Based on my experiences, following are ways that effective nonprofit boards have established board committees. (more…)
Nonprofit mangement
Once Again: How to Keep Nonprofit Board Members Informed.
Once Again: How to Keep Nonprofit Board Members Informed.
By: Eugene Fram. Free Digital Image
With high performing nonprofit organizations, board members will rarely be invited by the CEO to participate in operational decisions. As a result, management will always have more information than board members. Yet the board still needs to know that is happening in operations to be able to perform their overview process. The name of the game is for the CEO to communicate the important information and to keep board members informed of significant developments. Still, there’s no need to clutter regular board meetings by reporting endless details about operations.
How Prepared Are Board Members for the Challenges of the Nonprofit Culture?
How Prepared Are Board Members for the Challenges of the Nonprofit Culture?
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Given that the typical tenure of a new board member is six years. In addition,a new director’s intention may beto make his/her unique contribution to the organization’s progress before he/s rotates off the board and is supplanted by another “new” director. With these factors in mind, I estimate that many volunteers enter the boardroom with little understanding of nonprofit culture. Even those who have served previously on business boards may initially spend valuable time in accommodating to the nuances of nonprofit practices and priorities before being poised to make contributions to the “greater good” that nonprofit create. Following are some areas that are endemic to nonprofits:
Time Compressed Non Profit Board members – Recruit & Retain Them
Time Compressed Non Profit Board members – Recruit & Retain Them!
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Every nonprofit board has had the experience of having board positions open and being unable to fill them with highly qualified people. The usual response from qualified candidates is that they are too busy to be accept a board position. However, the real reasons, if speaking privately, are that they perceive the nonprofit decision process to be too slow, board agendas loaded with minutiae, presentations that take up more time than they should, unfocused discussion, etc. (more…)
Once Again! Nonprofit CEO: Board Peer – Not A Powerhouse
Once Again! Nonprofit CEO: Board Peer – Not A Powerhouse
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Some nonprofit CEOs make a fetish out of describing their boards and/or board chairs as their “bosses.” Others, for example, can see the description, as a parent-child relationship by funders. The parent, the board, may be strong, but can the child, the CEO, implement a grant or donation? Some CEOs openly like to perpetuate this type of relationship because when bad decisions come to roost, they can use the old refrain: the board made me do it.
My preference is that the board-CEO relationship be a partnership among peers focusing on achieving desired outcomes and impacts for the nonprofit. (I, with others, would make and have made CEOs, who deserve the position, voting members of their boards!)
Enlarging the Nonprofit Recruitment Matrix: The art of selecting new board members
Enlarging the Nonprofit Recruitment Matrix: The art of selecting new board member
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
There’s never enough to say about the selection of nonprofit board members. Following my last post on board behaviors and cultures I ran across a guide fo desirable skills/abilities for “for-profit” directors. From this list, I suggest the following additions to the recruitment matrices of 21st century nonprofit board candidates to improve board productivity. * Those included will have:
• Executive and Non-Executive Experiences: These include planners with broad perspectives needed to have visionary outlooks, a well as persons with unusually strong dedication to the organization’s mission. It may include a senior executive from a business organization and a person who has had extensive client level experience. Examples for an association for the blind could be the human resources VP for a Fortune 500 corporation and/or a visually impaired professor at a local university.
• Industry Experience or Knowledge: An active or retired executive who has or is working in the same or allied field. However, those who can be competitive with the nonprofit for fund development could then present a significant conflict of interest.
• Leadership: Several directors should be selected on the bases of their leadership skills/abilities in business or other nonprofit organizations. Having too many with these qualifications may lead to internal board conflict, especially if they have strong personalities.
• Governance: Every board member should have a detailed understanding of the role of governance, their overview, financial/due diligence responsibilities and the potential personal liabilities if they fail to exercise due care. In practice, nonprofits draw from such a wide range of board backgrounds, one can only expect about one-quarter of most boards to have the requisite knowledge. But there are many nonprofit boards that I have encountered that even lack one person with the optimal board/management governance knowledge. Some become so involved with mission activities that they do what the leadership tells them when governance issues are raised. Example: One nonprofit the author encountered, with responsibilities for millions of dollars of assets, operated for 17 years without D&O insurance coverage because the board leadership considered it too costly.
• Strategic Thinking & Other Desirable Behavioral Competencies: Not every board member can be capable of or interested in strategic thinking. Their job experiences and educations require them to excel in operations, not envisioning the future. Consequently, every board needs several persons who have visionary experiences and high Emotional
Quotients (EQs.) Those with high EQs can be good team players because they are able to empathize with the emotion of others in the group. Finding board candidates with these abilities takes detailed interpersonal vetting because they do not appear on a resume.
• Subject Matter Expertise: Nonprofit Boards have had decades of experience in selecting board candidates by professional affiliations like businessperson, marketing expert, accountant, etc.
• Other Factors Relevant to the Particular Nonprofit: Examples: A nonprofit dedicated to improve the lives of children needs to seek a child psychology candidate. One focusing on seniors should seek a geriatric specialist.
* http://eganassociates.com.au/disclosing-the-board-skills-matrix/
Nonprofits in Limbo: Preparing for the Unexpected
Nonprofits in Limbo: Preparing for the Unexpected
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
I happened to read a report from Deloitte Consulting suggesting ways that for-profit organizations can improve their performance in uncertain times. The report centers on key drivers of board effectiveness that, in my opinion, resonate with similar nonprofit situations. * Most nonprofit boards typically live with uncertainty and are perennially “on the edge.”
- Conservative leadership: Nonprofit boards are responsible for donor and charitable types of revenues that place directors in a public trust position. In addition board members typically will only be active for a median tenure period of four to six years. As a result they often become overly conservative in their strategic views and may accept CEOs that “mind-the-store” with modest incremental growth annually.
To prevent the organizational boat from capsizing in the perpetual seas of the
pandemic and beyond, the board needs to rely on the best forward looking
information about strategy, people, culture and clients.
All of this must be in solid alignment with a substantial mission, or a modified one if
the external environment requires it.
This allows the nonprofit to cut through the barriers that impede strategy
development.
- Opportunities & Strategies: Even when the organization is prospering, the board has a responsibility to press for innovations and to support small-scale experiments as called for in a “Lean Management” structure. Within this structure, the staff can test the waters via experiments to move more boldly, as long as the experiments yield positive results. ** At a minimum, the the board and management, need to focus on near-term planning during the pandemic period. They then need to move to a “north star” approach, with a ten year framework, once the pandemic recedes. This requires management to balance the needs of the various client groups that can call for heartbreaking decisions. For example, should revenues be allocated to marketing or used for client programs?
- Match fit: Boards have a responsibility to motivate the nonprofit to realistically evaluate the tensions between new models and existing ones, for example between face-to-face meetings and virtual ones. It is already clear the virtual format has caught the attentions of nonprofits. If nonprofits plan to rely on virtual meeting to a significant extent, board and managements will need to improve their technologies, presentations and develop better ways for participants to become involved in discussions.
- Culture, culture, and culture: As Peter Drucker has noted, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast every morning,” Nonprofit boards’ cultures play a key role in determining the level of risk the board is willing to take. With key drivers, nonprofit boards will have to take reasonable risks to survive the impacts of the pandemic, and work with management to take some crafted entrepreneurial risks. It now appears that fund raising, for example, will emphasize greater focus on major donors, and board members will need to provide more time and effort
- Diversity and inclusion: Board diversity is a well established need. Inclusion not only means differences by demographics but recruiting new board members and maximizing the best they have to offer. Nonprofit boards traditionally try to acculturate new board members to the current culture instead of maximizing their potentials. For example, a person with financial strategy and accounting backgrounds will be asked to work with the CFO on accounting related problems because this has been the prior process. Instead, he/s should be asked to develop a long term-term financial plan. This should be more meaningful work for the new board member and of significant benefit to the organization.
- Meeting format: For the thousands of nonprofits that have had to suddenly change meeting format from face-to-face to a virtual format, it is time to consider what is best for the organization post-Covid. Can the board, management and staff be productive working from home? Will a virtual-face-to-face process be acceptable in terms of productivity and client satisfaction? How can productivity be assessed under the virtual format?
- Curiosity is Key: To keep a nonprofit sustainable in the long term beyond the pandemic, Deloitte Consulting concludes, “Directors should get out of the ‘same old’ board room, and should even look across borders to learn from approaches in (different nonprofits) and companies… . Developing news skills and insights are essential for innovation and should be sought to create the questioning and challenging environment needed to imagine, inspire and deliver better outcomes (and impacts). Complacency (in uncertain times) can be a killer.”*
**https://npengage.com/nonprofit-management/lean-implementation/
Once Again: Who Should Be Involved in Fund Development and How?
Once Again: Who Should Be Involved in Fund Development and How?
By Eugene Fram Free Digital Photo
This is a perennial issue. Following are suggestions that can clarify questions related to it.
The Board of Directors
• Board members should provide an annual donation, be able to generate contributions from other sources or donate time. (“give or get” policy).
• Even if cash donations are modest, 100% of board members should make a financial and/or support contribution each year. Funders look at this percentage as a surrogate measure of board interest and involvement in the organization.
• Two type of of board members should be directly involved in development. One is the talented person who is highly comfortable with the development process. The other is the person who may lead other board members to unknown sources. For example: relatives, neighbors, college friends, etc. who can contribute. At least three or four board members need to be in the former category. All board members are obligated to alert the CEO to other leads they may encounter and assist with introductions, if appropriate.
The CEO and the Board
• There needs to be a robust partnership between the board and CEO if there is to be effective and efficient fund-raising. The CEO should act as a lookout for fund development potentials and then alert board chair to support his/her activities, after the board has approved the project and is prepared to make a proposal.
• If the CEO is going to assume the lead role in approaching prospects, it may important that the person have the president/CEO title.
A Foundation
• With the aid of legal counsel, establish a development foundation. It needs to have its own small board and a volunteer as its leader. The board needs to have full understanding that the parent board is responsible for fund expenditures. Otherwise conflicts can arise between the two boards on fund deployments. A foundation can also be helpful current traumatic conditions because its total focus is on fund development.
A Special Relationship: Nurturing the CEO-Board Chair Bond
A Special Relationship: Nurturing the CEO-Board Chair Bond
By Eugene Fram Free Digital Photo
Viewer Favorite – Updated & Revised
Here are tips to assure the best possible partnership between the board chair and CEO.
Keeping boards focused on strategic issues is a major challenge for nonprofit leaders. This leadership crisis is intensified by the fact that board chairs tend to have short terms (according to BoardSource, 83% stay in office only one or two years). Thus, nonprofit CEOs and board chairs need to bond quickly. For the good of the organization, they must come together swiftly and create a partnership that works. Here are golden rules for the CEO and board chair to follow:
1. Be sure the CEO and board chair share strategic issues with each other—negative as well as positive ones. A failure by either the chair or CEO to share information, such as a potential cash flow issue, can be disastrous for the nonprofit.
2. It’s critical for the CEO to conduct orientation sessions with a new chair, explaining the challenges facing the nonprofit, and reviewing the fundamentals of the mission. The CEO can help the chair keep the board focused on strategic issues, whether they’re programmatic or financial. With many nonprofits electing a new president each year, the CEO needs to prioritize these tasks.
3. Make sure staff know who has the final say. Some employees mistakenly view the board chair as the ultimate authority, even when the organizational table lists the CEO as holding that position. As a result, they may try an end run around the CEO, asking the board to overturn the CEO’s decision about salaries, promotions, or programs, for example. Both the CEO and board chair must emphasize the fact that the CEO is the final authority. If they make this message clear enough, they can probably keep staff from attempting any end runs. If an end run still occurs, the board chair must refer the issue to the CEO for resolution, except if the CEO is being charged with malfeasance.
4. The CEO should arrange for individual board members to meet with management staff on occasion so that the board can gather information about how the organization is operated and obtain an understanding of the promotional abilities of managers. The Sarbanes-Oxley act (a federal statute relating to public corporation boards) recommends this process for for-profit boards, and it’s also a good one for nonprofit board members.
5. Give staff members opportunities to participate in strategic planning and to support board committees. The board chair and CEO should work together to arrange such board-staff interactions, including joint celebrations of organizational success.
6. The CEO and board chair need to agree on the use of ad hoc board committees or task forces and their relationship to standing committees. For example, should the HR/personnel committee be a standing one or only an ad hoc one to address major personnel policies? In the 21st century, a board should only have maximum of five standing committees, many can only have three. If task forces are used to provide provide options for occasional policy issues, for example pension plan changes, there may be little need for a standing board HR/personnel committee.
7. The board chair and CEO should be the active leaders in fundraising efforts, with the CEO as administrative leader. The board chair and other board members must provide the CEO entrée to funding sources. They often need to accompany the CEO on fundraising visits. The CEO should keep the board chair informed of all entrepreneurial development activities being explored.
8. The board has only one major employment decision to make – to recruit and hire the CEO. It’s usually a long and exhausting process. But once it’s completed, the employment of all other staff personnel is the responsibility of the CEO and the CEO’s management team. For senior positions, most CEOs ask their chairs and/or other board members to meet with candidates, but the ultimate responsibility remains with the CEO. The board also has a responsibility to overview staffing to make certain that adequate bench-strength in in place for succession placements, at the CEO and the senior management
9. When hiring a CEO, or soon after employment, the board chair and CEO must face a stark reality—the need for emergency leadership should the CEO become temporarily incapacitated. These plans can either be established informally by the chair-CEO partnership or more formally via board resolution. The following are possible interim CEOs: a senior manager in the organization, a semi-retired experienced CEO living near headquarters, a consultant living in a neighboring city. CEO succession planning is an important issue for the partnership should the CEO decides to leave or retire.
10. The CEO can be helpful to the board chair in recruiting new board members by suggesting possible volunteer candidates or other contacts who have demonstrated an interest in the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Board candidates will want to meet with the CEO as part of the interview process. As a result, the two partners must agree on how to present the organization to board candidates.
11. The chair and CEO need to lead in establishing meeting agendas. The two partners must work together to assure there’s sufficient meeting time to discuss and resolve strategic issue While many nonprofits call their top executive the “executive director,” the term CEO or president/CEO is a more leader-focused.
12. For the current environment, board members should be ready and willing to be ready to involved in a heightened level of board activity. If not, the board chair and board member should determine what constraints the member needs to be in place for his/h activity.
The Possibility Of Fraud – A Nonprofit Board Alert
The Possibility Of Fraud – A Nonprofit Board Alert
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
“According to a Washington Post analysis of the filings from 2008-2012 … of more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations, … there was a ‘significant diversion’ of nonprofit assets, disclosing losses attributed to theft, investment frauds, embezzlement and other unauthorized uses of funds.” The top 20 organizations in the Post’s analysis had a combined potential total loss of more than a half-billion dollars. *
One estimate, by Harvard University’s Houser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, suggests that fraud losses among U.S. nonprofits are approximately $40 billion a year. **
Vigilant nonprofit boards might prevent many of these losses. Here’s how:
Nonprofit Management 