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Have you ever been on vacation and wished you knew some local people in the town you are visiting? One board member I know has a great way to enrich his summer travel and help his organization at the same time. He's on the board of an organization that helps children with disabilities, and when he goes somewhere, he drops in on a similar organization in that city (sometimes he calls ahead to say he might do so). On a recent trip he visited a Florida center, enjoyed meeting some local people, found their center impressive and interesting, and has returned with a broader perspective as a board member. Some of us, on the other hand, try to do as little as possible on vacation! Have a great summer . . . Jan Masaoka WEBSITE OF THE MONTH: PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE
If your board uses Robert's Rules of Order or other variety of parliamentary procedure, you'll find this website helpful: . I'm glad that many boards have moved towards meeting processes that may be better suited for smaller groups seeking consensus (rather than larger groups needing to make decisions), but the tried-and-true will always be valuable.
ARE YOU ON THE BOARD OF AN ALL-VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATION (AVO)?
If so, help! Here at the Board Café we're writing a handbook for board members of AVOs, and we'd like to hear your experiences, tips, thoughts, and advice. All-Volunteer Organizations are the invisible heart of many communities, from PTAs, volunteer fire departments and soccer leagues to Rotarys, political advocacy groups and community theatres. Would you take a moment and let us know a bit about YOUR all-volunteer organization? You can mail newsletters and brochures to us at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, 731 Market St., Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94103, fax us stuff at 415-541-7708, or send us notes or files via e-mail to . Thanks!
WHO SUBSCRIBES TO THE BOARD CAFÉ?
Among the Board Café's 3,500 subscribers are board members and staff from Make-A-Wish Foundation of Puerto Rico, Merseyside Young People's Theatre (England), South Eastern Museum Conference, Planned Parenthood of Spokane & Whitman Counties (Washington State), Bread & Roses, La Casa de las Madres (San Francisco), First Baptist Church of Phoenix, Continuum of Care Partnership (Charleston, North Carolina), LandWatch (Monterey, California), Lincoln Theatre Center Foundation, and even as far away as the Center for Citizen Education in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. Each issue about 20 readers take the time to write letters to the editor of the Board Café . . . thanks so much to all of you for your enthusiastic support and great suggestions. Don't forget: subscriptions to the Board Café are free (available either by fax or e-mail), so it's easy to give subscriptions to all your fellow board members.
FREE ISSUES OF "WHO CARES"
"Who Cares" has borrowed their high-graphic production style from WIRED magazine, and bills itself as the business magazine for social entrepreneurs. In their own words: "Who Cares publishes information to help people create, grow, and manage organizations for the benefit of the common good, and to foster a sense of community among social entrepreneurs nationwide." For a free trial subscription, call (800) 628-1692 and press 5.
This Issue's "Big Idea at the Board Café":
SHOULD STAFF CONTACT WITH THE BOARD BE RESTRICTED?
The challenge: should board members have contact with staff independent of the executive director? For executive directors, this issue raises blood pressure faster than almost any other (except the board's having executive sessions--a future Board Café topic!).
Executive directors often feel that independent board-staff contact undermines their authority, and creates the potential for staff to give misleading and undermining information to the board. Board members want to respect the authority of their CEO, but they also know that they can often serve best by meeting separately with staff on program or fundraising issues, and they value the independent viewpoint they can develop when not all their information is filtered through the executive director.
Some boards regularly ask program managers to give presentations to the board on developments in the field and how the organization is responding. For example, an arts organization might ask for a presentation by the development director on the concept of "audience development," or a jobs program might ask the program director to speak to the board about welfare-to-work and how the agency is working with those programs. Some boards assign a board member to each program manager, although other boards feel that doing so can create "special interests" on the board. RESTRICTING contact between board and staff usually results in suspicion on the part of the board and resentment from the staff. We suggest the following guidelines:
1. There are no restrictions on contact, but the executive director must be informed about meetings. (Example: a voice mail message from the Controller saying, "Hey, I just wanted you to know I'm meeting with the board treasurer next week to go over cash flow projections. Let me know if you have any concerns or things you want me to bring up.")
2. Board members can request information and reports (such as another copy of the budget or last month's client statistics report), but must stop short of directing staff work by asking for reports that are not already prepared (new reports can be requested of the executive director).
3. Personnel grievances must go through the channels specified in the personnel policies. Board members should direct staff complaints to those channels.
4. There should be a defined channel by which staff can raise concerns to the board about the way the executive director is running the organization. We suggest that such complaints and concerns be directed to the board president ONLY, not to any other board member. As representatives of the public, the board needs to know if staff has serious criticisms to raise, but it's only fair to the executive director AND to the board president for these to be handled in a defined way. The board president can choose to raise the concerns to the executive director, or to bring them to the board for investigation.
Volunteer Consulting Group: 9 East 41st St., 8th Floor, New York, NY 10017; (phone) 212-687-8530; (e-mail) boardinfo@vcg.org |
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