A few years ago the Chicago chapter of the American Lung Association left the national organization to form its own independent entity: the Respiratory Health Association of Chicago. At the time it was an unusual move.

Yet in recent weeks we have seen two more major affiliates of well-known national nonprofits leave the fold. Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, in Northern California, is now Golden Gate Community Health, and KCET, the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles, recently announced its intention to leave the PBS family in January 2011.

Each of these situations is unique and involves a combination of differing perspectives, financial tensions and interpersonal conflicts, but I wonder if economic pressures are increasingly going to drive large affiliates of national organizations to leave behind their household brand name in favor of independence.

KCET will lose access to crucial PBS programs such as Sesame Street, while the two health organizations named above will continue to offer the same service but without the benefit of instant name recognition.

Given the demands of participation in a national organization (financial, programmatic, quality review, brand usage and the like) we may see additional large affiliates deciding they can do better on their own.

In the short run that may be true, but it remains to be seen whether they can replace the instant name recognition and credibility of their former national partners with local support. And of course there is always the possibility – indeed the likelihood – that the national organization will establish a new franchise in the same area, providing a high profile competitor who will build on the previous organization’s name recognition, now abandoned.

Stay tuned.

I love to use a governance teaching case by Peter Dobkin Hall, called Conflicting Managerial Cultures in a Museum.

In the case, a long-slumbering board hires an entrepreneurial executive director to revitalize their museum. He brings in a small cohort of new board members who are local business leaders. Fundraising increases, and the business board members are highly involved, then they become too involved. They make executive decisions behind the director’s back, move the museum’s banking to the board chair’s bank, buy office equipment from another board member’s company, and tie the museum’s signature event to their businesses.

You can imagine the end of this story. Both the executive director and the board chair submit resignations in frustration and the organization is on the brink of collapse.

When I use this case I ask students, or workshop participants, to first determine what actually happened. Step by step, I want them to understand how the decisions unfolded and the relationships unraveled?

Then I ask them to apportion blame among the various parties – there is plenty to go around. Finally I ask them what could be done now. This usually leads to a lively discussion.

Cases are a powerful learning aid, a realization which brought me the following insight: could a nonprofit experiencing significant internal conflict or lack of clarity benefit from writing its own case?

The idea would be to gather organizational leaders from board and staff and give them a structured writing exercise where they describe the road that has gotten them to their current situation. What key decisions, external circumstances, and relationships were most significant? Maybe do it in small group format so that they can later compare and contrast different versions of the story.

This would lead to an airing of different viewpoints and ultimately, with luck and good facilitation, to a shared understanding of the present situation. With agreement on the “what happened” question, I would ask them to address the causes of their current situation, and then what can be done about it now?

This process follows the model of my big picture view of strategy. It asks: where are we, how did we get here, and what do we do about it?