Tag Archives: board retreat

Governance At Its Best – Strengthening Your Board and Staff

In many nonprofits, there is not a clear divide between board and staff responsibilities. Then you add in long-term volunteers, founders, and advisory boards and things get even muddier. Who should have the final say on a decision? And, should you have that in writing?

Do you know how to go about strengthening your board and staff?

It’s easy to offer simple recommendations like whether the board should be fundraising (they should be fundraising, starting with themselves), but you also have to have strategies for:

Encouraging your board to respect your staff and their opinions
Reminding the staff that coaching strategies may change board and volunteer behavior faster than constant reminders
Board learning opportunities throughout the year (e.g. understanding a P & L– spend 15 minutes explaining how to read the statement –and how it represents the organizational priorities – for those who don’t work with them every day)
Creating change with buy in from staff and the board
Knowing a board president’s strengths and weaknesses. And understanding that is not always the same as the last person to hold that role.
No one person can be in charge of everything (whether that is staff, a Board President or a Volunteer). Nonprofits are a group effort, intentionally, so spend time determining how to utilize your resources.
Running the board like an organization, and not a family business
The size of your board – too large or too small will affect whether you are engaging your board members or leaving them to drift off (among other things)
Helping board members or staff see their role in creating the solution to the problems you are facing and that they may be causing
Overworking your leadership (volunteer and staff) may help you achieve more in the short term. But, in the long term, staff will leave and volunteers will burn out.
Moving forward with a decision when consensus was hard to find
Innovating change. Nonprofits can no longer rely on the status quo for support, membership or involvement
Engaging everyone in fundraising and development when not everyone is willing to ask others for money

This is not an all-encompassing list, and it is not intended to overwhelm you. Instead, it is designed to create a new dialogue around the staff table or at a board meeting about what you want to see change. In other words, help you in strengthening your board and staff. You may want to initiate a strategic plan or a board retreat to help you focus in on your priorities. But don’t let another year go by without growing as individuals and as an organization.

If you think your nonprofit would benefit from our facilitating this process, email me at abigail@merskyjaffe.com today.

If you would like to work on improving your board without counsel, you can purchase one of our books by clicking here

Originally published in 2017

Dealing With Disruptive Board Member(s)

Two organizations with which we have been working have very similar concerns. At each nonprofit, there is at least one board member who is disruptive to meetings. And both have leadership that want that to change.

The Disruptive Board Member(s)

Based on a board member’s personal approach—often rooted in personality—there is at least one person who:

Likes to point out problems but has no time or willingness to help with solutions
Insists that their solutions are the only way to find a successful path forward
Cannot get past a specific issue resolved in a way they did not support so that now they are having trouble supporting anything
Tries to dominate the meeting (or specific agenda items)
Believes the cohort they represent needs more attention or resources
Is invested and wants to understand the details of decisions but doesn’t have enough time to participate in committee work. (Which often translates into someone who wants to revisit every committee recommendation in a deep dive at board meetings)

How does the rest of the board feel?

The result is that one bad apple can upset the cart. Or, in this case make the board meeting uncomfortable for everyone.

Not everyone is going to raise their hand and tell you they don’t enjoy volunteering for your nonprofit. Instead, they may step off the board at the first opportunity, make less of an effort to be at meetings and make your nonprofit less of a priority in their lives. And once a volunteer has shifted focus to other nonprofits or life-priorities, it’s not easy to bring them back.

What can be done?

If this has been going on for some time, one meeting will not change how everyone feels. Like stewardship or altering a donor’s perception of your organization, it will take consistent proof that change is happening. But you can start showing your intentions by:

Moving the agenda along. Keep time and limit conversations to predetermined timeframes. There will be some conversations that need to be extended, but not every conversation falls into this category. You probably already know who a good timekeeper will be. Asking that person for help will show that you understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual board members and you are trying to make change.
Having a private one-on-one conversation, outside of the board meeting, can help the person(s) in question feel heard.
- Express to the board member that, to you, it feels as if they want a deeper understanding of the development/finance/program decisions. If this is true, suggest they join the committee where the discussions can go deeper on certain issues- when they have an hour or more to consider the issue. If they cannot/will not join the committee – ask them for suggestions as to how they can participate without diminishing the committee’s work prior to the meeting.
- Explaining that as board-chair you are having trouble getting through the agenda in a timely way – and ask if they have suggestions. Be open to the responses. It may be that many members want fewer agenda items with deeper discussion or that allowing a deeper dive on one pre-determined issue would feel more meaningful.
- Repair damage by making it less personal. We can assume that everyone is at the board table because they care, but just as in any for-profit business, decisions often have to be made for the good of the organization and not necessarily the good of the individual board members. We all have to get past our personal issues and focus on the larger organizational goals.
Training sessions reminding board members of:
- Their responsibilities to the nonprofit
- The value of introverts. Allowing the loudest board members to have the most impact is dismissing the importance of an introvert’s value to your board.
- Basic skills that when absent can derail board meetings. (Think about how many people at the table understand how to read a P&L vs. asking questions that are obvious to those in the know)
Holding a retreat to regain consensus. Sometimes, people have to be reminded of the positive energy that can happen within the group. Using ice breakers, small group exercises that acknowledge different learning styles (pictures help some people think outside of the box and oral stories help others.

And, of course, if you would like help with your specific board’s governance issue or your nonprofit’s next retreat, email me by clicking here.

Lessons Learned While Prepping for a Strategic Planning Board Retreat

I recently offered to help a friend, Jen, plan her nonprofit’s retreat. We met for coffee and she explained that she had decided to start off her term as board president by holding a 3-hour strategic planning board retreat (replacing the second board meeting of the year). The executive director suggested she wait until the spring (Lesson 1), but she wanted to start her term with board-wide, consistent organizational priorities and had everyone reserve an upcoming Sunday afternoon.

Right away, she wanted to talk about what she wanted to include as content (Lesson 2) and how she should present it. But the more she explained, the more I realized she also had to focus on:

How to get people excited about where they were headed – even if they were not convinced this was the right path forward (Lesson 3).
The importance of engaging board members without conflicting with committee work (Lesson 4).
How to incorporate different learning styles (Lesson 5).

What follows are the six lessons that can help you plan your next Retreat (Lesson 6).

Lessons Learned:

Lesson 1: It is easy to feel like you can take on the world when you are starting a leadership role. But, don’t let the excitement of taking on a new position, trump the reality of a situation. If an executive director suggests you hold off, hold off. They will understand the dynamics from an organizational standpoint, much better than anyone else. For the record, she has told me that she regrets not listening to the ED.

Lesson 2: As it turned out, she didn’t really need help with content. Jen needed help in structuring the retreat. She needed help figuring out how to talk about the topics she had already highlighted. Planning a retreat was not in her wheelhouse, so she didn’t realize what she needed to feel confident was a plan of how to engage and excite the board. And, a few nonprofit board retreat techniques.

Lesson 3: Major decisions – capital campaigns, shifts in focus, new membership strategies will excite some board members and anger others. Your job, as a volunteer leader, is to encourage everyone to find their way past their personal reluctance and back towards helping the organization move forward.

Lesson 4: Committees do not want to feel pointless, and that is what happens when board time is used to rehash committee work. To avoid this, use board time to highlight their decisions and bring recommendations up for a vote. If board members have strong opinions about the committee decisions, encourage them to join the committee.

Lesson 5: The differences among us provide balance on a nonprofit board. So, remember that not everyone will vocalize their opinion in a large group. Some people are visual thinkers and others auditory ones. Leadership and good ideas come through many different paths. A retreat is the time to value differences by using alternate strategies to bring out the best, innovative, useful ideas from everyone. Think creatively and strategically about how you can do this.

Lesson 6: Calling this a strategic planning board retreat was a mistake. A strategic planning board retreat is used when you are trying to determine the direction of the organization for the next 3 or 5 years. Every board retreat has a different purpose, so try not to confuse people by picking the wrong name.

Click here to read more about Mersky, Jaffe & Associates’ Strategic Planning

Email me to learn how we can help you with your next Board Retreat

Why Every Board Member Should Write An Annual Appeal Letter

Here is a great (and relatively short) exercise to encourage donor-centric thinking among your board and/or committees. Use this with anyone and everyone you can. In addition to a new way of thinking, you can improve donor retention and have new ideas about what to write in your donor appeal letters for the coming year.

The “Why every board member should write an annual appeal letter” exercise

Take 15 minutes at a board meeting and ask everyone present (whether board member, volunteer, or staff) to write a donor-centric, annual appeal solicitation letter. And include the following instructions/reminders:

These letters will not be sent out right after the meeting, so don’t worry about grammar or structure.
You are looking for their point of view and what they think are the reasons people give to the annual fund- not wordsmithing or perfection.
Strong donor-centric letters include:

The word “you” whenever possible
The benefits for the prospect and why it will be beneficial for the reader to give to this nonprofit (not why the nonprofit should be a recipient)
Creating connections for the prospects and the organization

Consider whether a story should be featured and, if so, whose story should it be?
Think about who is writing and signing the letter.

This exercise will help you:

See what motivates the board members to donate their time and money
Generate board awareness of what the development team is focused on each day and what works.
Determine what your board views as donor-centric
Find new ideas for your letters
Create connections between board members and staff (and maybe even uncover some hidden development skills among your volunteer leadership)

Should this be homework to bring to your next meeting?

You may want to tell your board members that you will be doing an exercise about fundraising letters and stories so they can consider ideas ahead of time. But, the majority of volunteers will not sit down ahead of time to write anything out. If some people do, it will be the people who already feel comfortable writing and excited about fundraising. This exercise is about generating ideas from everyone, because that is what will help your nonprofit look at fundraising in new and different ways.

And new ways to look at your fundraising will help you raise more money. Which, of course, is always the goal.

Email me if you would like our help in facilitating your next board meeting or retreat.