CausePlanet Blog

For over two decades, I’ve had the honor and privilege of guiding hundreds of business executives and professionals in choosing the nonprofit boards on which they’ll serve epson scan 2 herunterladen. Each candidate experiences a personal journey exploring regional, national and perhaps global organizations, sorting through a plethora of causes and considering nonprofits that are at vastly different stages–from start-up enterprises to century-old institutions minecraft online downloaden.

When making their final choice, here are the seven considerations board candidates tend to take most seriously:

1. Am I excited about the mission bittorrent herunterladen? Is it meaningful enough for me to take time from my busy life, make generous financial contributions, and ask my company and friends to support the organization as well jaarplanner download excel?
2. Do I find the chief executive officer (executive director) compelling–someone I am confident in and look forward to working with minecraft kostenlos downloaden windows?
3. Do I find the programs compelling herunterladen? Are they achieving the work the organization has set out to do? (And if the programs need to be enhanced or streamlined, do the chief executive and/or the board seem prepared to make that happen?)
4. What is the revenue model herunterladen? What are the challenges? Do the CEO and board seem prepared to address the challenges?
5. Who are the board leaders ist es erlaubt bei youtube lieder zu downloaden? Do they seem to have a handle on the key issues facing the organization? Are they prepared to galvanize the board to strengthen the organization, including with financial support iphone klingeltöne herunterladen kostenlos?
6. What value can I add videostar pro herunterladen? Am I ready to do what they need from me? Do I think the CEO and board will actually engage me and appreciate what I can contribute?
7. Is this an organization with integrity, as evidenced by their adherence to legal and fiduciary duties and responsibilities? And if they are missing the mark on a few specific matters, what are they? Are the board and CEO interested and open to making corrections?

Deal breakers: Scaring away the board candidates you most want to recruit

Board candidates that bring diverse perspectives and valuable experience and resources are not lacking for board options. People are most likely to choose boards to which they can add value, not those that could possibly stymie their efforts.

Board candidates often consider the following to be deal breakers: too big and stale of a board to allow new board members to truly engage, obstructive or divisive board members, weak or incompetent CEO or board leadership, an obsolete board structure, lackluster board participation in attendance and/or giving/fundraising, and revenue challenges the leadership is unwilling to face.

The lesson for nonprofits in building highly effective boards

The key message for nonprofit boards is to pave the way to attract andretain the board members who will add the most value in helping to advance their organizations to their greatest potential. Pave the way by assessing your board and improving your board practices and effectiveness.

For their part, business executives and professionals are most effective onboards when they have considered a variety of options, made a meaningful choice and prepared themselves to “make the translation.” That’s when the fun begins. A good nonprofit board experience leads to remarkable results for the board member, the board member’scompany, and most importantly, the community.

See also:

Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses

A Fundraising Guide for Nonprofit Board Members

The Ultimate Board Member’s Book“

According to surveys by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, nonprofits face growing financial pressures while also experiencing greater demands for services sleipnir musik kostenlosen. At the same time, there are new funding opportunities for nonprofits, including corporations seeking to advance social and environmental purposes as well as investors and new philanthropists need for speed rivals download free full pc. The smartest NGOs/nonprofits will weather the financial threats while capturing substantial new revenues in the next several years.

The organizations that build the most effective boards of directors, who work in concert with their CEOs, will win; they will win by maximizing strategic and financial success google chrome for free for windows 10. So if your board is stale by a matter of years or decades, you most certainly need to build a new board. But even if you just recently completed a board-building process, it’s good to begin thinking about the next board members you want to recruit herunterladen.

In fact, each board should work on building the next board that will take the organization even farther to the next level.

Here’s WHY it’s important to continuously build the board:

The role of the board is not simply to provide oversight, but also to add value and advance the community in accomplishing its mission herunterladen. This happens best when the board is ambitious in achieving a greater vision.

The social and economic environment is so dynamic it’s essential for your NGO/nonprofit to engage board members with the most current, relevant expertise ringtone download van youtube.

It can take time to cultivate the most desirable candidates to your board. And often, busy people need to build the time into their schedules in order to fulfill the responsibilities of service minecraft pocket edition kostenlosen vollversion ios. So, they’ll say, “Yes,” if you give them a year or two to plan ahead.

It often takes more time to research and identify board candidates with diverse backgrounds and perspectives than it does to recruit the most obvious candidates book of ra kostenlosen ohne anmeldung. The investment is essential if your organization seeks to be relevant, enriching and fully meaningful.

There should be some planned turnover on your board in order to promote dynamic thinking and avoid stagnation driver for pc.

Here’s HOW to continuously build the board:

Imagine the organization’s greater vision in the next several years – in terms of communities you might serve; programs you might offer; strategic alliances; and key revenue sources including philanthropy, corporations, fees for services and government little drummer boy noten kostenlosen.

Consider people with the experience, networks of influence and diversity of perspectives who will be most valuable to the organization in achieving the greater vision.

Create a plan to recruit the best candidates. Establishing a clear role for the board and a board structure and practices that are highly effective and efficient are necessary steps to attract and retain the most desirable board candidates.

Create opportunities for leadership succession: create room for new board members without bulking up the board by rotating people off the board.

By the way, many of the most desirable candidates find it preferable to serve on a particular board – even possibly ascend to a leadership position – for a certain period of time and then have the opportunity to move on to serve another organization. They regard board service as a learning opportunity as well as a chance to contribute.

Pacing rotations thoughtfully and carefully for board leaders and members is important and depends on a variety of factors, including the complexity of the organization. Too quick of a rotation, leaders and board members will not have the opportunity to fully engage and contribute. Too long, board leaders and board members can potentially become stale, too dominant or cliquey.

In all cases, dynamic board-building is vital.

See also:

Leveraging Good Will

The Practitioner’s Guide to Governance as Leadership

The Ultimate Board Member’s Book

Image credit: vcg.org

Because so much of what board members do as a group is behind the scenes, we often forget the supremely important role they play in governing our nonprofits rockstar games herunterladen. Boards are a tricky aspect of leadership when you’re the executive director or CEO. When your board is ineffective, you have to succeed in spite of its mediocre performance 7 zip kostenlosen. When your board is exceptional, it can multiply your efforts tenfold. Ironically in either case, the board still oversees your organization. However, with Kay Grace’s Ultimate Board Member’s Book guidelines, you can have an impact on whether your board is a help or hindrance videos from 3sat mediathek.

Last week, in our live interview with Kay Sprinkel Grace, a participant asked “How do you ensure that a board is as equally concerned with fundraising as they are with governance?”

Define boundaries

Grace answered this question beautifully by addressing the importance of defining roles for a board member TV shows. “Too often I see board members drift into management areas rather than governance or fundraising, creating conflict with the staff,” says Grace microsoft office outlook 2007 gratisen. It’s up to the board development committee (see Grace’s discussion on this committee) to explain what the boundaries are when someone is recruited and trained herunterladen. In other words, “This is your job as a board member and this is the management team’s job…” says Grace.

Keep them inspired

Secondly, keeping board members on task with governance and fundraising is a matter of keeping them inspired zum herunterladen filme. Mission-level work and policy setting are heady tasks, and without any inspiration, it’s easy to see why some members float into undesignated areas inpa ediabas 7.3 german free of charge. “Board members join you because they care about your organization or feel a connection with someone they respect on the board,” Kay adds. It’s up to you to keep them inspired so they feel invigorated to raise funds as well as focus on governance, policy setting, or budgeting musik downloaden für auto.

Mission moments

If instead, you dazzle them during their recruitment process and leave them to the business of governing without regularly bolstering them with “mission moments,” you’re asking the board member to find their own inspiration kartenspiele canasta kostenlosen. Left to themselves, they’ll gravitate toward the familiar, which are usually management matters. Mission moments are simply a time during the meetings when important mission-related anecdotal information is shared to inspire and motivate, says Grace.

Get them comfortable with the task of fundraising

Another surefire way of driving your board members to find tasks outside of their job description is to shoulder them with fundraising without any input. Without any say in how they are involved in development, some board members will identify another focus that isn’t necessarily helpful to the board objectives.

AAA fundraising

Kay Sprinkel Grace introduces a terrific way for addressing every level of comfort and expertise with fundraising at the board level in her book, The AAA Way to Fundraising Success. The process begins with asking your board to choose from three different roles in fundraising: 1) Ambassador, 2) Advocate, and 3) Asker. Then you spread the choices your board members have made on a matrix and develop a plan based on who will ask, advocate or serve as ambassador. “Because board members have chosen the role they want to play, their willingness to fulfill the identified role is amazing,” says Grace. Grace’s number one rule in this AAA program is that everyone is at least an ambassador.

What results from defining roles, keeping members inspired and implementing this AAA process is a board that is equally confident with raising money as they are with governing the organization.

See also:

The AAA Way to Fundraising Success

The Ultimate Board Member’s Book

The Nonprofit Leadership Team

I have been asked numerous times by clients to describe what a “good board” looks like. I understand the point of the question–what is the right size, what are the right committees, etc. But asking what a board should look like misses the more important point, which is this: a good board is defined not by what it looks like but rather how it thinks and behaves upc app herunterladen.

Based on my work as both a consultant and board chair for a large nonprofit, I have concluded a “good board” exhibits three essential and interrelated characteristics.

1.      A good board is one in which form follows function. “Do we need a marketing committee?” is the poster question for this phenomenon seitenen. The answer is, of course, “It depends.” Specifically, it depends on a) what your organization is trying to accomplish strategically and b) what you need from your board to make it happen. I have seen valuable time wasted trying to fill committee slots simply because the committee exists on paper. If the people were in place, one should ask, what would we have them do herunterladen? If there is no compelling answer, chances are your board has been wasting energy trying to create a function to fill an existing form.

2.      A good board is one whose work is aligned with the life stage of the organization. As we know from the excellent work on “nonprofit lifecycles” from Susan Kenney Stevens, nonprofits move through predictable stages of development paint 3d kostenlos downloaden. However, not all aspects of the organization move forward in lockstep. Usually, it is the board role that lags behind the evolution of the program model and the administrative systems. One key consideration for the board of a maturing organization is to have an honest discussion about how far removed from the “inner circle” its members are drawn funny videos for mobile phone. As a start-up or young organization, the board is made up of people who have a direct personal connection to the mission and/or are drawn to the charisma of the founder. The work of the board at this stage consists of gathering together, rolling up the collective sleeves and pitching in to get the work done. Unfortunately, some boards unwittingly create a mismatch of interest and skill by retaining the same board orientation long after the other aspects of the organization have settled izip herunterladen. The board that is able to reorient its work and perhaps even repopulate its committees to support the emerging needs of the organization is positioned to become a good board.

3.      A good board is one that values principles over practices liederen gratis youtube. I have written about the shortcomings of a “best practices” approach, particularly when too much credence is given to merely mimicking the practices of other organizations. (The short version of the argument is that things work in a particular context because of everything else that is going on within that context). By contrast, effectiveness principles focus on the desired ends and the manner in which those ends are pursued minecraft vollversion kostenlosen windows 10.

For me, it boils down to three key principles:

Effective Oversight. Oversight means striking the balance between trust and verification. Financial crises don’t develop overnight but over time. Too often, boards are forced to respond in crisis mode because they didn’t ask the right questions, didn’t ask the right questions soon enough or simply fell into the trap of fraudulence because they didn’t verify the identity of the external element with the help of a company like Fully-Verified amazon prime videos auf den pc herunterladen. Like the frog in the boiling water, a board that doesn’t pay close attention to the elements in the environment may discover too late things are getting hot.

Open Communication. I have been involved in more than one contentious discussion about the “need to know.” Here’s the deal: there are no degrees or ranks when it comes to board authority herunterladen. Anything important enough for the board chair or executive committee to know is important enough for every board member to know. Granted, sensitive personnel issues may be better kept under a tight lid. But this is the exception. Nothing is more disengaging for board members than the presence of a pocket of power (and information is power) within the board.

Strict Accountability. Simply put, some boards are just too darn nice to each other. Yes, the board was relying on the resource development committee to plan the upcoming event. And it didn’t get done. But they are very busy people…you shouldn’t expect too much from them. Really? To quote a former client, “Board members should be expected to bleed for the organization.” If you sign up, you are expected to perform. Period.

When it comes to board “goodness,” there really is no there. People change, issues emerge and priorities shift. But focusing on these three characteristics will allow boards to maintain consistency of purpose even in the midst of changing structures.

See also:

A Fundraising Guide for Nonprofit Board Members

The Ultimate Board Member’s Book

The Board Game

Many nonprofit executives, development officers and board members are eager to recruit business people from diverse backgrounds to their boards because they think business people will come in and solve their financial and strategic challenges herunterladen. Other nonprofit leaders are more circumspect about recruiting business people to the board. Who’s correct–the believers or the cynics? Both.

Here are the six WORST reasons to recruit business people to your nonprofit board of directors:

Assume they’ll give you lots of money deutsche bahn ticket herunterladen.

Assume they’ll get their corporations to give you money.

Assume they’ll raise money from rich friends and colleagues.

Assume they’ll bring business expertise to the table Forza street free download.

Assume they’ll be dedicated board members.

Assume they’ll be passionate about the mission.

Here are the six BEST reasons to recruit business people to your nonprofit board of directors:

Expect they’ll give you lots of money musik kostenlos herunterladen auf handy.

Expect they’ll get their corporations to give you money.

Expect they’ll raise money from rich friends and colleagues.

Expect they’ll bring business expertise to the table lieder von youtube downloaden mac.

Expect they’ll be dedicated board members.

Expect they’ll be passionate about the mission.

Let me explain.

Having trained and placed several hundred business executives on global, national and regional nonprofit boards, I can attest to the tremendous value they provide to the boards they serve herunterladen. In fact, the vast majority of these board members have ascended to board leadership positions, including serving as board chairs and officers and heading up capital campaigns, strategic alliances and other game-changing initiatives antivirus scanner kostenlos download.

The keys to getting business people on board who will actually bring the resources, business acumen, dedication and passion the board needs in order to advance the organization are the following:

establishing a purposeful and thoughtful match between the board candidate and your organization, based on what the candidate has and wants to offer and what your board needs herunterladen.

having candid conversations with the board candidate about the financial and strategic challenges facing your organization and how the board hopes she or he in particular can add value–in very specific terms, such as financial contributions, fundraising, expertise, time and introductions word kostenlos herunterladen studenten.

understanding what about the organization is compelling to the particular candidate and making sure the role you need and expect him or her to play will be personally meaningful and rewarding mailbox nachricht downloaden.

organizing the board so that board members can engage meaningfully and productively and making sure there is adequate staff support for the board to deliver.

Boards and board members become disillusioned and disappointed with each other when expectations are not clear upfront, the board environment is too dysfunctional for board members to engage productively, and there is a failure in leadership to advance forward momentum.

Boards and board members thrive when expectations are established and agreed upon at the outset, the board is organized for efficiency and effectiveness, the staff supports the board in implementing its work, and the board chair and CEO work in partnership to engage the board in maximizing its potential.

The best boards work in collaboration with the CEO to envision the organization’s greater potential, determine and commit to core programs for high impact, establish a sustainable revenue model, and work in concert to achieve strategic and financial success. The best boards are comprised of people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives who together have a deeper understanding of the issues they are addressing and the capacity to find the best solutions. Click here for more specific information and articles on building quality boards.

Boards that recruit and engage business people purposefully and thoughtfully will gain the full benefit of their business acumen, passion, commitment, financial resources and introductions. And a board comprised of people from diverse backgrounds with the will and the might to succeed will propel the organization to achieve its greatest potential in service to the community.

See also:

Leveraging Good Will

The Nonprofit Leadership Team

Leaders Make the Future

Image credit: theburnerblog.com