Friday Notes, May 20, 2022
Dear Friends —
I have had this experience too many times: on an international trip, at the receiving end of questions that are nigh on impossible to answer. I remember this first time after the Bush-Gore election. Again after November 2016. More recently about how the United States could go from “most prepared” for a pandemic to suffering a million lives lost. And counting.
Then, last week while I was in Kenya, the terrible events in Buffalo: domestic terrorism fueled by White supremacy. “What is happening in your country?” a Kenyan colleague asked.
It is a question to which we all need the answer.
There are some words to (partially) explain the inability of the US to effectively cope with COVID. One piece of the puzzle has to do with the fragmented sources of data about cases, hospitalizations, and deaths — and the inability of the Centers for Disease Control to deploy a set of reporting standards and systems across the country’s 3,006 counties.
Into the information vacuum in early 2020 came the volunteer-run Covid Tracking Project. Through a combination of scraping county health department websites and scanning news reports, the Tracking Project team pieced together daily estimates of key indicators and became — unbelievably — the source that White House Covid Task Force used as a reference.
You can read about and hear the story of the Covid Tracking Project here, in historical context. Highly recommended.
I was in Nairobi for a meeting of the board of the African Population and Health Research Center, and returned last night. This morning I participated in a virtual board meeting for Namati. And next week I’m spending several hours on Zoom for board work for the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation. So, naturally, the topic for today is: how can nonprofits get the most out of their boards, and how can board members get the most out of their service?
According to the section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code, a nonprofit can legally operate with a board of three people — more or less any three people you like (with the exception of former President Donald J. Trump and his grown children).
That’s a pretty low bar. So the question is, how can a board go from being a statutory requirement to being a true asset to the organization? It’s partly about choosing the right people — individuals who support the organizational mission, bring diverse perspectives to bear, have some time to dedicate to meeting preparation and participation, and play nicely with others. And it’s also about making the most of occasional interactions with people who come together a couple of times a year and and likely have varied familiarity with what the organization does.
Here are a few basics for nonprofit leadership, followed by some for board members.
For nonprofits:
Remind the board of their major responsibilities, early and often. These include:
Guiding organizational strategy, especially through approval of an annual (and sometimes multi-year) budget.
Commissioning and receiving external audits.
Recruiting the CEO or Executive Director, negotiating the executive’s annual goals, conducting an annual performance review, and setting executive compensation.
Identifying organizational risks and holding the CEO accountable for reasonable mitigation measures.
Recruiting and orienting new board members when the board is expanding or vacancies are being filled.
This is list of big things. It is most definitely not a list of small things. By that I mean it is not a list that includes anything about the daily business of running an organization. The more the board can spend time on only the five items above, the better. (Some would add to the list raising money for the organization.)
Make information about the organization’s work accessible to board members, especially those who are not immersed in the same field. It’s easy to assume that anyone who signs up to be a member of a nonprofit’s board knows what the organization does, but that assumption is often false. Board members will learn through repeated (and I do mean repeated) exposure to both high-level strategy and — far more usefully — specific illustrations of how the organization works.
Bring in staff members to describe what real-world problems they are trying to solve, how they’re doing it, what they’ve achieved and what the challenges are. If it’s an organization that delivers services, bring in someone who can talk about what it’s like to receive those services. If it’s an organization that does research, put together a presentation of findings appropriate to the board members’ background knowledge. Eschew acronyms, minimize jargon, and pair abstractions like “movement building” and “policy engagement” with descriptions of what those phrases mean in day-to-day work. Host a site visit.
Remember and affirm each board member’s special contributions. Deliberations about who should be recruited to a nonprofit’s board are often very careful, with attention to the skills, influence, and life experience potential members’ bring. Then, once a person joins a board, that distinctive contribution can be brought forth with intentional efforts on the part of the nonprofit leadership and the board chair. Assign people to the right committees, given their backgrounds. Call on people during meetings if you know they have something special to offer on a particular topic. Ask for advice in one-on-one conversations between meetings. If you ever hear a board member say, “I’m not sure what I’m contributing,” fix that fast.
For board members, the list is even simpler: read up, show up, keep your eyes up, speak up, and (if you have the means) pony up.
By which I mean, do your homework and prioritize attendance at both committee and full board meetings. Remember that you’re being invited to weigh in on the organizational strategy, and so you need to exercise self-discipline over any tendency to direct management-level decisions. Use your voice to express concerns about organizational direction or leadership: organizations are well served by boards that ask challenging questions. And while the expectation of full board participation in annual fundraising is in tension with badly needed diversification of nonprofit boards, if you have the means, you should show support with a financial contribution that works for your budget.
For this week’s moment of joy, I invite you to watch a time lapse video of the life cycle of the Western monarch butterfly. In a word: awesome.
Have a good weekend,
- Ruth