How to Build a Board

Here are some articles that might help you understand the challenge you face, as well as overcoming those challenges: http://tinyurl.com/TMC-ChallengesFacingNPOs

I think the second to the last question you asked is the most important. "How do you motivate Board members to become more engaged." I attended a philanthropy briefing in Chicago last night, and the final piece of advise was to recruit board members who were "passionate about your cause, and have the talent and networks to help you".

Thus, the best advise I can give you as a start up is find people who share your commitment and passion, and who represent different skill sets, and networks, that would be valuable for your organization to have.

If you can, start with a small board, and add committed people over time. We answered the "no time/big check" question by creating an Advisory Council. People get their name on the letterhead, and we get modest donations, and recognition for their involvement, but they don't have to spend time involved in board meetings and the bureaucracy of running the organization.

The weakness of this, is that these "name" people are not as engaged, or passionate, and unless you have a way of coaching them, they don't do as much to help you as they possibly could.

I'd add a final thought that I hope others will respond to. I think it's much easier to get responsible people to join boards of well known organizations, and institutions such as hospitals, universities, art institutes, and religious organizations, than to get them on to organizations serving people in poverty, or issues that are not popular with large segments of the public.

I'd like to find a pool of committed leaders who would support small organizations.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks so much for your comments and the link to the helpful articles. I appreciate the advice to start small and add people slowly. One of my concerns is that if we immediately double the size of our board that will double the number of relationships to manage and give our staff (me, plus one other and a host of dedicated Berkeley undergrad interns) less time to focus on growing and improving our program.

One question for you: how would you recommend gauging BOD candidates potential level of engagement?

Andrée:
First, thank you for sharing your thought process, questions and the advice you have received on board development. I admire that you are taking the time to think all of the issues (and potential issues) through to anticipate how you can strategically attract and build the best board of directors for your organization.

When I read the advice you received from different people, I actually did not see too many contradictions, but rather, taken together, the advice points to building a diverse board of individuals who have strong leadership qualities, a passion for your mission and a willingness to bring visibility to your organization (through time and resources).

I also think it is a fair concern between inviting big names with less time and active participants who devote a lot of time. Some organizations create separate advisory boards for the big name members.

Zimmerman-Lehman publishes helpful resources on board development here:
http://www.zimmerman-lehman.com/freeresources.htm#board

Christine, you make a good point, i.e. that there is a lot of overlap in the advice we've received, and the unifying message is to seek diversity, passion, commitment and leadership.

I guess the conflicting part is whether we should reach out beyond our own networks to find potential candidates. If we reach out to people we don't know (or who aren't in our extended network), will they be less likely to sign on? If we are reaching outside our network, how can we effectively target people who care about the issues we work on?

I'm also curious to know what you and others think of our approach to our Advisory Council. Rather than go the (seemingly more traditional) route of putting big names on our AC, we've populated it with mid-level professionals who might lack the depth of experience sought for a Board of Directors, but who are committed, passionate and able to devote at least 10 hours per month on a specific area related to their expertise and our needs. Since we are such a small organization (in terms of staff), we're hoping our Advisory Council will expand our capacity. Are we being overly optimistic about the potential of the AC to help us grow?

Thanks again for your thoughts and the helpful link to more resources on Board Development.

This is very timely for me as I am involved right now in helping the board of a cultural institution with high regional status profile regional status within its host country. My current and previous experiences convince me that you have to first work out very clearly with your existing board (and senior executive staff) why and where you need to add talent, skill, gravitas etc. This, as you are considering, may be about reaching out to new networks. But equally, the existing board must be ready for welcoming, assimilating and implementing what the new members from unfamiliar sources bring with them. They might bring challenging, unwelcome and even threatening, but nonetheless valid, things.

I think everyone concerned in the organidsation I'm writing about is aware of the need for passion and commitment for what this highly reputed house is producing. A challenge, however, is in persuading many of the existing board members to understand and respect the ‘more commercial’ strategic activities such as stakeholder profiling, brand and reputation management etc.

This then raises associated challenges for the board in confronting difficult issues around how their existing top level staff may well be excellent ‘creatives’ – but they are, sorry to say, sadly lacking in the business acumen front.

One evident answer is to recruit new board members with the requisite skills and experience in the board’s areas of weakness. I have, however, had previous experience of where this resulted in the virtual creation of a self-appointed ‘old guard’ or ‘keepers of the truth’. In other words prior-existing members of the board saw it as their sole role to defend artistic truth and quality against those pesky new incomers with all their business and consultancy talk. Hence the need for the prior-existing board and exectuives to be clear and agreed about what they have committed to.

On a final note, great care, of course, needs to be taken by the change champions and managers about emerging perceptions that the fresh visions and skills of the new board members are, in effect, criticisms of the old. The aim must be to see the new as building upon the earlier successes and legacy of the old (even if that’s not always strictly true!)

Thank you for sharing your experience, Edward!

Though we are not facing this challenge at Darfur Stoves Project (our Board has not been particularly active so there is not already a strong Board culture in place), I have seen the situation you are describing at another nonprofit where I worked. It was in the process of transitioning from a founder-led organization where the majority of Board members were friends of the founder, to a more "professional" organization, with high-profile Board members with business backgrounds. We saw exactly the culture clash you are describing: the "old guard" wanted to keep the program exactly the same as it had always been, and was resistant to changes/innovations; whereas the "new guard" wanted to move quickly to change the organization based on what they saw were weaknesses.

At that stage in my career, I did not have much interaction with the Board, so I'm not sure how the organization's leadership handled the cultural shift, though I'm sure it must have been challenging.

So I'll turn the question back to other readers: have any of you been involved in an org. where the Board was transforming in the way Edward describes? How did you handle the different cultures & viewpoints of the "old" and "new" guard? Any tips on how to allay tensions, and ease the concerns of existing Board members?

I think an answer to some of these questions comes in having a clear vision of what the organization seeks to accomplish, along with a road map of how to get their. Depending on the depth and complexity of the issue the group is seeking to solve, the road map may be a bit blurry the further out you're looking, but this provides room for innovation as you build history.

New members should be joining a board to help it achieve it's existing vision, not to change it to something they think the vision should be....unless, they were invited to the board to help it redefine the mission and vision.

Because of the desperation to find people who can raise money, or hot bodies to fill empty slots, I'm not sure how many non profits actually recruit and develop boards in this manner.

I think this "old guard/new guard" problem may be the perception that new members have not done their homework, don't know the history, and may not even be aligned with the original vision of the organization. I've seen new board members come into an organization with a 25 year history, and want to change it completely, into something else.

Thus, the board needs to be involved in re-energizing the board, along with the staff and leaders of the organization. Easier said than done when board members are volunteers with limited time to stay deeply informed of the direction and strategies of the organization, and new members, who are also volunteers, may not have the time to understand the history before they begin to change direction.

Great points, Daniel! Thank you for highlighting the importance of educating new board members and making sure that they are brought on with a clear understanding of their role vis a vis the organization's vision and mission. The more clearly expectations (about whether they are being asked to help the organization move toward its stated vision and mission or change direction in some way) are articulated to new members, the more effective everyone will be!

Danielle and Andree, I want to choose my words diplomatically here… but I think that this quote rather misses the point of the scenario I was describing:...

“I think this "old guard/new guard" problem may be the perception that new members have not done their homework, don't know the history, and may not even be aligned with the original vision of the organization. I've seen new board members come into an organization with a 25 year history, and want to change it completely, into something else.”...

In fact I think at an least equal (greater?) danger is presented by the very “25 history” scenario described here, in-that this scenario is almost systemically biased towards generating an ‘old guard’ response to new comers. I think there are maybe additional challenges and cultural barriers for the existing board members of a 25 year old organisation to go through when preparing the ground for their ability to assimilate and utilise new blood.

A further, and barbed, issue is that the board members of a 25 year old organisation that finds itself forced (repeat forced)to seek new blood, may have to address the issue that they and/or their organisation is already failing in some ways – given that it has not anyway attracted the new talent as a matter of course. In this scenario the existing board members will have to focus to an at least equal extent on their own needs to adapt and change, as to those of educating incoming new members.

An obvious response to all this would be that the capabilities of both the existing and new members have to be addressed. And so they do – but the scenario I have more than once experienced, and have in mind, is where the problem is largely about the existing board members (and, virtually invariably, their top executive staff).

Hi Andree, I am the ED of WITNESS, a global human rights organization that uses technology and video to create social change. I have been following the conversation and wanted to contribute a perspective:
You have to start by forgetting the conventions that exist in the NGo world around boards and management and respective boxes and roles. The best way to start is to think of Board, Staff, other Allies as one ecosystem, all contributing to realization of your mission. Step 2 then is to map the resources, networks, skills, experiences and knowledge that you need to get there. Step 3 is to figure out, once you have these buckets of 'stuff' that you need how you access that and make it work for your organization. To give you an example: WITNESS uses innovative approaches to video and technology to create change and one key new programmatic strand is focused on engaging social networks in creating safer, more effective spaces for human rights. I know that to accomplish that I need: (i) strong relationships with the people who run those networks, (ii) participation in the communities that use the networks, (iii) developers who are interested in apps and creating autonomous tools for change, and (iv) funds to finance the plan. Once I have that, I look at the WITNESS team and the Board and map their networks, skills, etc. the same way. So in this case, we are starting an Innovation Team, which consists of Board, staff ad external experts that can deliver the whole. I am adding people with experience in fighting violence against women to my Board now, as we are launching a networked initiative on Gender Based Violence. Boards are living organisms and function bets if they are part of the whole universe - but make sure their roles are clearly defined: we do an engagement plan with each Board member each year to talk about all aspects of their engagement: financial contribution, where their expertise is needed to accomplish that year's goals, how much time they will spend....

Yvette:

Thanks for joining the discussion! A long admirer of WITNESS, I really appreciate your perspectives. I love the idea of looking at Board, Staff, Advisory Council and other allies as one ecosystem. For an organization as small as ours (only two full-time staff members, up from zero at this time last year), being creative about leveraging the skills of the inner circle of our community is essential for growth. Some of the key areas where we need expertise to succeed are: logistics/supply chain management, emergency response programming, fundraising, growing a start-up, and nonprofit accounting. We also need connections to other international development organizations, and scientific/engineering knowledge, but we have both of these in great supply between our staff, Board Chair, and the many UC Berkeley students who volunteer with the project. To fill some of the other gaps we’ve created an Advisory Council whose members have one or more of the specific backgrounds/skills we’re seeking. This seems to be working well – because it is an entirely new body it has been fairly easy to work with the AC members to jointly decide operational principles, minimum commitment levels, etc.
I’d love to hear your advice on how to engage existing Board members so they see themselves as part of this ecosystem, and are more eager to lend their talents to the organization. We are planning on developing an engagement plan with new Board members (as we have done with the new AC members), but I’m less certain about how we can initiate this with our existing Board who has grown accustomed to a more hands-off culture. WITNESS’S Board sounds incredible. How do we begin to introduce the type of culture you have?

Andree:
Congrats on the thoughtfulness with which you are approaching this subject. The most important tool in these circumstances are good questions, so you're already on your way!

The following is all from the Board Recruitment workbook I authored almost 10 years ago ( http://is.gd/d4guw ). That book is still the #1 book on the subject at Amazon, and I believe that is because it is a thought process, not a list of advice and tips. In reality, you know what you need; you just need questions that can help you gather that knowledge into a useful framework.

First, it is important to know what you want the board to be for the organization. (Note: Start with what they will “Be.” From there, what they’ll “Do” will follow). Do you need volunteer workers AND the organization’s leadership (governance)? Or will they only be governing? In new organizations, the former is common, but there is no right or wrong - no shoulds, just your reality. What does your particular organization need the board to be?

From that "job description," list the qualities you need in board members, for them to accomplish what you need the board to be for the organization. I suggest using 3 categories.
#1: Must Haves - What are the qualities every board member MUST have. Usually includes passion for the cause, as well as practical matters like time to devote and etc.
#2: Wouldn't It Be Nice - It would be nice if some people had these qualities, but they don't all need to have them. It would be nice to have someone with great contacts, but not everyone needs that. And etc. (Note: Be cautious about seeking pro bono assistance in this category, for reasons listed here: http://is.gd/bznvF)
#3: The “Never in a Million Years” category - These are the qualities that can tank a board. They are also the qualities we are often willing to overlook in the quest for the Wouldn’t It Be Nice folks. (“Yes, he’s egotistical, angry and negative - but he has money and connections...”)

As you go along, names will occur to you. And that leads to the next process: Have the board recruit the board.

Yes, a founder has to recruit at least the first few board members, or there will be no one there. But once there are a first few in place, have them recruit the rest of the board. This is your first step towards having the board be responsible for itself. Work together with them to establish both the job description and the criteria / qualities list. And then let them find the rest of the board.

Lastly, I do have one small bit of advice. In new organizations, an almost vertical growth / change curve is very common. So your needs for the board in Year 1 may be very different than even a few short years later. Recruit for what you need now - and know that some of that “need” will likely be “flexibility / ability to embrace change.”

I know this is long - sorry about that. I just hope some of it is helpful.
Hildy

This is tremendously helpful, Hildy. Thank you so much!