Tagged recruitment
Board recruitment brainstorming – a sample invite letter
In Recruiting Board Members? Ask for Help, I described how one small nonprofit held a gathering to ask members of their community for help in thinking up names of possible board members. As I was cleaning out their folder for filing, I spied the invite letter our recruitment team prepared.
Throw away your old board recruitment matrix
We have learned much about board recruitment since then, but these outdated matrices have not been updated to match. Here are four key reasons the old matrix format is critically flawed.
Recruiting board members? Ask 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 advice, now would they.) Or, 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 benefit from recruiting members beyond their inner circle.
Six roadblocks to board recruiting
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.
A belief in good things to come
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.
Like the bulbs of spring.