It’s incredibly daunting to join your first non-profit board. I joined two (and a half) in the last 10 years and honestly had no idea what I was doing in either case. It’s a lot to learn quickly, especially if the board isn’t on the best footing already. Here are a few ideas to get you started and find your own way to work productively in non-profit leadership.
You are a volunteer
You bring yourself, your skills, and your time to the table. It’s a kind thing you are doing to volunteer, and I thank you for your service. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know something, don’t feel bad if you can’t help in a specific case, don’t worry that you might not have the most experience on a topic. It’s okay that you don’t know what you are doing, none of the others do either.
Also, nobody is going to tell you that you are working too much, so you need to check in regularly with yourself to make sure that you are comfortable with your balance and don’t burn out.
The bigger the problem, the more it needs an owner
Corollary: Small Boards wrongly think they can solve big problems
You have a big item to tackle, a rebranding or a decision to commit a lot of issues. Clearly this is a heady topic that has to be handled by the board and nobody else, right? Very often…wrong. Even small boards have too many priorities to give any one of them their full attention. If you find that a topic has come up at more than one board meeting or needs a lot of coordination, establish a committee. Find someone to chair that committee and come back to the board with a recommendation and research. If folks want to have a say in the process, they can join the committee.
I have some recommendations on how to manage committees, but one of the most important follow-ons is: trust their work. These folks you found who care about the issue enough to work on it? Unless you missed something big in the setup, or they need some coaching in basic skills (brainstorming/soliciting input/research), they likely spent a lot more time thinking about the problem than you (see next two sections for caveats).
Care and feed your committees
Committees should have a crystal clear charter. Are they long-lived or focused to a one-time problem? What are the things they should care about? What do you expect them to deliver to you? To other committees? Write these things down whenever you create a committee and you’ll save dozens of hours later on.
Committees need people to do the work, and this usually starts with a chair. It literally could end there. Some committees have a fixed size, some are encouraged to grow, some should have requirements to join (e.g personnel/finance/management) and others should have very loose membership (e.g. events or activism). If a committee is getting off the track, find someone who can join it and help as soon as you can. Or pre-seed a committee with someone who is good at starting committees and getting structure in place.
And check in! Show you care by being invested in the process. Ask for feedback (for the board or yourself) and give feedback if appropriate. Find out what they need and what gaps they have. Over time you’ll naturally focus more on seams with other teams or new problems than on the day-to-day work.
Needed work must be done, not all done work is needed
Organizations regularly change the scope of their work, or pick up more or less tasks. Imagine you are finding the group overworked or regularly missing goals that it sets. You should just work more to help catch up, right? Almost invariably: wrong. The organization has a limited capacity. Your job as a board member is to make sure that you are getting the important stuff done. Help get rid of stuff that isn’t working well. Talk with group members and cut mission scope until you get to the size that you can be proud of the work being done. Then you can focus on growth again.
Keep in mind that volunteering has the same problems that work does when getting people to change roles: some just don’t want to do it. Even if you want to stop making spreadsheets once a month, the spreadsheet wizard might not be interested in licking envelopes. You need to help find a combination of work that needs to stop and people doing that work who want to do something else. If the spreadsheet person will quit if reassigned: congrats, you have a permanent spreadsheet person until you have no spreadsheet people.
“We don’t need (Robert’s) rules”
Many think rules are for dysfunctional boards because the horror stories most come from folks in a storm trying to plug holes they hadn’t noticed before. But until that storm comes they’ll say “Rules will make this feel like work; it’ll ruin the friendly atmosphere we have.” Designing clear rules and governing principles in calm waters is crucial. This includes decision criteria for general and special rules, codes of conduct, removal procedures, and an agreed upon system for holding meetings.
Beyond just rules saving you in bad times, they help structure in good times. Loosely following Robert’s Rules during good times means members orient themselves to action (motions) and not just engage in meandering discussion. They also learn to take critique regularly with — usually friendly — amendments. Focusing on actions and agendas and respectful discussion in good times means you have muscles for the bumpy road. Plus, if the bylaws say “We follow Robert’s Rules of Order” that means when you really need it you have an exact formula to hold a meeting in a legal and unambiguous manner on your worst day. Trust me, you’ll become an expert on the rules when that day arrives.
Talking is not (always) a sign of productivity
I’ve been in multiple situations where a board thinks that productivity is having a long board meeting once a month. “Status update? Well last month at the board meeting we had that discussion…and I guess that’s where we’ve been. No real status changes yet, but we still think that the chairs will either be blue or red….” Board meetings should be measured by actions taken, issues closed, committees reporting statuses, or literally any other metric besides number of words spoken in status updates.
The happiest I’ve ever seen a board is when we moved from spoken word updates to written/read status updates. Board meetings went from 1.5–2.5 hours to 45–60 minutes (almost guaranteed). Even when we had hard topics! Spend 5 minutes as a group at the start of each meeting reviewing the status reports as a group instead of verbal reports. Then a simple question “Do any committees or board members have status updates that didn’t make it into the written report?” It’s an open floor, but you can probably guess how quickly those tail off. It’s more transparent, more efficient, and makes note-taking a heck of a lot easier. Plus some people are always 5 minutes late.
Short meetings are not (always) a sign of productivity
All of these ideas about delegation and reducing board workload doesn’t create a collaborative environment. Some of the inefficiencies in your existing meetings help folks build trust just by spending time together. If you cut down meetings by 20 minutes, maybe take 10 of those minutes at the end of the meeting intentionally talking with each other about non-work stuff.
Do it in a way that works for your team. Get time to check in with each person and try to understand how they are doing. Are they going to need more help in the month ahead? Do they need a break but don’t want to put it in the formal record? You’re not going to find that out in a status update; you’ll find it out by caring about your peers and getting to know them as people.