2005 saw the arrival of Richard P. Chait, William P. Ryan, and Barbara E. Taylor‘s new book: Governance as Leadership. Definitely worth the read. However, it started me wondering, why are we so unhappy with our typical nonprofit board? Is it – as recent, thoughtful people such as these argue – that our conception of boards is inadequate or just plain wrong, or is it, as it often occurs to me, that we often don’t do a very good job of managing, motivating and leading our boards?

I spent 16 years as a nonprofit executive director and I had my share of bad board moments, but, by and large, it was a great board. We raised money, we made decisions. We grew to serve 4,000 kids a year. The board consistently supported me, but it never forgot to critically question management’s plans, suggest we were going too fast, and generally put the brakes on when needed. It was a relationship they took seriously in part because we, management, took it seriously. It was far from perfect, but it was farther still from dysfunctional. I am not taking credit for this — the organization had a great board before I arrived, and now, many years after my departure, the new executive director tells me he still has a great board. Is it a board culture? Plain ol’ good luck? I don’t know.

If I had to guess, and I have had lots of years to think about this, I would say this board has been successful through a combination of everyone generally keeping the mission first in mind in decision-making, keeping any private agendas or squabbles out of the board room, trusting management, but keeping on top of things by reading everything and asking lots of questions (trust but verify). For its part, management has always given the board the information it needs to make good decisions, in plain English. We never tried to hide anything. As one board member used to say “On this board you know you’ll hear bad information first from David.” Also, we expected the board to work well. Maybe that last point is the key.

Tags: nonprofit

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Governance, Recommended Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.