“Do you really need a Board or does having one just lead to more chaos…?”

A few months back, this loaded question was asked of the Nonprofit Professionals Group on LinkedIn, and a robust discussion followed.

My favorite answer, though, came from colleague John McClusky.

“…we, the public, “entrust” the “trustees,” the predominantly volunteer body named “the “board,” to serve as our agent to ensure that the NPO actually pursues the socially beneficial purpose (mission) it claims to fulfill and acts in a fundamentally responsible way with the charitable donations and tax exemptions we grant it…”

In other words, the Board of Directors is entrusted with the responsibility to make sure that the mission is fulfilled.

For years, I have been telling boards that their job is to ensure that the mission of the organization can be fulfilled now, and in the future. It lays the groundwork for the board’s role in ensuring that the resources necessary for this fulfillment – financial, intellectual, capital, social, vision –  are available to the organization.

But I’d never really looked at the other side of the role. When we serve on boards, we are not only serving our own nonprofit organization, we are also serving society. We, the Directors and Trustees, are the eyes and ears of society, are responsible for making sure that the dollars which society entrusts to us are used wisely and to fulfill the intent which we proclaim. Our donors give us their wealth; our government is giving up tax dollars to us.

As directors and trustees, we serve our nonprofit. But we are also trustees of society, and as such, responsible for upholding our end of the bargain.

Being on a board is an awesome responsibility. Let me know if you’d like to talk about instilling this vision of a board’s role throughout your work.

Better be nasty first, before someone else is nasty to you.

Ever notice how that seems to be the attitude of so many people?  It’s an attitude that exudes arrogance, because it asks the world to earn respect, instead of automatically endowing each person with dignity.

On the other hand, my mother, of blessed memory, always treated people with respect until they lost it, and more often than not, they lived up to her expectations. Never one to be in the spotlight, she earned no honors or awards but she had a smile and a welcome for each new person. 29 years ago, the throng at her funeral testified to just how many people she had touched with this attitude.

In the nonprofit world, you are far more likely to encounter people like my mother than the nasty folks of the first paragraph. But if that’s the case, why is there acrimony when board members, volunteers and staff professionals disagree? If the nonprofit world is filled with people who have the best interests of their organizations at heart, why is it sometimes hard to maintain a cordial discourse?

Maybe, although we profess that each party has good intentions, our actions belie that belief.

Let’s take, for example, a house of worship.

The people on the board of trustees, or vestry, or similar body, are volunteering their time to make this house of worship a healthy, vibrant place for all people who wish to participate. But sometimes, when there is a disagreement on the board, personalities are brought into the discussion, old grudges are revived and arguments become heated. Nastiness occasionally ensues. Trustees storm out. Rumors are spread. Email diatribes fly.

Yet each party to the disagreement probably began by arguing from a position of faith, and love of the organization; each wants the church, mosque, or synagogue to be the best it can be. How much more cordial the discussion would be if each party stepped back, acknowledged that they all want the organization to succeed, and then acted as if they truly believed it.

The disagreement is not who loves the congregation more – it’s about how best to improve it.  The next time a disagreement starts – and there WILL be disagreements – step back and reinforce this. Elevate the conversation. Place the issue at hand in front of the board, and remind all the parties to presume that each comes to the table in good faith.

I am not a Pollyanna. I will not deny that there are people who are regularly nasty or are just plain bad guys. But you can’t convince me that the majority of the world would not want to see it improve.

Presume good will.

If you’d like to find out more about how to elevate the conversation in board meetings, get in touch with me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.  Let’s see if there are techniques for making the meetings more productive, by focusing on why you’re all there in the first place…because you ALL want to achieve your mission.

Wow. He sure nailed it on the head. If you’ve ever come into an organization and tried to change its course, you know just how right he was. Change is hard, change is risky, and change is resisted.

And even when people claim to be willing to change, almost to a person, they will tell you that their peers will resist it.

In February, Julia Kirby wrote an analysis of the downfall of a change agent. As I read her blog on Harvard Business Review, most of her analysis boils down to arrogance. Coming in as a white knight that will rescue a situation, creating an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ mentality, presuming that everyone agrees that change is necessary – any one of these will create resentment in an organization. Doing all of them is sure to make change even harder.

An organization is made of people who have invested time and their lives in building something good. To be told that it has to change implies that they have wasted their time, or that what they have built is not good.

Instead, engaging every level in the organization in making the already good even better creates a team more willing to work on change. And change is important, to keep up with society, and to ensure that you’re delivering your mission in the best way possible.

It’s not a panacea – change IS hard – but a willing attitude goes a long way toward making those difficult transitions easier to take. Instead of imposing change, inspire the team to aspire to greatness. Change will follow.

When good intentions get derailed.

I’m on the board of a nonprofit contemplating a new initiative, and it’s been taking us a long time to come to a conclusion. When the chair said, “Thanks, Gina, for nudging us back on track,”  I remembered something that nonprofit administrators sometimes forget.

Boards of Directors have other lives.

Executive Directors eat, sleep, breathe, LIVE the mission. Most boards don’t.

That’s not to say they don’t care. Not at all. They care very deeply! That’s why they are filled with regret when they realize that they’re not living up to their own expectations of what they hope to accomplish during their terms. The Executive Director may be frustrated with them for not following through, but you can bet that most of them are also frustrated with their own lack of progress.

I once worked with a Board President who was dynamite at raising money – when he made his calls. He was completely committed to making those calls When he was at the board meeting, he had no other mission except to make those calls. But he didn’t make the calls.

Something else came up to distract him, and as committed as he was to the mission, the immediate task took precedence, pushing those fundraising calls down the list.

So what’s the solution?

Well, in the case of the board president, we set appointments for him and the Executive to meet in the same room and make the calls. Once it was on his calendar, it became concrete, not just an item on a to-do list.

We figured out what the problem was, what was keeping him from fulfilling his own self-identified commitments, and figured out how to overcome those obstacles.  With this as an example, the Executive Director learned to view each board member as an individual. Each had his or her own external pressures and obstacles, and each had ways in which they worked well. The Executive Director had to spend some time considering how to help each stay on track.

Time consuming? A bit. But so much more productive than fuming, “can’t they see that this is important?!”

And in the case of the nonprofit that opened this post? We set concrete dates and commitments for our next meeting.

What keeps your board members from accomplishing their work? What else is on their minds? How can these obstacles be overcome? If you’d like to hash this out, let me know!

If it ain’t broke, find a better way.

Usually, I hear if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  At nonprofits, it’s usually used to defend the status quo – we’ve never had term limits, our mission is still as important as ever, the materials in our literacy classes have always worked, we always read our committee reports out loud, Jimmy’s always handled our books, the 5K is our biggest fundraiser!

The problem is, if we only fixed what’s broken, we’d never have the automobile, the telephone, the radio, the iPod, the space shuttle. Heck, if we only fixed what’s broken, we might never have invented the sewing machine! Each of these improvements weren’t fixing something that was broken, they happened because someone said there had to be a better way.

It’s the same thing with delivering our missions. Our programs have been working just fine, thank you very much. Why should we change? The answer isn’t change for the sake of change. The answer is change to do it better. To have a greater impact. To use our resources more wisely.

That’s why strong, effective nonprofits regularly evaluate their programs and measure their effectiveness. It’s not to fulfill funder requirements, although that is a nice benefit. It’s to see if we can learn from them, and find ways of having a greater impact.  Many nonprofits operate in the same mission space, because there is such a great need. It’s not competition if you can learn from each other, and discover the best practices for making a difference.

We evaluate our personnel all the time (or at least we know we should). Shouldn’t we be evaluating our programs?

Instead of saying, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, shouldn’t we be asking, it ain’t broke, but can we do it better?

One of the 55 standards of The Standards for Excellence: A Code of Ethics and Accountability for nonprofits calls for regular evaluation of programs. If you would like more information about the Standards, or ways to evaluate your programs, let me know. Let’s talk.

Lunching with a great colleague this week, it dawned us that we both respond well to external deadlines. We’re so bent on meeting client needs, that deadlines we set for ourselves sometimes go by the wayside.

We all do this, and nonprofit board members are no different. As we respond to the challenge…or opportunity…of the moment, we let long term goals slide. At board meetings we deal with immediate issues while our strategic plans languish with 10 minutes at the end.

The cycle continues. Each year we make plans, often repeating last years’: recruit new board members, seek best practices in hiring, expand our reach, or whatever we have identified as crucial to our growth. Yet 5 months into the year, it’s still just a plan.

I solved the problem with an accountability partner…someone who regularly asks me what I’ve done that week to further my goals. Then I commit to specific steps toward my goals, so she can ask me again.

Maybe the board needs an external accountability partner. A coach. A guide. A nudge. Someone to regularly check in with the president and the executive, help them keep board meetings focused on long term and strategic issues, and help them figure out ways to do it better. Someone to guide them through the hazard of rehashing decisions that have already been made.  Perhaps a coach to help them figure out how to make sure that committee and staff work are done by committees and staff, while the board spends its valuable time focusing on mission.

Think about your own life. Making a commitment to someone else has a way of focusing our attention. Maybe we should use the same approach for our boards.

If this is an intriguing idea, contact me. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts, and help you think through whether your organization might benefit from a coach.

“Board membership should reflect the diversity of the communities served by the organization.”

But what does diverse mean?  In the early days of affirmative action, there was a water cooler joke that to get hired you needed to be able to check off certain boxes – black, Hispanic, female, with an Asian surname. The more boxes you could check off, the more likely your resume would be read.

Wow, is that dated! Not to mention extremely offensive! That’s not diversity, that’s tokenism.

Instead, look at what a Board Source white paper Does Board Size Really Matter says about diversity versus inclusivity.

Increasing diversity in itself cannot be the ultimate goal. The goal must start by understanding the power of difference — searching for the perfect mixture of attributes, using what individuals have to offer, negotiating for the best solution. Being inclusive of diverse opinions and approaches is the solid foundation when building diversity.

Of course, every organization is different, so mandating a list of skills, attributes and perspectives isn’t possible. Instead, what do you need from your board in the way of passion, viewpoints, talent, skills, and contacts?

Only after you’ve figured this out, should you go out and engage prospective board members of all kinds. Board members who are collectively inclusive of a diverse constituency will be your best defense against stodgy ‘been there, done that’ mentality.

But merely checking off boxes doesn’t do it.

If you’d like more information about Standards for Excellence, let me know. Click here for more info!

Whatever happened to “I’m Sorry?”  Whatever happened to “It’s my fault?”   Whatever happened to “I made a mistake, I will fix it?”

This post from Sarah Andrus says it clearly and concisely. When we make a mistake, we must own it and make reparations. Her post talks about individuals, but it’s equally true of organizations. “My Bad…” or How to Handle Mistakes With Grace

This is where a culture of ethics and accountability can make all the difference. If your organization has a culture in which individuals – both board and staff – are known to take responsibility for mistakes and are not unduly punished for them, then each person can feel more comfortable owning his or her mistakes.  Honesty and integrity become the hallmarks for which you are known. The receptionist can feel proud of working for you, the donor can be proud of supporting you, your community will offer up new board members.

Think about it.  If all the time and energy spent in evading responsibility were instead spent in fixing the problem and taking steps so it doesn’t happen again, then the entire organization moves forward that much faster.

Where would you rather work – where energy is spent covering it up, or where energy is spent making it right?  

It’s people relations. It doesn’t matter if she’s a prospective donor, a volunteer, a parent or a student. It doesn’t matter if he gives time, money, or attention. Or none of the above. 

If you care about your organization, then you should be building relationships with every person.

Every  single person you encounter.

Segmenting the people you know for the purposes of sending appropriate messages is one thing. Segmenting them because you think that somehow donors are different from other people is completely different.

A person is a person is a person is a person. A person has dreams, hopes, and ambitions. A person has quirks and traits and tendencies. Anyone might have a reason to care about your organization, and it might not be the reason you think.

But if you only look at her as “soccer mom,” you might miss that this particular person dreams about somehow personally making a difference. If you only look at him as “volunteer,” you might miss that he hopes to introduce his kids to philanthropy through your organization. If you only look at that couple as “stay-at-homes,” you might miss that they really are seeking for the best way to invest their time and energy together.

Everyone should be in your database, so when you encounter that person, it doesn’t matter whether he’s a donor or not – you have an entrée into a conversation about their dreams, hope and ambitions.

A chance encounter with a community member was a forceful reminder of this truth. His kids are really into soccer. My client was an arts organization that educates children. A mismatch? Not at all. Not after he wistfully said he wished his kids could learn a little discipline. What is learning to play an instrument but learning discipline? Sure, it’s a lot of other things, too. But one big part of what it brings to kids is the knowledge that if you keep at it, you become better. Maybe the class in rock can do that for him.

Everyone you meet is a potential relationship. And every relationship starts with seeing every person.

Before 1973, no one ever asked where are you? when they reached you on the phone. Of course they knew where you were. You were within 3 feet of the telephone they had dialed (now that’s an anachronism!). Thirty years later, times have changed. Today, because of mobile phones, one of the first things we ask when we reach someone is, where are you?

Where are you? An innocuous casual question that turns quite profound when you ask it of your organization. If, in 30 years, the world has changed so we call individuals instead of a place, has your nonprofit kept pace? Do you still ask your constituents to come to your location, or do your meet them where they are? Have your programs evolved to meet the new mobility of society? Has your mission changed?

Society’s rate of change has accelerated. When was the last time your board of directors evaluated whether your programs are still relevant, much less whether your mission is? Once every 10 years isn’t enough (and maybe it never was). But certainly  never shouldn’t be the answer.

In fact, maybe now is when you should ask, where are you?