Board Member Orientation

Issue No. 253 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting notes Peter Drucker’s comment, “There is one thing all boards have in common…They do not function.” Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Hooey Alerts on Fuzzy Board Thinking

In the foreword to Jim Brown’s book, The Imperfect Board Member, Patrick Lencioni writes, “The author—a friend of mine—often jokes that a greeter at Wal-Mart gets more orientation than most board members ever do. We all know that’s no joke. It’s true for boards of every description. And it’s appalling.”

Lencioni adds, “Although it sounds extreme, management guru Peter Drucker wrote, ‘There is one thing all boards have in common…They do not function.’”

So how do you fix dysfunctional boards?

Michael Batts has come to the rescue! In just 85 quick-reading pages, the author delivers a short-enough book that most new board members will read. Board Member Orientation: The Concise and Complete Guide to Nonprofit Board Service is a must-have tool for your orientation sessions with new board members. There are 10 chapters:
   1. The Legal Authority and Responsibility of Board Members
   2. The Proper Role of the Board
   3. Board Committees
   4. The Board’s Role in Risk Management
   5. The Board’s Role in Financial Matters
   6. Governing and Policy Documents
   7. The Liability of Board Members
   8. Understanding, Evaluating and Protecting Mission
   9. Board Meeting Dynamics
  10. Completing the Orientation Process by Providing Organization-Specific Information to Board Members

Addressing the sometimes fuzzy line between a board’s proper role and its tendency to micromanage, Batts gives board members grace in some situations when the lines may get blurred. “Such occasional circumstances must be handled with wisdom and care,” he writes, “and as long as they are, indeed, occasional, they are not a cause for great concern.”  (Note to CEOs: stifle yourself and just take a deep breath sometimes!)

What is a board’s job description? The author says that effective boards focus on three areas: Strategy, Oversight and Policy. Just remember “SOP.”

Hooey Alerts!  Most handbooks on board governance are dry and boring. Batts remedies that sin by sprinkling “Hooey Alerts!” throughout the book.  He defines hooey as “false or misleading information, malarkey, or bunk.” Example: “the often vaguely worded and intimidating assertion or implication that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed by Congress in 2002 applies to nonprofit organizations in a manner similar to how it applies to publicly-traded companies. (It doesn’t.)

Another Hooey Alert: “The IRS is another primary source of rampant confusion regarding policy requirements for nonprofit organizations.” The IRS Form 990 now requires nonprofits to answer yes or no to numerous governance questions—and so many organizations have written new policies to address the IRS’ concerns about lack of governance oversight (including board meeting attendance requirements).

“Such policies, if drafted carefully in a manner that is appropriate for the organization,” concludes Batts, “can be helpful, but they are not a requirement for tax exemption.”

Batts, a CPA, has served as the board chair of ECFA and is currently the chairman of the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations, a national commission convened at the request of U.S. Senator Charles Grassley. Batts writes with experience and conviction. My recommendation: give this book to every board member and senior team member and keep extras on hand for new board members.

To order this book from Amazon, click on the graphic below for Board Member Orientation: The Concise and Complete Guide to Nonprofit Board Service, by Michael E. Batts.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Batts says that one of the key roles of a board is to prevent “mission drift” or “mission creep” (“not permitting the organization or its leadership to pursue programs or activities that are outside the scope of the organization’s mission”). How effective is our board at preventing mission creep—or has the board been the unknowing catalyst for it in the last 20 years?
2) The author urges boards to engage in the “tough” discussions at board meetings, and not refrain from addressing topics that might make some members or staff uncomfortable. He suggests being proactive and keeping those topics as standing agenda items, such as “Annual consideration of the reasonableness of the CEO’s compensation package,” and “Discussion of details of any related party transactions.”  What “tough topics” should be added to your board’s agenda in order to reduce hallway gossip and misinformation?

Slot-filling Syndrome - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in Chapter 12 in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is to inspire volunteers to see their roles in the context of God’s calling. When staff abandon the “slot-filling syndrome” and see their work as discipleship, the volunteer culture can be transformed.

Al Newell, founder of High Impact Volunteer Ministry Development, sees it this way:

“Sustaining motivation is better understood as a by-product as opposed to a goal of itself. It is my experience that if you pursue discipleship with volunteers, motivation will follow. If volunteers see the fulfillment of their role as ‘obeying and serving God’ rather than serving you or your organization, it will cause motivation to swell.”

For more resources, visit the Volunteer Bucket webpage and download “The Volunteer Annual Program Check-up” worksheet.

 

 

Comments

[Taylor Bishop]

Thanks for the interesting read about board member orientation. It's good to know that you can ask how effective your board is for preventing mission crept so that you can fix it in the future. It sounds like something to keep a record of so that you can analyze the data effectively and over a certain period of time.