GOOD NEWS: 5 Questions for Boards of Directors
Good News: An enewsletter for donors and nonprofits
on strategic planning, governance, fundraising, and executive leadership.
“Addressing these questions will promote creating highly functioning boards which is the #1 issue facing many nonprofits.”
5 Questions for Boards of Directors
Have you been thinking about what makes a productive board of directors, especially when it comes to making progress on strategic planning, hiring and retaining an exceptional chief executive, fundraising, and creating board and institutional diversity?
In April, I joined two colleagues to lead a workshop at the National Partnership for Educational Access annual conference. The session was entitled: Where is the Reckoning? Connecting the Dots of Governance, Fundraising, and Executive Leadership. Our discussion with chief executives, trustees, and other leaders, focused on how change has been slow to nonexistent among many of those who pledged to do better since the murder of George Floyd nearly two years ago.
The group determined that governance was a key explanation for an unrealized reckoning in the nonprofit and funding worlds. Many boards of directors have been slow to respond or dismissive of calls for institutional and cultural change. Over the years I have counseled boards and served as a board member myself. I've come to the conclusion that a board's record on diversity, equity, and inclusion is an indicator of how effective their organization is with strategic thinking writ large, fundraising, executive leadership, and hiring.
There are many more to consider but here I offer the following five questions when assessing the strength and productivity of a board:
1. Who is in the board room? Scan the room for age, gender, racial, professional, geographical, and stakeholder diversity. A room full of people who look the same and share the same life experiences and careers is a sign that change is needed. As the saying goes, “If you are not at the table you are on the menu.”
2. Are terms defined? Too many people serve on a board for too long. Staggered and limited terms encourage active membership and intentional board recruiting dynamics. Even the best board members should not serve indefinitely. It's not productive or fair to the person and organization.
3. Is the job defined? Written board member job descriptions should establish clear expectations such as making an annual, personally meaningful, financial gift to the organization that they support. This should not be confused with so-called “give and get” requirements which generally impede effective board creation. Other documents such as board handbooks, committee member job descriptions, and self-evaluations should exist and be regularly referenced.
4. What is the calendar? Most boards should gather for quarterly to 7-10 meetings/year, have a definite beginning and end time, agendas and committee reports sent in advance, and meeting minutes sent after each meeting. Board committees are active, empowered, include non board members, have a specific charge, and serve as mini boards and proving grounds for prospective board members.
5. Is there transparency, pride, and joy in the boardroom? Budgets and other key organizational information should be widely circulated and easily accessed by members. Members should promote their board membership passionately among their family, friends, work circles, on LinkedIn, and through other social media profiles.
It is a challenge to build a representative and productive board because good people are not easily found and are in demand. Often overlooked is that many of our institutional and cultural habits compound the challenge of building a highly functioning board and therefore organization. Addressing these questions will promote creating highly functioning boards which is the #1 issue facing many nonprofits.
Please check out the links below for more on governance and board development ideas.
Stuff Steve Is Watching, Listening To, and Reading
Stuff Steve Is Watching, Listening To, and Reading
Shut Up and Listen (16 minutes)
"I decided when I was 27 years old to only respond to people, and I invented a system called Enterprise Facilitation, where you never initiate anything, you never motivate anybody, but you become a servant of the local passion, the servant of local people, who have a dream. So what you do - you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas, and you sit with the local people. We don't work from offices. We meet at the local cafe. We meet at the pub. We have zero infrastructure. And what we do, we become friends, and we find out what that person wants to do. The most important thing is passion. And then we help them go and find the knowledge, because nobody in the world can succeed alone. Why don't we for once, instead of arriving in the community to tell people what to do, why don't we for once listen to them?"
https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen/transcript?language=en
Play With An Infinite Game Mindset (46 minutes)
"An infinite minded player embraces uncertainty, likes surprises because they understand that their business can be transformed, and they view all of that as an opportunity rather than something to be feared. What I've learned is when we play in an infinite game with a finite mindset, there's a few very consistent things that happen, consistent and predictable. There is a decline of trust, decline of cooperation, and decline of innovation, all of which are necessary for us to survive and thrive for a very long time. And if you think about it, business is an infinite game."
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-play-an-infinite-game-with-simon-sinek/id435836905?i=1000448344652
Governance and the NFL (45 minutes)
"In certain critical ways, the NFL is racially segregated and is managed much like a plantation. Its 32 owners - none of whom are Black - profit substantially from the labor of NFL players, 70% of whom are Black. The owners watch the games from atop NFL stadiums in their luxury boxes, while their majority-Black workforce puts their bodies on the line every Sunday, taking vicious hits and suffering debilitating injuries to their bodies and their brains while the NFL and its owners reap billions of dollars."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/02/us/brian-flores-nfl-lawsuit.html
