As you may have gathered if you regularly check-in to my blog, I have become vary focused on the importance and role of the nonprofit board chair. I have come to believe that the success of a nonprofit, at any given point in time, depends as much on the paid leader as the volunteer leader.
My believe in the importance of the nonprofit board chair has me paying great attention to the selection and training/orienting of board chairs and hence today's blog. Earlier this year, the Patriarch of the Egyptian Coptic Church died. Now I will recognize that the Church and position of Patriarch is a bit different than the average nonprofit and average nonprofit chair but bear with me.
While the article was very brief regarding the selection of the Patriarch, what was said was that a young boy was selected to put his hand in a hat and pull out one of the three slips of paper. On each slip was a prospective Patriarch.
Hm, not much better than american-idol type voting you might say. But I'm thinking that the electoral college (or some such body of the Egyptian Coptic Church), using some criteria establshed some 2000+ years ago, identifies all the best candidates and winnows the option down to three. These three I'm thinking have been really vetted and principle would say that they all would bring something very special to the role such that the Church would not suffer if any is selected.
Now, imagine a nonprofit board adopting this process. It could certainly reduce the political element of selection -- no?