Nonprofit Board Crisis

Nonprofit Board Fiduciary Duty: Competing Interests? #NonprofitBoards #NonprofitBoardCompetingInterest

Can one board truly fulfill its fiduciary duty if it has two nonprofits to oversee?  How might conflicts of interest borne out through a "rob Paul to pay Peter" risk?

These are the questions that come to mind when reviewing the case of Tuachan High School and Tuachan Center for the Arts: two nonprofits operated by pretty much the same board.  And yes, according to the students, they are getting the shorter end of the stick in what appears to be governance that favors the art center over the school  where the school is effectively subsidizing the art center but not giving returns equal to the subsidy.  And there lays the problem and the question: how does the board not have a conflict of interest? 

I dare say that it does appear that the board is not fulfilling its fiduciary duty to ensure the mission of the school over the mission of the Center for the Arts (which is quite a place if you check-out their website).  I suppose one might ask if the board really embraced developing a school for the purpose of education versus generating revenue (a social venture)?  And if so, is this justifiable in the interest of the students?  And if not, is this not a huge fail on the part of the board?  

Charter Schools are important educational vehicles that provide opportunities otherwise not available through the regular public school systems.  They are also entities that often require a lot of effort on the fundraising front.  So, this does feel rare that it should be the school that is the revenue generator for the Center.  But perhaps.  Anyway, one answer is to create a board whose sole interest is the school and its students.  This board and the school could become a subsidiary of the Arts Center ensuring that the board of the School would be focused.  It clearly isn't optimal in the current arrangement.

From kjzz.com we learn:

It turns out the board who runs the arts center also runs the school. Nearly every member of the board, with the exception of one, makes up both boards. Merida said no one is looking out for the interests of the school.

We think that presents a conflict of interest because more times than not, the Tuacahn Center for the Arts, is the priority and Tuacahn High School gets left behind,” she said.

This lopsided arrangement has sparked the interest of the Utah State Charter School Board, which issued a stern letter to the school and is demanding Tuacahn leaders fix all the problems. The charter school board is also demanding the Tuacahn officials answer questions at the charter board’s next meeting in April. If Tuacahn doesn’t correct the issues, the school could face disciplinary action.

Read the letter issued by the Utah State Charter School Board here.

NOC for Tuacahn High School for the Performing Arts by McKenzie Stauffer on Scribd

 

Nonprofit Board and the Public #NonprofitBoards #NonprofitPublicRelations #NonprofitAppearanceMatters

In what is at minimum a bad PR move, early in the shot distribution, two Rhode Island Hospitals opted to give their board members COVID-19 shots.  And guess what: there were no government rules that said the hospital couldn't so they did.  This means that mostly rich folks got shots ahead of the crowd.

I'm not remembering the source, but one of the BIGGEST issue for the average US citizen is not being treated fairly or as the report stated - being able to cut in line.  It's just not fair!  So, while parts of the Boston Globe article that described this situation notes, the hospitals defended their move citing that the board worked as hard as the medical practitioners.  Really? I ask.  Not likely is the answer but there you have the explanation.

So no - nothing legally violated with this move but there remain issues and most importantly, questions of trust, for the public some of which feels cheated.  And is that surprising.  Skipping the line is never warmly received and even less so when individual lives are at stake.  

My take: these boards should have a long discussion about personal and corporate values and what makes them, board members so special, more special than citizens- past, current and prospective customers.  Funny enough, there's an old principle that humongous corporations like hospitals, toward the end of a capital campaign, invite the public to make smaller gifts and buy bricks or plaques or whatever with the rationale being that these gifts matter and that this institution is owned equally by the "small" folk as much as the "big" folk.  Having board members skip the line and get the COVID shot makes it unclear as to how really important and true the "small" folk are as "owners".

Is an apology due, sure, at the very least.  

Here's the source of the Boston Globe story and some clips follow.

“Lifespan and CNE, even absent better direction from RIDOH, should have realized that offering vaccinations to this small, yet privileged subset undermined public confidence in the system writ large, particularly when, at the same time, the public was receiving communications from RIDOH indicating how very constrained and limited the eligibility was,” Neronha wrote to the two hospitals groups. “This erosion of public confidence in the fairness of the process undermines broader willingness to follow the rules.”

Lifespan and Care New England, Rhode Island’s largest- and second-largest hospital groups, ignited a firestorm of criticism in January after revelations that they decided to vaccinate members of their boards with the doses they were receiving from the state.

Those unpaid board members include influential Rhode Islanders and wealthy donors who have no patient-facing roles.

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The vaccinations came at a time when most elderly Rhode Islanders couldn’t get shots because of how scarce the doses were. Rhode Island was reported to be slower than any other state to make broader swaths of seniors eligible.

Like other states, Rhode Island first rolled out the vaccines to hospitals and nursing homes in December 2020. As seniors waited, more health care workers were made eligible, from dentists to chiropractors to doulas. Vaccines were also made available to first responders, inmates and prison guards, and other vulnerable groups.

Hospitals, meanwhile, rolled out vaccines beyond the emergency-room staffers who were eligible in mid-December. At Lifespan and Care New England, that included board members within a month of the first vaccines going out. Lifespan included its board of directors and its individual hospitals’ foundation trustees in its eligible groups.

As criticism grew, Lifespan said the board members play a critical role in the functioning of the hospital, and had worked hard throughout the pandemic.

Care New England, which owns Kent Hospital in Warwick, R.I., offered its vaccines to board members across its system. That included its board of directors and the board of trustees at The Providence Center, a mental health and addiction treatment provider. Care New England also owns Women & Infants Hospital, among other health care institutions.

 

Care New England said 17 of its board of directors and affiliate boards opted to be vaccinated; Lifespan told Neronha that it couldn’t say how many had done so, but that they offered the COVID-19 vaccine to 110 volunteer board members. That includes some people who would otherwise have been eligible, like doctors who serve on the board.

 

According to responses the Health Department gave Neronha’s office, neither Lifespan nor Care New England sought permission to vaccinate board members.

Care New England didn’t seek permission to start vaccinating its last wave of employees and volunteers at all, Neronha said, though the hospital system had several telephone calls with RIDOH officials in which they “confirmed they had a similar overall perspective . . . on how the allotment of vaccine to our health system was to be used,” according to the review.

Lifespan told the Health Department that it wanted to start vaccinating people “including remote workers who are very much essential to the safe and effective operations of the hospital.” But it made no mention of board members.

After the vaccinations were publicly revealed, Neronha said, the Health Department sent Lifespan a letter telling it to stop vaccinating its lowest tier of workers and instead to shift into vaccinating community providers.

The Health Department, meanwhile, told Neronha that the decision to vaccinate board members was “neither in conformity with, nor in violation of, RIDOH’s directives and guidance.”

The Department of Health also told Neronha that it “does not believe that the decisions to vaccinate the members of the boards, when they were vaccinated, were appropriate.”

 

Dr. Timothy Babineau, the president and chief executive of Lifespan, said in an e-mailed statement: “Lifespan has played an important role for the state in combating this pandemic for more than a year. We have been committed to the equitable and efficient distribution of vaccines from the very beginning of the statewide vaccination program. Our intent and actions have always been to work in accordance with the guidelines received from the Rhode Island Department of Health.”

Care New England said in an e-mailed statement in part: “During the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, Care New England has worked diligently to vaccinate its workforce, as well as patients, in order to provide the highest quality of care to everyone in our community.”

 

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Brian Amaral can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44.

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Making Virtual Board Meetings Better #Nonprofitboards #NonprofitVirtualBoardMeetings

What follows are 13 concrete virtual meeting-improvement suggestions from the Stanford Social Innovation Review.  Helpful stuff.

 

Leading Boards in a Virtual World

Thirteen ideas to keep boards effective and cohesive in a remote environment.

By Mark Zitter & Jon Huggett Mar. 17, 2021

Ways to Build Board Effectiveness Virtually

1. Connect members to the mission. Virtual meetings can include elements that remind members why they are serving. In fact, giving members an “impact fix”—a reminder of the organization’s positive impact—builds joy and energy, and can be easier virtually than in person. One way to do this is via short, mission-related video clips. Over the past year, for example, the music nonprofit  SFJAZZ has opened and closed its board meetings with videos of performances it produced.

2. Recruit members who found it hard to attend meetings in person. Virtual work makes it easier to bring on people who otherwise couldn’t make meetings due to geography, commute time, or family reasons like childcare. Organizations such as the San Francisco-based National AIDS Memorial, which until recently had few members outside the Bay Area due to travel costs, are now are actively engaging members across the United States.

3. Onboard new members virtually. The more-abrupt and -transactional nature of virtual working can make the integration of new members harder, especially if they’re from communities previously unrepresented on the board and might have fewer pre-existing relationships with other board members. It’s worth investing extra time to integrate new members virtually through formal orientation sessions and unstructured social meetings with the chair, other officers, or even an assigned “board buddy.” For example, Paul Levitan, vice chair of the Stanford GSB Management Board, spends one-on-one time with new directors in advance of their first all-member meeting.

4. Schedule shorter and more-frequent meetings. People are less tolerant of long virtual meetings than they are of in-person sessions. We tire more quickly on virtual platforms like Zoom for a number of reasons, including intense eye contact. Rather than holding three-hour, in-person meetings quarterly, some boards are seeing better attendance and more engagement with 90- or 120-minute virtual meetings every six weeks. As chair of the Zetema Project, a nonprofit aimed at improving the US health care system by building relationships among influential leaders, Mark (co-author of this piece) has found that more-frequent and -focused meetings have enhanced cohesion between members and contributed to a stronger sense of community.

5. Reconsider meeting times. Boards used to schedule meetings around lunch, to avoid rush hour, or after work hours. The option for shorter meetings, less commuting, and in some cases more-flexible work schedules facilitate attendance for members who live in different time zones or have strict personal schedules. For example, Liz Bender of the poverty-fighting organization Tipping Point Community said, “Our board travels [a lot normally], so many find it hard to come to in-person meetings. But 23 out of the 25 board members attended our last meeting on Zoom—one of the best attendance we’ve ever had.”

6. Minimize reporting and maximize discussion. Making virtual meetings engaging requires careful choreography. Using the advance board packet to efficiently convey important information and focusing discussion and decision-making around just two or three issues are both good practices. Daryl Messenger of Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational arm of Reform Judaism in North America, advises: “Limit screen share to as few slides as possible so that people can see each other. Pre-record information-sharing and keep the meeting about discussion. This requires a different culture about prep for meetings: Folks need to have read the material.”

7. Make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. As virtual meetings can be shorter, with tighter agendas, it can be easy to overlook board members who are cautious about speaking up. To help ensure that people chime in, Mark makes a checklist of members he wants to hear from during any given meeting. And as chair of the global movement for LGBT equality All Out, Jon (co-author of this piece) used gallery view to see, hear, and keep track of everyone without straining his neck and ears.

8. Make the most of virtual tools to boost participation. Virtual platform tools such as breakout rooms, polls, and chat boxes can facilitate engagement and increase connection between members. They help generate input from members and turn otherwise passive listeners into active participants. In fact, Baker’s case study shows that they can make virtual engagement even easier than in-person engagement. Breakout rooms allow all members to opine on issues in small groups during meeting segments that can be as short as 15 minutes. Polls allow a range of answers, rather than a simple vote with a show of hands, and they can be anonymous to enhance candor. Chat boxes let everyone answer a question simultaneously and raise questions without stopping the flow of the discussion.

9. Take charge when conflict erupts. Conflict over ideas can be healthy and productive in any meeting, but in virtual meetings where it’s harder to read body language, it can be harder to anticipate and manage well. When conflict turns personal or offensive, it damages cohesion, especially when it arises between board members who don’t have well-established relationships. When tempers or offensive remarks flare, it’s important that the chair acknowledge them and be prepared to mute or even expel members if their behavior persists.

10. Give people a chance to get to know each other personally at every meeting. People join boards in part to make connections and friendships with other members, but that’s much harder to do virtually. Leaders can prompt personal connection in an informal way by asking where everyone is and how they are, or do something more structured, such as asking members to respond to a revealing prompt or using breakout rooms liberally. Lisa Wolverton of the global philanthropy network The Philanthropy Workshop commented that just seeing other people’s homes via Zoom creates a deeper sense of personal connection.

11. Use board work outside meetings to build connections. Some boards are increasing the number of committee meetings they hold and promoting work in smaller groups to enhance relationships and build board cohesion. Andrew Barnett, chair of the community-building network Church Urban Fund, noted, “We encourage bilateral connections. We can create one-on-one pairings, task groups, and committees with the dual purpose of making something happen and connecting board members.”

12. Organize social events outside meetings to foster relationships. Sometimes we need unstructured time to get to know people. With this in mind, the board of the National AIDS Memorial created a monthly “water cooler session”—a virtual drop-in session with no agenda. Board member Lonnie Payne remarked, “At first I was skeptical, but it has proven very successful. There is always a good number [of members] that show up.”

13. Make it a team effort. If all of this sounds overwhelming, it is. Or rather, it is if you do it on your own. We suggest that chairs assign meeting roles to directors, such as greeter, chat monitor, and tech lead. Baker even uses a detailed run sheet to organize his board meeting’s many moving parts. This kind of teamwork helps build cohesion too. Peter Babudu, chair of Blagrave Trust, a foundation supporting youth charities, told us, “I do think working on things together, seeing each other in action, making difficult decisions together, really helps strengthen bonds.”

 

Jon Huggett (@jonhuggett) was the first chair of the Social Innovation Exchange, which has members across Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Australia. He has also chaired the boards of Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, STOP AIDS Project in San Francisco, Khulisa in the United Kingdom, and the global campaign All Out. Huggett also serves on the board of One Million Mentors and advises businesses and social enterprises around the world. 

Mark Zitter (@markzitter) chaired SFJAZZ, the West Coast’s largest jazz presenter; is the founding chair of The Zetema Project; and was chair and CEO of Zitter Health Insights and Vital Decisions. He also serves on the governance committee of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation and mentors nonprofit board chairs.

Community Advisory "Boards" #NonprofitBoards

So before presenting this very helpful American Press Institute article on how to start and manage a Community Advisory Board, I have to declare one more time, among many in the future I am sure, that these bodies ARE NOT BOARDS!  They have NO authority.  They have no fiduciary responsibility.  BUT, they can be valuable.  

That said, the American Press Institute has very helpfully put out this "mini" manual to guide those who would consider adding to their structure, a group of community advisors.  Given that many nonprofit boards are really only in touch with their networks, usually pretty small, and tend not to really "listen" to hear how to make their their nonprofits even more successful, except maybe during fundraising times, and even then, not really, nonprofits, not just media nonprofits would really do well to create a body that can indeed provide advice.  Yes, this has to be an investment that produces and truly guides.  Yes, the institution must really want listen and act.  Yes, this will require some staff time, often competing with other demands including ironically, the very board that doesn't offer these added benefits.  

So, please, take a look and appreciate and consider. Community Advisory "boards" (councils) pose a real and tangible opportunity and benefit to every nonprofit.

It just so happens that I came across one more piece from Nieman Lab that does an even better job at describing a way to increase the role to a meaningful level of these advisory groups - 

Animal Shelter Board Needs Sheltering #NonprofitBoards #AnimalShelterBoardFail

According to HottyToddy.com, the Oxford Animal shelter has just lost its contract for really bad behavior.  The shelter, Mississippi Critterz, not only didn't do its job but did it badly.

Now in my opinion, animal shelters are one of those passion projects where volunteers (1000's according to their website) and staff and board members operate freely and willingly often impatient if a space isn't available for them to do their job.  And, it is rare, in my observation, that those who serve on Shelter boards don't regularly visit if for no other reason than to "touch" the shelter residents.

So what happened at the Mississippi shelter where 

The shelter came under fire last month after a complaint was filed with the Oxford Police Department by several former employees and volunteers claiming neglect, overcrowding and lack of medical care. OPD and the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department investigated the claims, and while they did not press criminal charges, they reported back to their respective governing boards that were many issues noted at the shelter.

Two veterinarians also issued a report last week claiming the shelter “violates even the most basic standards of care for animals in animal shelters” 

Precisely what trees was the shelter board barking up that they didn't see what everyone else has seen?  Some kind of deal with the exec?  Board members gaining financially in some way (maybe someone sells the food and another .....)

Anyway, the prize for shaming of the day goes to the board of the Mississippi Crittez.  May they bark in peace!

Nonprofit Boards Can Prove Helpful to CEOs #NonprofitBoards

The following Capital Research book review offers some key thoughts on nonprofit board/ceo work particularly about how the work of the board can prove helpful to execs - not just a myth.

 

BOOK PROFILE

Ken Dayton on Good Nonprofit-Board Governance

 

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by Michael E. Hartmann

MARCH 15, 2021

 

British arts administrator and journalist John Tusa’s new On Board: The Insider’s Guide to Surviving Life in the Boardroom includes some helpful material about nonprofit boards in particular. In its second chapter, Tuso describes his experience serving on the board of the Minnesota-based American Public Radio (APR), which he joined in 1991.

 

“In the 1990s, American Public Radio grew from 19 full-time employees and some $3 million in revenues to more than 40 full-time employees and $20 million in revenues,” according to an excerpt of On Board last week in ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. APR internationalized “its programming and purpose by changing its name to Public Radio International (PRI),” and it became “a ‘publisher’ of programming, not just a distributor. Funds were raised to initiate ground-breaking programs such as The World (international news) in cooperation with BBC World Service” and the weekly This American Life program, among others.

“I do not believe that the transformation of a tiny Midwestern radio network into a major player on the US national media scene would have happened without a serious, rigorous foundation in the way it was governed,” Tosu writes. “Governance supported and supervised management, it was as simple as that. It needed thought, belief and work and was striking to witness in action.”

Power, Weakness, Trouble

The network’s first chairman, Ken Dayton, had gained a national reputation for his successful nonprofit leadership—along with his previous, also-successful leadership of the Dayton Hudson shopping stores—and he was willing to share his thoughts about it with others, as he did in his 1987 “Governance is Governance” paper from Independent Sector and up until he died in 2003.

“Dayton warned of deficiencies in not-for-profit boards, where either the paid executive surrendered its powers to the chair, or where chairs and boards, volunteers one and all, gladly usurped executive responsibilities,” writes Tuso of Dayton, who also served on the boards of the Rockefeller and Mayo Foundations and the J. Paul Getty Trust. Both of those deficiencies do seem familiar.

“Any institution—for-profit or not-for-profit—that has an all-powerful Chair or a weak CEO,” Dayton notes in “Governance is Governance,” “is an institution in trouble or surely is one headed for trouble.” That’s recognizable, yes.

A Warning, and an Exhortation

“Dayton had a special warning for executives in the non-profit sector,” though—the too many of them “who said they didn’t want a board ‘looking over my shoulder, second-guessing me, reviewing my performance,’” according to Tuso in On Board. “To any such executive, [Dayton] advised, ‘If you really want to build that institution into a dynamic force in society, they can do it so much more effectively if you have a dynamic, effective board.’ Supervision, review and challenge were essential elements in the path to good performance.”

And Dayton had an exhortation for nonprofit directors. “[W]hen we sign on as trustees,” he notes in “Governance is Governance,”

we also sign on as volunteers agreeing in essence to undertake any assignment reasonably asked of us. That’s the only difference between a corporate board and a not-for-profit board. The corporate board will usually only be asked to undertake this additional role when the corporation is in real trouble. But our kinds of boards are asked to play this double role all the time. Individuals should not be invited to serve on such a board unless they are totally willing to undertake the volunteer side as well as the governance side of a trustee’s responsibility. So a CEO is a CEO, but a trustee is a governor and a volunteer.

Overall, “Ken Dayton’s observations have a pleasing directness and a deceptive simplicity,” Tuso concludes. “His advice has no theory in it, no abstractions, just an attractive clarity of thought which should compel acceptance. Yet, over the years, the evidence is that even with the best of advice available to them, many American [nonprofit] boards still struggle to put it into practice.”

Abstractless clarity of thought, to make some familiar nonprofit-governance deficiencies less so.

(Hat tip to Neil Hrab for bringing the book excerpt to my attention.)

Nonprofit Board Behavior #NonprofitBoards

While I honestly can't say I am 100% certain of how every word of wisdom shared by Dr. Fram's blog connects to his question of whether nonprofits should act more like businesses, the following advice makes for interesting consideration.  At the same time I do have questions about each of the bullets and have added these where I saw the need.

So, from Eugene Fram:

To effectively change the course for a nonprofit: the board needs to:
• Reduce the number of board standing committees that hamper effective board operations and misuse board personnel - I concur - I don't see the need for more than a Governance Committee and a Finance and Sustainability Committee and certainly NOT an Executive Committee but that's just me.
• Build a high level of trust between board members, management staff - that's pretty much up to the CEO and Board Chair - their relationship pretty much defines the rest.
• Overview organizational operations and management development, not attempt to micromanage them - yes but kind of depends on the board's stage of development and what is needed from the board at a particular time in it's development
• View the CEO as a professional peer, not as a servant - hm
• Conduct a robust evaluation of the CEO and the organization annually - absolutely!
• Pinpoint management’s responsibility and clarify its accountability - kind-of goes back to the relationship and the defined role
• Develop a partnership between the board and management to develop funds - um, ok but I think more than a partnership will be needed.
• Allow for more management flexibility to develop a more entrepreneurial culture - but not act like a business?
• Increase focus on productivity and impacts at the expense of bureaucratic processes - and back to evaluation....

Community Board: Excellent Intentions, Poor Nomenclature #NonprofitBoards #ABoardIsABoard

Three cheers for the Town of Antrim, New Hampshire, practicing democracy even during a time when it is so difficult for most to do so.  And guess what: no one is claiming the decisions made at the Town Meeting were rigged or false!  Yes, it's a rare day in America when Americans get to practice being Americans and there is faithfulness to process and honesty among the voters.

Now, all that said, I must once again raise my hand over one decision in particular.  I should be straight forward however to note that it is not the decision but what they have decided to label what the town has agreed to.  The decision: create a body of community-elected folks who will organize to look out for the town citizens and inform more fully those who are elected to make decisions for the town.  Imagine again, the citizens have decided to have citizens look out for them.  Hmm, we typically over quite a number of years only see half of the body that has this duty, standing-up and trying to do what is best for the citizenry.  

BUT this new body is being called, for short, the Community Board.  But it will be acting more as a Council and it has no fiduciary responsibilities.  It is not really a "board".  While it's advice and study will hopefully be taken seriously, it is not a board and it has no authority to enforce what it recommends.

From the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, here's a description of the newly launched Antrim Community Board:

Antrim became the first town in the state to establish a community board after voters overwhelmingly approved the measure at Town Meeting Thursday night. The board is tasked with enhancing public health, prosperity, quality of life, safety, and general welfare of all town residents. Residents passed all articles on the warrant, and all five zoning ordinance amendments passed during ballot voting on Tuesday.

It’s been legal since 2008 for a town to establish a community services and care planning board, as one might establish a conservation commission, yet no town had gone through the process until Thursday night.

The Community Board will deliver annual reports, ...., and, unlike a nonprofit’s board of directors, board members will be elected by residents on a rolling (I might quibble with this statement, there are boards that do engage residents for a vote to select a portion of members) basis starting next year, and all meeting proceedings are available to the public. That means accountability, transparency, and long-term stability, she said.

Like land use planning boards, certain goals identified by the Community Board will eventually work their way into the town’s Master Plan, Allen said. Unlike land use planning, community board initiatives will come with detailed action steps, as per state guidance. “We aren’t going to approve a project unless it brings with it enough volunteers and resources to make it happen,” Allen said.

The Board’s work will center on a community asset database, Allen said, a project that’s already collected input from almost 100 residents. The information allows Board members to group people by interests and skills to tackle projects that improve quality of life, such as a suicide prevention-focused group, he said, as well as more innocuous endeavors, like connecting people in town who want to know more about woodworking.

So there you have it - not a Community Board but definitely a Community Council.  My counsel: don't use the word "board" when what is really intended is some other structure and/or function.

 

Book Review: Onboarding Champions #NonprofitBoardRecruitment #OnboardingChampions #JamesMueller

The never ending scramble to identify, recruit and integrate individuals who will serve on nonprofit boards continues throughout the world.  Recruitment might, for many nonprofit boards, appear to be the most difficult task taken by those who serve as the fiduciary guardians for the public (although equal in size to hiring an executive).  And, at least for this moment in history, the task of identifying and attracting individuals for service who have more of a stake in the results of a nonprofit's mission has risen to the top of criteria for recruitment. 

"Onboarding Champions: The Seven Recruiting Principles of Highly Effective Nonprofit Boards" by James Mueller is a newly released book focuses on two subjects: nonprofit board recruitment and onboarding (you know, bringing newbies into the fold - the generally sorely forgotten or underperformed function by nonprofit boards).  Mr. Mueller is a sharp writer who is concise and thoughtful and particularly easy to read with concepts equally easy to digest.  In Onboarding Champions, Mr. Mueller proposes that there are seven essential practices that will produce desired results presuming that the board has indeed determined what are those desired results.  I would concur with Mr. Mueller's conclusion that determining the results is indeed the task that, well, produces results.

So, the seven principles? culture, character, competence, connections, composition, continuity and collaboration.  Nice alliteration, no?  Simple to remember, not really; boards will want to create a checklist or simply turn to the end of the book where a helpful assessment "tool" is offered taking each of these principles, offering a range of options (essentially) what each is if not, somewhat, and fully practiced and then providing questions to consider about what is discovered assuming the board answering the questions is honest.  This tool is mightily helpful in understanding the concepts proposed in the book and lend easily toward application.  This assessment tool, again, singularly focused on recruitment and onboarding, not necessarily, all of governance, is helpful and I would pose that Mr. Mueller's contribution to the field might best be captured with the release of a laminated 4x8 card that contains the same information or even better a deck of 7 laminated 2x4 cards plus a question card.  

I do have two quibbles with this offering to the sector.  First, referring to board members as "champions" is a little too cheerleader-esq for me.  Sure, nonprofit board members may indeed, in their career as nonprofit board members, take-on the mantle of championing the mission but do they deserve a medal and title for this volunteer effort?  Likely not.  Yes, nonprofit board members have stepped up to fill a gap which the public has chosen to sideline or where there is not enough financial incentive for the corporate sector to take-up but in this case I would pose that many, many, many folks deserve the label and medal and do a whole lot more to earn it than do volunteer board members.  But I suppose the title is more about lifting up this service than much else.  Given the times, I would have been happier to see something like "Nonprofit Board Recruitment: Getting it Correct".  Nope, not "sexy" but precise.

My other quibble and again, starting with the title: the language of "highly effective" is used to offer that highly effective boards embrace these principles.   And what exactly are "highly effective boards"?  Is highly effective up to the board to define.  And while I recognize that Jim Collins (Good to Great) does indeed pose that "getting the right people on the bus" is an essential element toward success (versus effectiveness), there is in the use of this language something missing.  I would have most appreciated at least a chapter dedicated to interpreting what exactly constitutes "highly effective" and then makes the link to the role of recruitment and onboarding.  But perhaps that's the next book.

Yes, boards should buy a copy and pass it around, at minimum to the Governance Committee and if not the whole book - at least the assessment although a deeper understanding of what is highlighted in the tool will be provided by reading the whole book.

 

Nonprofit Boards Or Not #NonprofitBoards #NonprofitBoardsOrNot

Yes Virginia, governing though a board is not the only way to to govern a "nonprofit".  Of course this means as well that a nonprofit is not the only structure for which to do nonprofit things.  There is the collective, cooperative, certified B corporation, an association and yes, a 501 (c) 3.  Each of these have different income tax implications but all of these essentially have social outcome missions.  

Do take a look at the following LEO Weekly to gain some insight about some alternatives that all place the emphases on governing by the people.  PS, if you follow the link, do appreciate the pic that begins the story.

 

 

Rooted And Blooming: Nonprofits For Marginalized Communities Make System Work for Them

MAR032021

 

BY DANIELLE GRADY

There are no corporate leaders on Change Today, Change Tomorrow’s board. There are no white one-percenters. The nonprofit’s leadership includes a social worker, a UPS employee and a founder of another nonprofit — all Black Louisvillians — which is the community that CTCT services.

“We feel it in our hearts; we actually are about the work we’re doing,” said Taylor Ryan, CTCT’s executive director and founder. 

Change Today, Change Tomorrow is an organization with grassroots spirit, but it is also a nonprofit. And nonprofits have rules they must follow to keep their federal tax status: Among them, they must recruit a board of directors to make financial and strategic decisions, and they must file publicly-available information about their finances. This document is often requested by organizations that dole out grants and funding. 

Ryan has found a way to work within this system, which is often also dominated by white people, and still maintain a nonprofit that takes action quickly while being community oriented. 

And there are other groups in Louisville who have figured out the same, such as La Casita Center. 

Similar to Change Today, Change Tomorrow, La Casita Center’s staff and board is predominantly Latinx, which is the community that it serves.

“Our board and staff, we reflect the community, so no one has to explain to us where the pain is, where the struggle is, because we’re living it,” said Executive Director Karina Barillas. “It’s part of our lives.”

The pandemic, though terrible, has shown what these organizations can do. 

Stan Siegwald, the director of strategic initiatives for one of Louisville’s most established nonprofits, Dare to Care, said that he has seen smaller, more community-integrated nonprofits take off since COVID-19 threw Louisville’s services in disarray. Dare to Care was impacted, too, when 5% of the community partners that distribute its food were forced to close during the pandemic. But, it’s filled some of the gaps with new groups like Change Today, Change Tomorrow. 

“What we’ve seen is, in fact, great innovation and creativity and resilience to find new ways to be able to serve folks in a pandemic,” he said. “And part of that creativity and the innovation have been the emergence of groups like Taylor’s, like Change Today, Change Tomorrow. They have brought a great spirit and a great energy to our community.”

With its Feed The West program, for example, Change Today, Change Tomorrow is providing food to West End families through “pop-up distribution,” said Siegwald — something creative and innovative to Dare to Care.

Not all groups doing community work in Louisville find it necessary to become a nonprofit, though. Black Lives Matter Louisville has been organizing in the city since 2016, doing everything from holding protests to delivering laptops to school children. 

“We would be subservient — if we were a nonprofit — to the government in which we are in opposition with,” said Chanelle Helm, co-founder of the group. 

CHANGE TODAY, CHANGE TOMORROW

There are aspects of the nonprofit model that Ryan, the executive director of Change Today, Change Tomorrow, appreciates. She likes, for example, that power in the system is not concentrated in the hands of a single person, which prevents corruption. But, she said, she didn’t have much of a choice in deciding whether or not to make her organization a nonprofit when she created it in September of 2019. 

“It makes you more legitimate,” she said. “So, as a Black organization, if you do not have your 501c(3) or a fiscal sponsor tied to another entity that has their 501c(3), then donors, who, a very large percentage of them are white, will not donate.”

But, Ryan wasn’t going to fill up her nonprofit board with rich, white people like many other organizations do. Instead, CTCT’s leadership is filled with members of its community: 

•  Nannie Croney, a social worker and the CEO of the small business, Dope Designs by Nannie

•  Talesha Wilson, a Black Lives Matter Louisville member and beauty influencer. She worked at Humana, Ryan said, but not in a position that would guarantee CTCT bundles of Humana dollars. 

•  Eric Hawkins, a UPS employee

•  Leo Braddock, the founder of another nonprofit, Children Shouldn’t Hunger

•  Angela Masden, the director of the Parkland Boys and Girls Club

•  Azure Williams, the founder of Watch Us Grow, a tutoring business

•  Jemiyah Johnson, a Community Foundation of Louisville employee

All board members but Croney are from Louisville. Both Croney and Ryan moved to the city from Western Kentucky. 

In a traditional nonprofit, boards meet quarterly to approve high-up decisions like financial and strategic plans. That’s not the case with Change Today, Change Tomorrow, which meets twice a month: once in person, once virtually. And, its members are on a group chat, Ryan said, talking daily about CTCT.

 

This helps the nonprofit work fast, Ryan said. Like the organization did on Feb. 15, when CTCT’s Umoja Project team was preparing to board a bus downtown to help Louisville’s houseless community. But, the weather kept worsening: It started snowing, and temperatures were set to drop below 20 degrees that evening. 

 Instead of sticking to just offering supplies, CTCT made some calls and arranged the opening of a pop-up shelter at Louisville Recovery Community Connection. They had to collect blow-up mattresses, food, fresh linens and pillows, as well as recruit volunteers. That weekend, the shelter held 25 people a night. 

“We are very nimble, is what the older nonprofits in town call us,” said Ryan. 

Siegwald, with Dare to Care, said nonprofits like Change Today, Change Tomorrow are important because they’re close to their communities and in tune with their needs.

“I think particularly with Change Today, Change Tomorrow, they have brought this energy and this spirit to their work,” he said. “And they have really, not created, they have exposed a narrative that struggling communities and communities that are challenged, maybe in some ways, also contain a great soul and a great spirit and great talent and great ideas to address those challenges.”

Dare to Care has its own strengths. When the pandemic hit and the nonprofit was worried about continuing to feed the community, it was able to leverage its long-standing connections to recruit the National Guard to assemble boxes of food. 

Change Today, Change Tomorrow is quickly building influence, too. In addition to its pop-up shelter and Feed the West program, CTCT recently opened its Change Education Center, which offers mentoring, tutoring and space for a preteen, early-teens boys club.  Another project, Pocket Change, is a storefront for Black-owned businesses to sell their products. The shop also hosts business workshops. CTCT’s next goal is to raise $1 million to buy a community center to offer temporary housing and to centralize all of its outreaches instead of operating out of five different locations. In 2020, the nonprofit served 100,000 individuals.

La Casita Center Executive Director Karina Barillas. | Provided Photo.

LA CASITA CENTER

La Casita’s structure is like a circle, says Barillas.

She’s the executive director, because nonprofits have to have one, but decisions are made collectively. La Casita also has teams that specialize in different areas, such as mental health. “We, as a collective, honor everybody’s expertise,” said Barillas. 

La Casita’s board members are invited with the understanding that they’ll be integrated into the circle, too — and help in other areas of the nonprofit. La Casita’s former board chair, Tom Gurucharri was and still is the organization’s volunteer facilities manager. 

Barillas hopes, and believes, that La Casita’s methods are influencing other nonprofits in town. She wants to “demainstreamify” Louisville’s nonprofit ecosystem. 

“Services are usually… unless it’s Black or brown led, they are following the rules like this, in blocs: ‘And this is a strategic plan; this is how we does; this is how the industry works; la-da-da,’” said Barillas. “We are demainstreamfying that, because we are creating it at the needs of our community. So, you know, our volunteers, our donors, our board of directors, anyone that supports us, what happens is that they become part of this culture, part of this experience, of this circle, where together we are demainstreamfying the way that we are looking at nonprofits.”

When Barillas started Casa Latina, a precursor to La Casita, she did so with the help of three other mothers and employees at the Center for Women and Families, where Barillas also worked. All but her were white. At the time, that was needed to give her organization legitimacy, Barillas said. Since Casa Latina started in 2002, she has seen that change, even though there are still few Latinx-led nonprofits in Louisville.

She has also noticed other nonprofits in town using La Casita language, such as “accompaniment,” the word La Casita uses instead of served. 

In 2020, La Casita “accompanied” 944 families that had COVID. 

Last year, La Casita served 2,255 unduplicated families, providing domestic violence and sexual assault services, financial empowerment, legal aid, mental health support, food delivery, diaper and formula distribution and more.

BLACK LIVES MATTER LOUISVILLE

When someone who wants to help their community comes to Helm, she advises them not to start a nonprofit. 

“I absolutely tell people to just do the work,” she said. 

As a Black liberation organization, Helm doesn’t think that Black Lives Matter Louisville should be a nonprofit, because then it would be beholden to the government that it’s trying to hold accountable. 

She also said she’s seen Louisville nonprofits claim to be grassroots to get funding, when, in reality, they’re “grasstop” organizations.

Still, nonprofits can do good work within the system, said Helm. She points to Dare to Care as a good example, because the organization has been responsive to calls for accountability. She also admires Play Cousins Collective, a Black-led nonprofit that helps families with child-rearing.

“I think you need to stay clear as to what your goal is. And, I think you need to do that well if that’s the funding you need to get,” she said.  

Ultimately, the people who are being served by nonprofits don’t care if they’re being helped by an organization with a Form 990 on file or just five people doing good work, said Ryan. 

“The people who we are serving don’t care about how legitimate we are, because we are meeting needs,” she said.

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