Living in an 100+ year old house means getting used to a life with a long and never completed home maintenance agenda. Something always needs repair or replacement. And, out there in the world there is no shortage of additional household improvement ideas I could add to my list.
Board Dynamics
Ex officios unearthed – Part 2
In the first post in this series I explored the possible benefits of external ex officio directors. These are places on the board for representatives of outside organizations. It was a call to dust off this artifact of non-profit board structure and modernize it.
Difficult board conversations
Is there an issue with a board member, or even your executive director, that you have avoided addressing? Perhaps you have a board chair that is failing to exercise any control over meetings, or a board member that dominates every discussion. On one hand you are afraid to broach the issue because the relationship is important. On the other, if you do not try to resolve things, the relationship may be in peril. In the context of non-profit governance, the existence of unresolved conflict can often lead to board member resignations by those close to the conflict and even those on the sidelines.
Ex officios unearthed – Part 1
Many non-profit boards include people who, by virtue of their job or past role, sit as ex officio directors or committee members. This can include government representatives, past chairs, or the executive director. Typically these positions are named in the bylaws or board committee or position descriptions. Ex officios are considered non voting directors although this meaning of the term is not the original one.
Are ex officio positions on boards an old idea we should let go of? Are there benefits of ex officio involvement on one’s board? Little has been written about the expectations of ex officios or what standards of performance ex officios should themselves aspire to. I intend to help fill this gap a little. In particular, I want to bring to light the value of certain kinds of board connections to the wider community that external ex officio directors, among others, can provide.
Motivating board members: it’s complicated
Executive directors and chairpersons are often at a loss to figure out how to motivate their boards to show more interest or take on new tasks. But what is it that motivates board members in the first place? Perhaps they are already motivated but efforts to get the board members to change miss the mark. Sure, ‘giving back to their community’ may well be the reason most people serve on a non-profit board but is it useful to know this? Might there be lots to understand about board member needs and aspirations as volunteers before we ask more of them?
Representative boards: Good idea?
Some non-profit organizations are governed by “representative” boards of directors. This means that the composition of the board is determined by the formal connection of the directors to particular constituencies or stakeholder groups. According to Australian board consultants Lynn Ralph and Alan Cameron, representative boards are “superficially attractive” but the idea requires a much closer look.(1)
Often the main motivations for specifying the composition as representative is to insure that the board’s decisions reflect the will of the stakeholders. Also, such an organization is, in theory, directly accountable for its actions back to the stakeholders through the directors themselves.
A wrinkle on family members on boards
The son of one of your nursing home clients, an elderly woman with dementia, is on your board. At board meetings he often raises issues around the care she is receiving such as how she is treated by staff, staff training, the cleanliness of the facilities, or the quality of the meals provided. The other family members around the table, which represent half your board, are usually quick to add their input based on their experience with their loved ones. Having the executive director’s ear at a board meeting apparently can be too good an opportunity to pass up.
Is your board somewhat odd?
To what degree is making decisions a central part of your board’s reason for being? If it judges itself on the wisdom of its decisions, then it may be interested in new empirical research that tells us that boards with an odd number of members may make better decisions. The U.S. based Philanthropy Journal recently reported details of the study, one that reveals directors’ preferences for conformity or difference. It caught my attention!
Conduct becoming
A group of students at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, one of Canada’s premier small post-secondary institutions, started a music project in 2001 they called “Conduct Becoming” to raise money for cancer research. The students decided their project should recognize exemplary behaviour, not the opposite, with which they were so often labelled .