United Way of the Midlands Blog

If you’ve ever been interested in serving on a Board of Directors of volunteer committee, United Way of the Midlands has a professional development opportunity to help you on your way.

United Way of the Midlands provides Blueprint for Leadership, a professional development course targeting future community leaders. The program prepares diverse groups of individuals for volunteer service in the nonprofit sector.

The Blueprint for Leadership program is wrapping up and it’s time to welcome our newly trained graduates into the community to serve! Graduation is tonight and we can’t wait to celebrate.

We are incredibly proud of the work this class has done and are anxious to see them lead the community in new ways with a new-found understanding of what it means to be a leader. We asked them to explain what they learned over the course of the program, and created this wordle to sum it all up:

Congratulations to the 2012 Blueprint for Leadership Class!

If you’re interested in nonprofits and you don’t know about Blue Avocado then take a minute and get to know it.  It is good reading for nonprofit staff, board members, or folks generally interested in nonprofits.  The magazine offers great articles and great commentary.  They also post something akin to “the Shameless Self promotion” award, so they have a sense of humor.

While it is an older post, this Blue Avocado article deserves some extra attention. Jan Masoka, nonprofit rock star, believes it is the executive director who is responsible for the organization.  ALL of it- including the how well the board operates. She’s right- everything hums along when both the board and the director are strong and are working well together.  She’s also right that when the board is weak something has to change, and the board likely won’t change unless the director gets involved and helps make the change.

I agree with Masoka to a degree.  However, I’m a fan of checks and balances, so I’m concerned about the director’s power.  I think it is too easy when operating from Masoka’s framework for board members with busy lives to defer to the director.  This deferment can further weaken or disengage a board.  Finally, and I hate to say it, but sometimes bad executives take advantage of or unwittingly hurt organizations. Call me skeptical and slightly paranoid, but I don’t want power of a charitable organization concentrated in one person.

So at Blueprint we work to cultivate an educated and trained group of volunteers who are prepared to step up and work on boards to make sure the best possible work is being done in an organization. The checks and balances from staff, to executive director to a Board of Directors made up of donors and volunteers keeps our message and efforts connected with the community and prevent them from being created in a vacuum, a crucial part to making an impact.

What are you doing to ensure your Board of Directors is engaged?

Fundraising already is or is becoming a significant role/responsibility for nonprofit boards. For some organizations (arts and such), this has always been the case.  In the area of human services, however, a contribution of time was considered sufficient.

Let’s look at some data from the Board Source Nonprofit Governance Index 2010.  The report shares data from surveys of both nonprofit CEOs and board members. According to the report, nonprofit directors’ perspectives about board performance differ from most board members’.   Directors’ GPA for overall board performance was a  C+ though board members gave themselves a B.  More striking, directors gave their boards a grade of D in fundraising while board members gave themselves a C.

Let me climb on the soapbox– I don’t think time is enough when serving on a nonprofit board.  If one doesn’t think the organization is valuable enough to personally fund, then why should others think differently and choose to give to the organization?  If one’s time is that valuable, then auction some of it off and share the proceeds with the organization.

These are the sorts of conversations we are having during Blueprint for Leadership with our 2012 class, and  I’m sure there are folks who disagree with this opinion, and those opinions are welcome.  It is only in the course of conversation that we learn. Want to be part of the conversation? Comment here and let us know what you think!