The Board you want

If the Board you have is useless or trouble, you're not alone...

My Board operates in one mode: critical parent.

I get tired of stroking their egos so they won't hurt us.

Each of these people is super effective in their professional lives. That's why we went after them in the first place. Put them in the Board room, though, and it's like somebody pumped in goofy gas.

I thought they were supposed to be the wind under our wings, but they're a drag chute. Because of them we never achieve liftoff.

I recruited this guy. I'm the one who put him on the Board. And now he treats me like he's the Lord of the Manor and I'm his servant. He wants coffee, he wants donuts, he wants reports. But he can't even see me.

This society woman took over as Chair and now our nonprofit is her personal toy.

I can't tell you how demoralizing they are.

The best thing we could do in terms of capacity building would be to get rid of the Board.

They're like a lump of dough without the spirit. You knead them and knead them and...nothing.

What's it like to have a Board that's trouble? What does that do to you? How does it slow you down? How does it hurt you?

Here's my advice to EDs...

Either have a Board that meets your needs, really meets them, or get yourself a minimalist Board. Don't mess around with anything in between.

Another way to say this is: Do it right or don't do it at all. And I'm not joking about "don't do it at all."

In California, state law used to say that you had to have a minimum of three Board members. So that could be you and two loyal friends. Now the law says you only have to have one Board member. I don't get that, but there it is. So that could just be one loyal friend. And then, presto!, you don't have any Board troubles to deal with anymore.

Now I'm not recommending this. I recommend having a stellar Board that gives you everything you want from a Board. But if you're not ready to go there, then there's nothing wrong with settling for a minimalist Board.

I've worked with EDs who are trying to turn an organization around, and they have so many things they're trying to handle, like getting a real audit for the first time in five years, or getting rid of a deeply destructive, long-term employee, that they have absolutely no bandwith for Board development. That's on their list, but for later.

Now I realize I'm talking to EDs as if the Board is putty in their hands and they can do anything they want with it, including starting over. Which brings up three key questions...

Who's in charge of the Board?
If a Board is dysfunctional, then I believe the ED has every right to step in and do everything she can to make it functional. In fact, to make it superb. If the Board members are out of alignment with mission discipline, then they don't count. I know that's a radical thing to say, but doesn't it make sense? Isn't the nonprofit there for the mission?

So if a Board is failing at mission discipline, the ED gets to step in and take charge, because as you'll hear me say often on these pages, no one is above mission discipline, including and especially the Board.

What can an ED do?
Lots. I've worked with many EDs in re-shaping their Boards. Sometimes they simply recruit a small coherent team of 3-4 new Board members who then take charge of upgrading the Board.

In one case, I worked with an ED, who had the most personally abusive Board I've ever seen, to get all of his Board members to resign on the same evening. It was a long, hard process, but it meant that the organization could start over. And it's now in the national spotlight for its issue.

Those are just two of many strategies. What strategy you use depends on the situation of your nonprofit, its mission, and the personalities and histories of the individual Board members. It's a complex thing. So forget about ten easy steps.

What's interesting though, is because of the general state of disrepair of nonprofit Boards, it's often not that hard to make significant changes.

What if you have a Board of people who don't care that much and aren't really engaged? What if your Board has shrunk to just a few people? In both those situations, EDs can make big changes, and fast.

On this page, I'm going to look at how to get what you need...

Maybe you need a minimalist Board.

Maybe you need a stellar Board.

And maybe you need to get out.

I'm not talking about magic here. I'm talking about being real. And sometimes what's real is that a Board digs in and refuses to let go and you as ED can do nothing and it's so bad that your best bet is to get out and go to another organization with a Board that will appreciate you and support you and live by mission discipline.

Here's something I've seen a lot, EDs who have fallen into a state of resignation. They have a do-nothing Board that rubber stamps all the EDs decisions...

"They're no help but they're no trouble. They come to the monthly meeting, listen to reports, and go home content. So that's one less thing for me to worry about."

I understand how tempting it is to settle for a neutral Board. Really tempting. But here's the danger. If the members bring just one bully onto the Board, you can have hell to pay. Because the bully can easily take over. He can intimidate the passive Board members, he can start speaking for them, he can give you orders in the name of the whole Board and no one will contradict him.

So one person with his own agenda could easily take control of your nonprofit in a month or two.

I once watched a Board member propose cutting out the organization's main program which brought in all the revenue in favor of boosting the program that every funder had already said they didn't care about. But this Board member liked that program. He liked to volunteer in it and didn't care about anything else. When he proposed the vote, without a single idea of how to keep funding the organization, not one Board member objected. It was the ED who had to put a stop to it.

And if that's not freaky enough, try this. Have you ever heard of someone getting on a nonprofit Board in order to take the EDs job? They dominate the other members, drive the ED out, and then appoint themselves to the position. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and it can be heartbreaking. Especially where an ED or founder has invested ten years of her life in building an organization, and now when the funding is solid and the reputation soaring, someone who's given nothing comes in and steals it from her.

I've seen lots of EDs trying to prop up a Board that was doing absolutely nothing for them, raising no money, never having a helpful thought about program. If that's the kind of Board you've got, then why have a Board? Why not just meet the legal minimum and be done with it?

Now, you may be thinking that I've got something against Boards. And you'd be right—if we're talking about conventional Boards.

But not if we're talking about great Boards, because a great Board can be incredibly great...

Without our Board we wouldn't have made it through the last three years. We've done such big things, but there's no way the staff could have done them alone.

We don't think of our Board as the Board. We think of them as Maria and Hector and Graciella and Jose and Elana and Pete and every one of them is a godsend.

I'm not going to tell you about my Board because then you'll want to steal them and they're mine!

And let's give a thought to people who with high hopes agree to serve on a Board. What's their experience like?

Sometimes it's like this...

My time is precious. I'm just throwing it away here.There's no plot to our Board meetings. We just go around in circles.I know how to make a difference. I know how to get results. I've built three companies. But here, I can't find any way to do anything that matters.It's like the ED is scared of us and hiding stuff from us. I don't know what happened to her with past Boards, but it must have been pretty bad.I'm the only one who does anything. We've got thirteen Board members, but it all falls on me. So I've decided to quit. I just haven't figured out how I'm going to tell the ED yet. She counts on me. I know it's going to be a blow.

But sometimes it's like this....

Apart from my family, this Board service is the best part of my life. I don't get to do anything half as meaningful at work.I've found kindred spirits here. I'm going to be friends with some of these people for years to come if not for the rest of my life.I feel in snych with the ED. It's like when I used to play basketball and five of us were in the zone together driving for the score. He doesn't talk feelings a lot, so when he told me how much I matter to him, I knew that was a big deal. I'm in this for the long term.At work I'm behind the scenes and invisible. Here people see me. They need me. When I get fired up, they get fired up. Here I'm a leader.

Nonprofit Boards have a bad reputation among lots of highly-effective people. And if you want to recruit them, you're going to have to push through that resistance and show them that you have a great Board and convince them that you're going to keep it that way.

So what does it take to build a great Board? Where do you start? The key is to...

Get the right people.

And if you do that, then so many of the typical Board problems disappear. Really, they just disappear.

So the first question to ask is one that's deceptively simple...

Who do we need?

But somehow it seems to be so much easier to ask other things instead...

What should we do?

Are there ten easy steps? Is there an expert who can give us a template that will make this quick and easy?

There are indeed experts with templates. And some of these experts are adamant that there's only one right model for a nonprofit Board—their model.

Forget that there are over a million nonprofits in the United States.Forget that they range from giant national organizations to small volunteer operations.Forget that some are focused on services and some on advocacy.Forget that every organization has its own unique personality.

There are experts who will gladly tell you...

How many members you should have on your Board.How often you should meet.How you should run your meetings.How many committees you should have.How the nominating committee should work.How your term limits should be set.

Lots and lots of shoulds, all without asking even one question about who you are, what your mission is, and what your nonprofit needs.

I think if you start with shoulds you end with trouble.

I don't think it's a matter of chance that Board X is trouble and Board Y is a delight. It's not like there's a lottery going on and some nonprofits are just lucky when it comes to picking Board members.

The success or failure of your Board is determined by the discipline that's behind the choices you make.

And that discipline begins with honoring what's at stake. Remember, your Board has the legal power to...

Change your mission in a single meeting.

Give away your favorite program to another nonprofit.

Rewrite your budget.

Fire the executive director, even one who is outstanding.

Kill the morale of the organization.

Kill the organization itself.

So choosing the right people for the Board is...

A matter of life and death for your organization.

You could say it falls under the category of self-defense.

I've seen EDs and Board Chairs be quite casual about putting people on their Board and it freaks me out.

Maybe they hear a couple good things about somebody in the community, so they meet with him and have a polite 20-minute conversation and he seems nice enough so they get him voted in. Suddenly this person who is really an unknown factor and a total stranger to the organization is a top decision maker.

I've seen nonprofits spend more time interviewing a temporary receptionist than a prospective Board member.

I understand how tempting it is to hope that picking the right model of Board governance will take care of all your Board problems. It would be so nice if there were one simple structural cure-all and we didn't have to talk and negotiate and do relationship work.

But developing a great Board is in fact relationship work, not technical work, and the truth is...

The right model can't save you from the wrong people.

It doesn't matter how perfect it is in theory, a model cannot protect you from people who are acting irresponsibly. You can't legislate Board success with structures and rules.

What matters most is that you...

Get the right people on your Board to begin with.

What do I mean when I say "the right people"? I mean...

People who get the mission in their bones.

People who have personal maturity.

People who are able to see what other people need—like you and your staff.

People who have emotional and social intelligence. They know how to work effectively as part of a team. They treat people with respect, know how to communicate directly and with compassion, and never engage in bullying.

Given all the horror stories about just how bad Boards can be when they go bad, there's a temptation to put a lot of rules in place for protection. But then your organization is running on fear.

If, instead, you institute a rigorous system for recruiting Board members who are dedicated to mission discipline then you don't have to be afraid.

And if you develop a vigorous Board culture, based on mission discipline, then, again, you won't have to be afraid.

Now I want to be clear, when people work together in groups, structure is a good thing. But there are two ways of getting it...

Rules based on shoulds.

Culture based on needs.

Let's not have structure for structure's sake. We can do so much better than that. Let's not adopt a model because an expert who knows nothing about us told us we should. Let's make our structure serve our nonprofit, not the other way around.

Let's put mission first and people first and culture first and structure second.

Zero-based Board building
You probably already know about zero-based budgeting. Every year you zero out every line and rebuild the budget from scratch. You have to justify to yourself each program and each expense.

You can do the same thing with Boards, start with the minimum number your state lets you get away with and then justify, really justify, each and every person you decide to add on after that.

You take the stand that a tiny Board of true supporters is always better than a big Board of trouble.

I've seen nonprofits look at their by-laws and see they're supposed to have a minimum of 11 Board members and right now they only have five. So they go on a drive to get butts into seats. But seat filling, by itself, is mission killing.

I recommend the discipline of always asking, "Why do we need another Board member? Is this particular person someone we need? Are we settling? Or is this someone who knocks our socks off? Is this someone who we're so thrilled about we'd do just about anything to get them on our Board?"

And most importantly:

"Is this someone we trust to hold the life of our organization in his hands?"

Now let's look at situations where a very small Board is exactly what the mission calls for.

"I just need protection."
Say a group of you put together an organization where you work with teens to develop short plays about gangs and violence that they perform in high schools. You have a special way of doing this work. It's taken you a good while to develop your recipe for success, but you've got it.

The teen actors love it, the teens they perform for shout and stomp after each performance. The teachers see behavior change because of the plays.

And the group of you who were the founders, and who are now the staff, do just fine raising money on your own. You don't need help with that.

In this situation, I would want you to have artistic control.

I would want you to be able to pick a small Board of people who totally get what you're doing and why you need to be left alone to do it your way.

I would not want you to ever have to put up with a Board member who decides that he knows best and hammers you to include a moralizing lecture before each play, which of course would instantly kill the spirit and effect of your work.

Let's take another example. Say you're the ED of an organization that does programs on unlearning white racism. You have lots of fans, but you also have some serious opponents, which is not surprising given how emotional and treacherous the topic of racism is.

You and your staff are geniuses at fundraising. Your program is working really well. And it gets better and better because you have a system for continuing to develop it. You could actually get along fine without a Board.

But there is one thing a Board could do for you that you really need—give you protection.

In that case, I'd want you to have a Board that does exactly that. When you get attacked on hate radio, and later the host calls your Board Chair and says she should shut you down, your Chair will tell him, "Our staff is doing exactly what we want them to be doing. We stand by them 100%. And by the way, thanks for the publicity."

And I would want your Board to know that doing that one thing, giving you protection, is enough. Having the guts to stand with you is enough. Actually it's a remarkable blessing. Think how it would feel to have a Board that let itself be intimidated and ordered you to water down your program.

"I need the freedom to lead."
Let's say you have done well in your professional life and you have enough money to run your own foundation and you have your own strategy for funding social change that you want to test.

Specifically, you want to support up-and-coming young leaders. You're quite capable of finding them yourself. You don't need RFPs to make your grants or a committee to make your decisions for you.

You find a young leader who impresses you and you write her a check. It's that simple. There are no restrictions. You don't care about service units. You want her to tear loose, follow her passion, use her strategic smarts, try things, and create new ways of leading social change.

If this is what you are called to, then I'd want you to be able to pick a small Board of loyal fans who would back you up in this experiment. I would not want you to have some kind of broadly representative Board that would veer off course and start fighting with you about funding conventional crisis services when you want to fund new leadership.

Next let's go beyond the very small....

"I need champions."
Let's say you've got dedicated staff, a mature program, and all your systems are running smoothly, but your passion is to reach more kids and families. To do that, you'll have to raise more money.

So what you need and all you need are champions, and more than just a few. You want a strong group of people who will stand by you and work with you and go out and ask for money. Actually go out and ask.

"We just need help. That's all we need. We don't need a Board that burdens the organization with more bureaucracy. We don't need to struggle with personalities. We don't need to debate academic theories of governance. We don't need to build a beautiful committee system while our fundraising dies. We don't need people fighting with us who have no idea what our work really is."

Finally, let's step all the way up...

"I need an active, full-service Board."
Let's say you're running a multi-service agency that gets city funding to provide programs for people who are homeless, or struggling with mental illness, or need vocational training, or all three.

You want a Board that represents stakeholders from throughout the community. You want a large Board. You want clients and former clients at the table. You want people connected to money. You want people who can keep a good relationship going with the mayor and city council. You want the whole smorgasbord of things a Board can give you.

And you want them to have systems in place for everything—meetings, fundraising, policy development, strategic planning.

But even though you develop a large Board with elaborate systems, you're still doing zero-based Board building. You're matching your Board model and members to exactly what you need for your mission and your local situation.

You might even find that one of the one-size-fits all templates works perfectly for you, so that's what you adopt.

"I need a Board that makes all the major policy and strategy decisions."
Say you and a couple friends have started a nonprofit that will speak and act on behalf of the community where you live. And you decide that its mission is not just to improve the community but to build democracy at the grassroots.

So you recruit Board members who are thoroughly representative of the community, all the diversities and differences. You develop a meeting structure so all opinions can be expressed but in the context that the overall welfare of the community comes first.

You help the Board create a way of working together so they don't turn into a gridlocked, in-fighting mess like so many attempts at democracy do.

From then on, you move into the background. The Board leads and you as the staff follow. The Board makes all the key decisions, because the whole point of this nonprofit is for the community to organize and guide itself, to master empowerment instead of being passive recipients of services.

Who decides?
I want to come back to this question again, because it's so important. You may have noticed that even though this page is about Boards, I haven't been addressing Board members. I've been addressing EDs and founders.

First, because this site is designed for leaders. But more importantly, if you pick a nonprofit at random, the chances are much better that it will have a dedicated ED and a so-so Board rather than the other way around.

It's much more likely that the ED and her staff are the ones who actually know how to do the work and lead the organization.

Of course there are great Boards who have failing EDs. But I'll address that situation on a separate page about culture and governance.

I believe that if the Board is not operating in accord with mission discipline, if it is neglectful or abusive, then the ED or founder or others get to step in and take action and transform the Board as needed so it works for the mission instead of against it.

Not everyone agrees with this perspective. Some people argue that the Board must make all the key decisions no matter what. They insist on it.

There are some top experts who say the nonprofit sector currently has it backwards...

EDs have become leaders and they should be managers.

Boards have become managers and they should be leaders.

First, let me say again what I said earlier about different strokes for different nonprofits. Some nonprofits need their Board to make all the key decisions because that's essential to their mission. But others don't need this.

Second, I'm never happy with even the implied assumption that managers are less than leaders, that leaders are the stars and managers are the drudges.

Great managers are people who have a talent for calling forth greatness from their staff. Do we need this? Yes we do.

If we want our social-change nonprofits and movements to grow in strength, we absolutely need effective managers who love developing the strengths of their staff.

I think there are indeed differences between leading and managing, but that we want these two functions to be in partnership with one another. One is not better than the other. One does not lord it over the other. In fact, personally I think of managing as a type of leading.

Third, what I hear in the comments of the experts I'm talking about is not actually about the difference between leaders and managers even though those are the words they use.

What I think they are saying is this:

Boards are employers so EDs should be employees. The Board gives the orders. The ED and her staff should take the orders and carry them out.

And I think this is starting from the wrong end of things. Take a look at the history that's behind so many nonprofits. Someone sees a problem and decides to take action. So she gathers some kindred spirits and they form a nonprofit. And then they go shopping for a Board because nonprofit law says they have to have one.

Yes, there are some situations where a group of people gather together as a Board of Directors and then go hire an ED.

But look at how many of our EDs and staff are the true leaders of our organizations, while the Board is along for the ride like the caboose at the end of the train, there but not really necessary.

Do we really want to insist that all Boards should make all the big decisions and every founder and ED and program director and activist on staff are only employees there to take orders?

Do we want our sector to become a system of mass downward transformation—turning leaders into order takers?

Can we afford to lose even one leader that way, let alone a generation?

And what do we see when we look at the current generation of emerging and emerged leaders? So many of them are so very serious about leading. They are refusing to be saviors, they want to be leaders instead and they know the difference.

Given that, why would they ever settle for being order takers? And why would they ever agree to take orders from the people in the organization who typically know the least about what's going on?

Turning our leaders into order takers is a...

Quick way to kill social change work.

We need leaders. All kinds at all levels.

Social change work is not really about service units. It's a way of life. And it's...

A leadership way of life.

In our organizations we need all of us, EDs, managers, front-line activists, and Board members, every single one, working together to show our communities that there is a happier and healthier way to live than the status quo.

That means we need Board members who believe in developing, supporting, and championing leaders.

We need Board members who understand that leadership is a whole greater than the sum of the parts, something transcendent in the organization, and that we want everyone to participate in it and contribute their natural talents and best abilities to it. And that...

A social change ED is a leader of leaders.

We need Board members who understand that just because one person steps into leadership that doesn't mean everyone else steps back. Social-change leadership means that we're all stepping forward together. We're helping each other become stronger and more capable at rallying our communities to a better tomorrow.

Next you might want to check out...

Recruiting
What it really takes.

Firing
Board members don't get to do whatever they want.

Culture
Culture isn't a decoration. It does real work for you. It draws in the people you want, screens out the people you don't want, and keeps on inspiring the people you have.

© 2008 Rich Snowdon