Nonprofit Management And Leadership

Nonprofit boards serve as the hub for accountability for the agency that they represent. As such, nonprofit agencies bare a heavy burden when recruiting members for their boards with the skills and objectivity needed to deal with the specific complexities of a nonprofit agency. While Board Source, in an article entitled “The Challenges of Board Recruitment, cites that “It is a constant challenge for nonprofit agencies to find ideal board candidates willing to make the major time commitment it takes to be effective board members,” the mainspring of the challenge is perhaps defining the role of board members. Board Source adds in the same article, “The governance committee’s task is to find the best candidates, convince them of the benefits of board service, expose the candidates to the full board, and, after the final nomination, make sure the unique board members are well equipped to do the best possible job.”

To be “well equipped to do the best possible job,” the board members must have a clearly defined mission. William G. Bowen writes in his article, “When a Business Leader Joins a Nonprofit Board,” that “Board members with no visceral feel for an organization may bring values to te table that are simply inappropriate,” highlighting the challenge of delineating the boundaries between nonprofit governance and other types of governance. Board members must be given access to the kind of information that will guide their directives in such a way that their skills, whether they are highly business oriented or politically oriented, can be best expedient to the environment in which they are now engaged.

Oftentimes, nonprofit directors recruit incredible leaders to join their board of directors, yet many nonprofit agencies see some leadership issues arising from the board. In “Why Nonprofit agencies Have a Board Problem,” by Manda Salls, Harvard Professor, Richard Chait discusses the express of board leadership in an interview. He notes that, “There has been a renewed emphasis on boards as fiduciaries-responsible for oversight, performance accountability, financial integrity, and conversation of assets.” He asserts that their roles as leaders becomes swallowed by more of a position of “police officer then a member of a leadership team” (Salls 2005).

Because nonprofit agencies are increasingly under pressure to show results and to bare themselves to scrutiny, one might acquire the existence of a board as a separate, non-paid entity would most fittingly address such concerns; however, focusing solely on result accountability and audits leaves little room for the immense task of securing public relations, funding, and stakeholder satisfaction. Richard Chait offers some solutions to this conundrum. He says, “The way in which we first make sense of circumstances is in fact what triggers or spawns strategies, policies, decisions, and actions,” and he presents the notion that boards be exposed to the flesh of a nonprofit: “those times when the organization tries to make sense of circumstances” (Salls 2005). Because nonprofit agencies do hold some special considerations, board members from highly superb leadership positions would benefit from being exposed to the action of the nonprofit, and the agencies must display for them the types of issues and agendas that they need to address holistically.

By including board members in the flesh of the nonprofit, the focus of its mission can become more salient. Because of the shift from mission accomplishment to fiduciary responsibilities, defining the role of the board is better accomplished by ensuring the members have more then objective a loyalty for the organizational reputation, but also a passion for the organizational mission. The passion the board members have will enable them to become more involved in the process, just as the board members of the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired (Roy, Jacko, Eadie 2008). William Roy, Virginia Jacko, and Doug Eadie assert, in “Leading and Managing Governance Change,” that, “They knew they couldn’t make the far-reaching changes necessary if they merely had a consultant come up with recommendations.

Attempts to drive change from outside are notoriously ineffective, fleet succumbing to resistance from those who feel scant ownership of the proposed changes.” So, they created a Governance Task Force (GEO), which delineated the role of the board from outside consultants, considering they did enlist the back of outsiders. They defined themselves strongly as the advocates of the agency, and had the capability of drawing on the strong commitment and enthusiasm of the board chair.

According to Roy, Jacko, and Eadie, there were five attributes of a successful board that this board employed in aiding their success: an enthusiastic, supportive board chair; an active, respected task-force chair; a rigorous methodology to “carry out its charge, lending to credibility to its recommendations;” a steadfast relationship between the GEO, chair, and consultants in agenda development; and a task force that “took the lead” (Roy, Jacko, and Eadie 2005). Within this context of board participation, “The foundation stone for the task-force effort was a definition of governing: to play the leading role (working closely with the board chair, GEO, and senior leadership team) in continuously answering three preeminent questions” (Roy, Jacko and Eadie 2005). Those questions, are:

1. Where should the organization be headed?

2. What should the organization be now and in the advance term?

3. How is the organization performing? (Roy, Jacko, and Eadie 2005).

Involving the board members in such a meaningful manner extracts the enthusiasm and passion needed to govern the agency in much more then the number accountability, which is ever valuable in a nonprofit.

While nonprofit agencies may find anguish in recruiting members for its board with the types of leadership qualities necessary to address the contemporary concerns of nonprofit agencies specifically, (accountability, fiduciary concerns), a more pressing concern may be defining the role of the board. In many instances, board members spring from highly prestigious roles, and they may have an exorbitant repertoire of leadership skills. Serving on a nonprofit board benefits them by offering a perspective in their fields or communities that they may not receive sitting at an executive level. With that said, their experiences are, indeed, small when dealing with the no-frill experience of serving on a nonprofit board, and as such, nonprofit executive directors may need to guide them by defining unbiased what is needed to serve his or her nonprofit agency, specifically, in a meaningful manner.

http://www.boardsource.org/spotlight.asp? ID=35.335

Bowen, William G (1994). When a business leader joins a nonprofit board. Harvard Business Review, 72(5), 38. Retrieved July 1, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. New Jersey Virtual Academic Library, VALE (Document ID: 48586).

Board Source. “The Challenges of Board Recruitment.” Retrieved June 25, 2008 from :

William Roy, Virginia Jacko, Doug Eadie. (2008, May). Leading and Managing Governance Change. Nonprofit World, 26(3), 28-29. Retrieved July 4, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. Current Jersey Virtual Academic Library (Document ID: 1489060111).

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