board experience. What a gift.  Thank you.

I spent this morning rehearsing interview questions with a few board members and staff of one of my clients. This small nonprofit came to me looking for help building its board. In that initial discussion, it became clear to me that the organization was running a few programs but was pretty unclear as to how relevant and valuable it was to the community it had traditionally served.

Board members agreed to get out and interview about 20 community members face to face over the next month or so. As we talked about who they might interview, I was impressed by their connections within their community … and curious as to when they had stopped having ongoing conversations with all of these people.  Unfortunately, I no longer find this unusual among groups that come seeking my help.

So we practiced interviewing each other to test our questions. This helped us structure a nice flow as well as highlighting missing questions or confusing ones.

AND, even though this was just practice with each other, I think we learned a lot about the two people who were interviewed this morning… and a lot about each other’s perceptions of the community and their own organization’s role in it. Just by role playing.

But as a board member myself, I find that life’s other demands — family, work — usually come first. While I’m pretty self-motivated as a board member, I still need nudging from time to time.

Here are just a few of the things I’ve found very helpful to keep me engaged:

• Monthly updates from the Executive Director. When I was on the board of the RI Council for the Humanities, I very much valued the lovely eNewsletters board members received from the ED. They included not just insider news, but also other musings, trainings, and books or articles the ED was reading. They made me feel very connected and gave me a sense of who this person was that we had hired to run our organization.
• Assignments sent immediately after meetings. Rather than waiting for the minutes, which usually don’t get distributed until very close to the next meeting, a quick reminder from the committee chair of who committed to do what by when is very, very helpful. Thank you to committee chairs who do this.
• Team work. It helps to be assigned to projects with other colleagues. The camaraderie is appreciated and knowing that you’ve got someone else to be accountable to helps motivate quicker action.
• A thank you now and then. I don’t need gratitude for doing my formal job at board meetings, but when I’m working on a project as a leadership volunteer, it is nice to be appreciated now and then.

So just a few of the things on my list. What have you found helpful?

These tiny organizations often need to rely on their board members to serve staff functions. That’s clearly obvious for organizations that have no staff at all… but may not be so clear once you’ve hired an executive director or one or two more staff positions.

It takes a lot of human-power to make our organizations run. One or two people, while they can do a lot, can’t do everything that needs to be done to be a thriving nonprofit. It’s pretty near impossible for one person to run quality programs, raise all the revenues, reach out to the larger community, and manage the operations and finances.

Board members in small nonprofits usually need to wear two hats… the hat they wear to govern the organization and? the hat they wear to serve a staff function… that is, to take on one of the many jobs that fall under the “staff” side of the organization and get them done.? Other non-board members can also be recruited to get the work accomplished.

How do you do this? You can start by making a comprehensive list of all that you hope to achieve this year. Then break those objectives down into the tasks that are needed to get them accomplished. Think about what skills and knowledge are essential to get this work done.

Knowing what needs to happen, recruit board members (or other volunteers) with the expectation that they will produce one of those desired outcomes.

Here’s an example. My local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals runs a series of educational workshops, an annual conference on fundraising, and a huge celebration for National Philanthropy Day, among others. With just one part time administrator, the chapter relies on its board members and volunteer to get things done. When board members are recruited, they are asked at the time of recruitment to chair a committee that is charged with the responsibility of achieving one of these very large tasks. ? I myself have served as chair of the Annual Conference, the scholarship committee, and the mentoring committee (not at the same time!)

So, to make a working? board work, every board member should have a job and outcome that he or she is responsible for achieving.