Yo Nonprofit Boards: Get Your Heads Out of the Sand
Yes, I am sounding the alarm because nonprofit boards are risking the health, well-being, and in tough times we could even say survival, of the organizations they are shepherding by keeping their heads in the sand. No longer is the crisis of executive leadership turnover looming; it is already upon us.
And what are boards doing to address this? Most are not doing very much. According to the 2006-7 salary survey by The Nonprofit Times, only 27% of the boards of the nonprofits they surveyed have a succession plan. (Some say they are working on as part of their strategic plan.) As bad as that is, it is an improvement: in 2006, 82% of the respondents said they did not have a succession plan down to 72% in 2008. (And both percentages are far better than the 90% The Nonprofit Center found in its 2006 survey of executive directors. Which is to say that boards in the
Thus, more often than not, it does one of two things, which brings us to epidemic number two: the board appoints an acting executive director either from within staff or from the board. And, if I may be blunt, that is pure stupidity! To do either is a board looking for the quick fix—and the least amount of work for themselves—rather than what is best for the organization. Not having given the appointment thought—what does the organization need during this transition period, what will it need going forward, what will the interim do when the permanent is hired (as the internal interim is unlikely to be the best permanent hire), the board looks for the lowest hanging fruit which is, more often than not, not the best candidate.
Absolutely, a board should appoint an interim director while it takes the time to engage properly in the search for the permanent executive director. But the interim should be someone from outside the organization who is not eligible to apply for the permanent position. It should be someone who is uninvolved with the emotions of losing, for whatever reasons, the leader, and who has the experience with and understanding of what an organization is dealing with in times of change and transition. It should be someone who can clean house, if needed, say the tough things, if needed, be the cheerleader, if needed, and run the business, all while helping the organization move through the transition instead of stall in the transition.
Agree! But this is just one manifestation of the lack of competent, informed and active board members in the nonprofit world. Although most nonprofit people would cite fundraising as their number one issue, I believe board recruitment and training are really the root issue in many if not most nonprofits. Any ideas on board recruitment and retention?
I couldn’t agree with more! If you asked nonprofits what was their number one challenge, I bet more than 75% of the time they would respond with fundraising/needing more money. But fundraising is so often not the real problem but a symptom of the real problem facing the nonprofit. The real problem is often the lack of a fully engaged board that truly understands, and is willing to execute, all of its responsibilities. And why is that? First, the vast majority of organizations do not apply strategic principles to the recruitment of new board members. They invite the people they know, all really good people, but not necessarily really good people for the board of that particular organization. They invite people to come do a job, but they don’t provide the job description, and then wonder why board members aren’t doing what they are supposed to do. Hard to do what you don’t know/haven’t been told is your job. Then they bring them to a board table where meetings are boring and inefficient, where operations rather than governance is the order of the day, and harrangue them to raise money without helping them to understand how to do that. Any wonder the ones we get don’t stay?!