In a dream, you are at a board meeting. Your board members are 100 percent supportive, challenge you in friendly ways, encourage you to lead, make decisions, and send cheers of thanks to the staff for their work. Finally, as the alarm rings, they pass around an envelope and fill it with personal checks to establish a board challenge fund designed to engage new donors.
You wake up sad that your board isn’t anything like the board in your dream. Instead, they struggle with attendance, leading, and follow-through. You wonder if they are bored. They teeter at times on the edge of dysfunctional behavior moving between micro0managing and micro-engagement. Overall, their behavior significantly reduces your job satisfaction.
You wonder if there is something you can do to make your dream come true. Because it’s lovely to dream and because you know, it’s even better to be on the road to creating one. Planning and acting to grow a supportive board is the difference between invested and hopeful and daydreaming. You need an effective plan that involves research, analysis, thinking, and long-term, consistent actions. A solid board excellent plan will clarify your outcomes, select the best alternatives to achieving your goal and move your board toward governance.
A supportive board is more than a dream, it’s an obtainable goal. In Board Rx, nonprofit leaders, like you, discover what’s blocking their boards from fulfilling their responsibilities and create a roadmap to board excellence.
Nonprofits with supportive, engaged boards don’t just wake up with them one day, fait accompli. A board excellence plan helps you, staff, board members, and other supporters to recognize that achieving excellence is possible with intentional efforts. Be intentional about getting the board you want. Yes, dream the dream. Then, wake up and create a plan to grow one. Start today. Write down the goal you have for your board—next, options on actions to list to get there.
For more about what’s possible, see these related resources:
Before founding her firm, Karen Eber Davis developed the Sarasota County Community Development Block Grant Program. Under her leadership, this infant program received the National Association of Counties National Affordable Housing Award for the Down Payment Assistance Program. To date, the program helped over 1,800 families realize their dreams of homeownership. She also worked with the City of Ft. Lauderdale and the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, where she developed the division’s first audit program. In an earlier position at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Tampa, she organized senior, youth, and children groups plus family activities. Her youth staffing work with the Florida Synod of the Lutheran Church in America supported youth ministries in 120 congregations in Florida.
Get free practical nonprofit tools, innovative insights, and valuable opportunities just for nonprofit CEOs in your inbox. Sign up today to receive your copy of “Top 5 Resources for Nonprofit Board Recruitment.”