Nonprofits have organizational missions, and their boards have fiduciary responsibilities to contributors, employees, customers, members, and the environment in which they operate. The most egregiously overlooked problem with nonprofit organizations is that their boards don’t seem to realize that the organization exists for a reason that lies outside of the board meeting room.
Get in the game and fix what’s not working; nonprofit doesn’t mean nonperformance!
Ignorance of Governance
The board is too often a tool for the CEO or executive director, rather than a governor and overseer. Nonprofit boards should do three basic things:
- Establish the mission of the organization.
- Determine what measures will determine success in that mission.
- Select, evaluate, and develop officers and senior managers.
Poor Choices for Board Membership
The most common criterion I’ve heard for prospective nonprofit board members is: Can they raise money? Fund-raising and governance are two separate requirements, and one individual rarely possesses both sets of skills at equal levels.
Board members should, amongst them, represent experience and expertise across the following gamut: business management, public relations, finances, law, human resources, volunteerism, and nonprofit experience.
Inappropriate Size
Virtually every nonprofit in the land errs on the side of too many board members. This is because board members are chosen not only for governance (which is, in fact, the least of it), but also for name recognition, reward, potential donations, contacts, cachet, and personal friendship.
Poor Self-Regulation and Discipline
Nonprofits need board terms even more than for-profits, because there is less external incentive and internal upheaval likely to cause turnover in the former.
Lack of Interim Actions and Poor Committee Work
No one can provide governance by working only once a month, much less once a quarter. Committees and subcommittees need to be active in the interim.
Insufficient Distance From the Organization Leadership
Too often the executive director or president is a close friend of the board chair and/or key board members. Sometimes this coziness grows to the extent that the board chair and CEO often change places, or one is seen as a stepping-stone to the other.
Ignorance of the Bylaws
Boards need a parliamentarian to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Bylaws should be required reading for all new members, need to be taken up in review form at least annually by the full board, and should be updated and revised as current conditions warrant. The best boards assign a person as the watchdog to make sure these requirements are met. The worst can’t even find their copies.
Micromanagement
Nonprofit boards act, most of the time, as if they were the senior management team. Their job is not to implement, not to execute, not to oversee daily operations. Their job is to set long-term goals and evaluate progress toward those goals.
The Great “Campaign” Debacle
The most legitimate gripe I’ve encountered from nonprofit staffs is the annual change in “theme.”
Strategy should never be solely a twelve-month affair, and constant theme changes can easily disrupt long-term strategy, making a mockery of any attempts to achieve longitudinal objectives. While bylaws often require a change of elected officers each year, they certainly don’t require a change in direction that is not dictated by strategic need or environmental events.
Misunderstanding the Value of Volunteers
The most waste to be found in any nonprofit is in the squandering of volunteer resources. Boards tend to look at volunteers as so much cannon fodder, not comprehending the tremendous asset they represent, the fact that the resource is not nonrenewable, and the financial fact that there is a return on investment equation that applies to volunteers.
Source: Good Enough . . . Isn’t Enough, by Alan Weiss. Amacom, 1999.
The Independent Sector is an excellent resource for help with board development and training.
Posted in Board of Directors, Leadership
