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Okay Board, Time to Make the Investment
Brian Kreeger • May 19, 2022
Let’s be honest, many nonprofit boards are not effective, and sometimes border on dysfunctional. Over my many years of serving on and leading boards, I have experienced boards who were highly effective and some who were struggling.
The interesting part, in my experience, has been that most boards believe they fall into the highly effective category when the opposite is many times true.
Board members want to feel good about their organization and their participation in it. They see all that they sacrifice to the organization in the form of time, talents, and treasure, and feel a certain level of pride in their service. And they should. Most times they are volunteers who are taking time away from their family or profession to serve, and that needs to be respected.
Unfortunately, these measures are not measures of effectiveness.
Serving on a nonprofit board can be a grueling experience, full of tough decisions, with the weight of the organization on a member’s shoulders.
And finding the right balances in board service are not always easy. Balances between family and board service, balances between policy and relationship, balances between responsible stewardship and faithful ministry expansion. The list goes on and on.
(This blog focuses on starting a conversation centered on preventing the fall of nonprofit leaders. I write it from a Christian perspective, but all leaders will benefit. Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at
briankreeger.com as well as taking a look at previous blog articles. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My story) of my book,
The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders.)
Like many things in life, taking the time to build a firm foundation can be the key to establishing a board, or moving a struggling board to a highly effective board. This is a board that runs smoothly, and each member feels valued as the organization thrives.
One study looked at
what board members actually think of their fellow board members.
In 2015, the Stanford Graduate School of Business in collaboration with BoardSource and Guidestar surveyed 924 directors of nonprofit organizations about the composition, structure, and practices of their boards. Their study found that:
-27% of nonprofit directors do not believe their fellow board members have a strong understanding of the mission and
strategy of their organization,
-32% are not satisfied with the board’s ability to evaluate the performance of the organization,
-65% of those surveyed do not believe the directors on their board are very experienced,
-48% do not believe their fellow directors are very engaged in their work,
-47% of nonprofit directors believe that their fellow board members understand their obligations as directors well, and
-69% of nonprofit directors say their organization has faced one or more serious, governance-related problems in the past 10 years.1
So, what do you see? Clearly, the opinions of the board member respondents to this survey reveal that nonprofit boards have work to do in their own development. They themselves believe they are unqualified, uninformed, and don’t understand their board obligation.
It’s time to take the blinders off and address the elephant in the room of your board meetings. This may be the perfect opportunity to employ a practice I wrote about a few articles ago, the executive session.
You may recall that an executive session of the board allows for open, honest discussion among board members and those invited to the meeting. Chances are that there are members of your board who have questions or concerns about those things mentioned in the study by Harvard above.
Communication, communication, communication.
It’s important to mention that most times there is a correlation between actual board and governance experience and the size of the nonprofit. For instance, the larger the organization, the more likely they are able to recruit board members with a solid foundation in board governance or train those who lack the experience.
But most nonprofit organizations are relatively small. Most sources say that about 80% of all nonprofits in the U.S. have budgets under $1Million. That means that, by far, most board members serve in organizations in the small to medium size range.
This is not to say that small to medium size organizations do not have high quality, well-educated and experienced board members. This would be a self-indictment because very few nonprofit boards I have served on were large organizations.
What I am saying is that smaller organizations typically have a smaller staff and fewer resources. This means that many times their focus on board development is not at the top of their priority list. Frankly, many are just trying to survive.
In fact, nonprofit organizations, in general, struggle to recruit board members. BoardSource reports that 58% of nonprofit leaders find it difficult to recruit new board members.
But board development, even beyond recruiting, must make it to near the top of the board’s list of priorities.
I submit to you, as shown in the study above, many board members are not trained well in governance, are not on-boarded properly, and are not really sure of what their responsibilities are.
This must change, and it is up to the board to do so.
But it will take some investment. This initial, sometimes sacrificial, investment will include time and money, two resources that many times are in short supply.
I believe the biggest investment must come from the board in setting their pride (individual and corporate) and personal agendas aside to assess who they truly are, their effectiveness, and their governance knowledge and experience.
Yes, a board must feel a sense of pride in their organization and their board service. But this can also get in the way.
There are any number of board assessment tools found with a quick search of the internet. They range from free to costly, from general to specific. They are there.
God led me to establish a free clinic in our city. In the beginning, I filled every executive position. Some of you are very familiar with this.
After about 2 years, it was time for us to move from a founding board to a governance board. I personally trained and read more and more about doing so, but became a nag to our board as I was trying to incorporate the principles I was learning.
It wasn’t until I hired an outside consultant who come in and taught the board about governance and responsibility basics that the organization as a whole moved into a position that it could truly grow and prosper beyond its founding. The organization continues to thrive now, many years later, even though I have not been leading it for quite some time.
(By the way founders, it may be time to step away for the growth and success of your organization....but that's a topic for another day)
The clinic really needed this third-party analysis and teaching. What I also recognized was that many of the organizations I had already served needed this exact thing, especially if they were newly founded in the prior 5 years. Their growth was stunted by not making that initial investment in foundation.
Board, it’s time to perform a Courageous Ask. It's time to ask tough questions. It’s time to push pride aside and let others in who can assess your strengths and weaknesses and help you grow. It’s time to educate your board for the benefit of your board and your organization.
Without performing this
Courageous Ask, a board will continually chase its tail, focusing on its own operation, and not focus on those things needed for effectiveness and growth in their board and organization.
These are the types of boards who take their collective eye off the ball and find themselves embroiled in scandal.
It’s time to make the investment.
Your clients are depending on it.
Be Courageous!
Be Proactive!
1
David F. Larcker et al., “2015 Survey on Board of Directors of Nonprofit Organizations,” Stanford Graduate School of Business, April 2015, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2015-survey-board-directors-nonprofit-organizations.
Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at
briankreeger.com. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My Story) of my book,
The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders.
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Executives -pastors or nonprofit executives in our context- are put on a pedestal. It’s not that the typical person necessarily believes they belong there or desires to put them there. But it is human nature that this happens. The general public often places much higher expectations on leaders than they do on themselves. Sometimes it is appropriate, and the leader has put themselves in that position. In some cases, it is simply scriptural. For instance, James 3 points out that those who teach will be judged more strictly, thereby heightening the expectations of those who lead and teach. But what about when we accept, and enact, those elevated expectations and forget the humanity of our leaders? Often a community heaps on a leader the expectation that they are to perform with the perfection of Jesus and not simply be a Jesus follower and disciple just like them, but with a unique calling and heightened responsibility. Too many times when a leader shows human imperfection, the respect we have for them is damaged. Leaders fall under strict judgment, and we forget they are no less fallible than us. The imperfection they have colors any positive experience we would have had with them otherwise. While most of us acknowledge this strict, hypocritical judgment and recognize it as not being how we want to treat our leaders, it is a difficult battle to fight in our own attitudes and minds. No matter who the leader is, they are not Jesus. But please allow me to reverently make some comparisons. (This blog focuses on starting a conversation centered on preventing the fall of nonprofit leaders. I write it from a Christian perspective, but all leaders will benefit. Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at briankreeger.com as well as taking a look at previous blog articles. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My story) of my book, The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders. )
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