Board Recruitment: More About the Future than the Now

I taught the first webinar in NYSArts’ board development series last week. (There are two more webinars left in the series and you can sign up for them by going to www.nysarts.org.) The focus of the conversation was on board recruitment and training.

The lesson I hope I successfully transmitted was that bringing great talent to the boardroom is much more than that – it takes planning, skill identification, networking for the right person, lots of communication once that person is identified, followed by a support system that enables that person to do their best job should they agree to join the board.

Far too often, especially for smaller boards or boards that are simply disorganized, the new board member recruitment process is an afterthought, hurriedly undertaken just before elections are held. This method may fill board seats, but does it facilitate the matching of talent to the changing needs of an organization?

It strikes me that board recruitment should be more about the future than the now. If an organization is intent on building a board to meet its needs, doesn’t it make sense that it should look for the talent it will need for the next 3-6 years, which is a typical term of office for a board member?

That approach may also help some boards diversify – if nothing more than to get beyond the same or similar skill sets to a more complementary set of skills and talents.

Photo: Illinois Arts Alliance board meeting, 6/25/2008. Flickr

Comments

What Would Make You Turn Down an Invitation to Join a Board?

THERE'S SO MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT RECRUITING BOARD TALENT, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about it from the prospect's point of view. Clearly, there are boards where the line is long to get on them. But what would make you turn down an invitation? Here's a short list to get the conversation started: 1. You've had no prior exposure to the organization. Your immediate reaction is "did you pull my name out of a hat?" (Is that lady in the picture the head of the Nominating Committee?) Seems as though there must be a hidden agenda at work (like you're rich and once you become a board member you'll pour all your resources into the organization) or the organization is simply looking for any warm body to fill a seat. 2. The organization doesn't have a good reputation. There's something to be said for street cred. An organization that's floundering may be strengthened by your participation or you may find yourself sucked into...

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for? This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.) Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although ...

Back in the Saddle

MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin. We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week. If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014. It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog. I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs. Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management. Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, wh...

Leading by Design

Search This Blog