Starting off on the right foot, or: 8 ideas for recruiting board members

The big federal grant writing season is over, and there is some time before the smaller winter season starts. Much of my time this month is actually taken with spending a grant award from a proposal I wrote for the Silver City based Wellness Coalition in 2009: The now extinct Compassion Capital Fund Program, which provides capacity building to nonprofit organizations through sub-awards, training and one-on-one technical assistance.

I am providing the one-on-one TA piece to four different nonprofits, and in particular their boards and executive directors this month. I am helping with amending by-laws, training new board members, putting together an application for 501(c)(3) status, coaching staff through a complex grant proposal, training the ED on board roles and responsibilities, tailoring sample policies, reviewing marketing materials, advising on an innovative fundraising campaign, and, with every one of these organizations, providing advice on board attendance, retention and recruitment.

On the latter subject, here’s the type of laments I keep hearing, over and over: How do we make them show up? Our board president has not been to four meetings in a row; our board has not had a quorum in several meetings; our board members are so old I don’t know if they are alive (someone really said this!); our board members won’t participate in any fundraising activities; the XYZ committee has not done a thing in a year; our board members have no clue about their legal duties; there are too many potential conflicts of interest bogging down out board; an organization similar to ours in California has 28 board members, and we can’t even get our five to attend meetings.

The last comment illustrates the particular struggle nonprofits in rural, low-income areas face, as described previously here. We lack the large pool of highly educated urban lawyers, educators, doctors and other professionals that typically serve on boards. The few that we do have are in high demand, and often feel compelled to serve on three or more boards.

I have come to the conclusion that most of our governance gaps are caused at the moment we recruit new board members.

As I am counseling clients on these issues, some patterns and strategies emerge. Some of these are at the idea stage, and have not been tested at a large scale, while some have been successfully tried in organizations I work with. All of them are based on the premise that an effective and engaged board originates with recruiting the right people, and that we need to go past the traditional recruitment strategies. And on the premise that if in a rural area, expertise is rare, go for enthusiasm.

1. Don’t talk your friends and family into joining your board.

They’ll join to do you a favor, not because they believe in the mission.

2. Recruit people who are users of your services.

They believe in your mission, and they can testify about the need for the services.

3. Recruit young people.

They bring enthusiasm, and the ability to learn, as well as innovative ideas. They’ll be motivated also by adding a civic engagement to their resume.

4. Recruit retirees as a potential source of expertise.

Just don’t make them your only type of board member.

5. Don’t downplay the board’s roles and responsibilities in the recruitment talk.

Be honest about what you expect. Educate about legal duties before someone joins. Talk the wavering candidate out of it.

6. Don’t beg.

Market serving on your board as an opportunity and a privilege.

7. Don’t accept candidates who serve on more than one other board.

A director can’t do justice to more than one or two organizations, both in terms of time and loyalty. Be careful about recruiting people who show any signs of over-commitment.

8. Train the new members.

Make new board member training mandatory, even if they say they have governance experience. In the training include your by-laws, the organization’s mission, history, financial status, and policies. Then have someone from outside the organization give them the “Basic Roles and Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards” training.

Clearly, in our community, the standard “1 banker, 1 public official and a few close friends” -type board of directors is not working. I’d be curious to hear from other rural nonprofit professionals about innovative board recruitment.

It's Better Over Where?

As I am reading the late great Tony Judt’s “Ill Fares the Land” (jumping up and shouting YES! every couple of pages…) , out comes another book comparing European social welfare states with the American model: Tom Geoghegan’s “Were you born on the wrong continent?”

Based on Geoghegan, I was born on the right continent, but must have temporarily lost my mind and moved to the wrong one. How could I leave a place providing guaranteed vacation time, free education, free child care, free nursing home care and generous unemployment payments?

I have lived in the United States for many years now and “the country” has been good to me. I have been able to pursue a diverse career of my choice, changing jobs and locations in a way that would have made me an outcast on the German labor market. I have been able to make a decent living (in large parts thanks to that free German education putting me ahead of Americans, financially and in terms of basic skills), raise a family and live in a beautiful place of my choice. Working in the nonprofit sector, my work has made real change in local communities, people and policies in a way that would not have been possible in the more static German welfare and political system.

The country has been good to me. So I will not join too loudly the choir of people on all the social media networks and the press who took the publishing of Geoghegan’s book as another opportunity to complain about how terrible this country is. I feel more at home in Tony Judt’s camp: Looking at the welfare systems through his vast historical perspective (a European who lived in the US by choice, like myself) many of the paradoxes on both sides of the ocean make more sense. For example, he reminds the reader that neoliberalism hasn’t always ruled American political thought and decision making: “ …, much that was best in American legislation and social policy over the course of the 20th century – and that we are now urged to dismantle in the name of efficiency and “less government” – corresponds in practice to what Europeans have called ‘social democracy’.” He explains why even in countries like Germany, middle-class support for the social democratic model is now waning. And he chastises our generation with having missed a great opportunity: After the fall of communism, “we sat back and congratulated ourselves upon having won the Cold War: a sure way to lose the peace. The years from 1989 to 2009 were consumed by locusts.” Thirty years of erosion of social policies in the US have made the country more unequal “ … - in incomes, wealth, health, education and life chances - than at any time since the 1920s.”

And here’s a big point (one of several) on which Judt and Geoghegan “agree”: Poverty (Geoghegan) and inequality (Judt) corrupt society, endanger democracy, and ultimately undermine the economy: “Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within.” Judt explains the emergence of the social democratic systems after two world wars in Europe partially as a way to avoid another catastrophe. Geoghegan shows that poverty carries a tremendous cost to US society and economy.

Here's a West-German Cold War quote a fellow German expatriate reminded me of “ Geh doch nach drüben!” which is what German conservatives used to say if someone in post-war West-Germany was too lefty, meaning, go to Communist East Germany. The reviewers that have praised Geoghegan’s little book are now getting the same comment: “go there, if you like it so much better than the home of the brave and the land of the free….”

Meanwhile, I am running out of the benefits my European free education provided me: A large portion of my salary goes towards the private education of my younger children, because where we live, school districts are too underfunded to provide a solid public education. Our teenagers go to the local college to make up for what high school does not offer. This means, I am putting away no money for my retirement, let alone a graduate education for our children. The secondary education they get here does not adequately prepare them for the (free) higher education programs in Europe. So, is it “Geh doch nach drüben” time? should we move our family back to Europe?

We have not made that decision. Maybe the question is not, where is it better, or, where would we be happier. One of the challenges for us 21st century homeless cosmopolitans might be to find a way to be at home in both worlds. Not only from an individual perspective, taking advantage of the best of both worlds and avoiding the worst. But also from the perspective of ambassador between the worlds, showing our fellow citizens on both sides of the Atlantic what is dear to us and worth transferring to the other side. The freedom of making creative choices in one’s life and one’s community from the US, and the solidarity of social democracy that affords everyone the chance to do so, from Europe. Judt the European and Geoghegan the American do a good job bridging the Atlantic for this discussion. Everyone should read their books.