News & Views

After the ED has calmed down, I try to help them step back and look at the framework through which they are assessing their board. It is framework, quite often, of staff accountability and performance management. In this framework, people have job descriptions. You manage them. They meet their goals, or suffer the consequences. They are accountable to you

But boards are not staff. They are not paid employees. And in a strange twist of corporate law, you as the ED are accountable to them. Also, as Mark Light has written in The Strategic Board, volunteer boards are perennially challenged by lack of continuity, lack of knowledge readiness, and varying composition and skills. If you think about it, what is the tangible consequence of “non-performance” for a board member? As the ED you can’t “fire” them. You can advocate for adding another, hopefully higher performing board member, but you can’t literally replace a board member as you would a staff member. Their leaving gains you little.

There is another way. Some of these ideas are best practices that Bill Ryan articulated in Governance as Leadership, and others have looked at, and some are from CRE's own experience of working with hundreds of boards over the last 30 years. Here goes:

1. Vetting is important. Before your board brings someone new on, try to understand what draws them to your organization (and to you). Relationship and trust building have to start from the first encounter. If this is not someone you or your board can imagine having a close professional and value-based partnership with, say thanks, but no thanks.
2. Partnership is key. Sure, they are your “boss”. Sure, sometimes it seems you’re their boss. When power dynamics are fluid in this way, the best relationship model is partnership. Would you make demands of a partner without setting up the groundwork for the relationship? How would you engage with, set expectations with, a partner? When would you communicate with them? Only when something is wrong, or when you need something?
3. The board has to love you, the ED. Think of the board as your support system. Your trusted advisors. Your ambassadors. If you’re lucky, your fellow fundraisers and door-openers. Respect and appreciate all the things they do, big and small. Disgruntlement is a bad place from which to move the relationship. Disappointment is too easy to fall into. Ideally, they are doing this work because they care – for you as the executive leader, for your clients and for the mission of the organization.
4. Make the board experience worthwhile and engaging. Work with your board chair to enliven board meetings. Business should be kept to short, critical discussions and key decisions. Unless there is a crisis, think “consent agendas.” Much pre-work and information can be shared off-line or in committees. Bring your program staff to meetings so board members can stay in touch with the work and accomplishments of the organization. Make time for strategic and generative, big-picture conversations: Who are we? Who do we want to reach with our work? How do we want to impact them in the broadest sense? How is the world changing around us? How should we adapt to these changes? These are discussion starters that may not lead to short-term actions or decisions, but they do keep the board involved in a meaningful and enlivening way – particularly around issues of mission, organizational identity and social value.
5. Invite the board into participation. Now we get to fundraising, and notice it’s point #5. Demands, shaming, rigid performance evaluations of board members, finger pointing, last minute appeals, “you haven't done your job” messages -- I haven't seen these strategies be sustainable in the long run. What works better is engaging the board around the opportunities that lie ahead and having board leaders invite their peers, individually and collectively, to do their part in meeting these opportunities. Ask board members what they can sign up for, given their resources and even their constraints. Be prepared to provide structured ways for them to participate, and give them choices: who can go to a donor meeting with you; or help with event planning; or organize a house party; or personalize appeal letters. And think about support and respectful follow up as a normal part of staff's job. If you’ve done #1-4 above, this work will become easier, and you’ll finally start getting real buy-in around raising money.