Avoiding a Board of Detractors

As someone who has worked with nonprofits for over twenty years, I've seen one issue rear its ugly head more times than I can count. The issue, which I'm sure has been around since The Hospital of St. Cross, the first recorded charity established in Britain in 1136, is poor board recruitment, training, and management. Granted, the monks back in the Middle Ages were still figuring out how to run things, but I'm sure there was at least one blowhard who insisted that they were right and dismissed everyone else's ideas to make sure their agenda was the one that prevailed. Sound familiar? You don't have to work in a nonprofit to be exposed to that sort of bombast, but the very nature of charities sometimes attracts people who attach themselves to organizations for all the wrong reasons. This is one reason you need liability insurance to cover your board and volunteers. 

Like a regular corporation, charities are created because someone saw a need they believed was not being addressed. Unlike a traditional industry whose mission is to provide a product or service that can be sold with profits distributed to investors, nonprofits have a social entrepreneurial spirit that gives back to the community it serves. 

Once the charity's mission is established, the next step is to create a board of directors. In some states, it can be as small as three people, usually the group's founding members. The goal is to increase the number of board members who can help raise the organization's profile. But first, they need to have a good understanding of the definition of a functioning board.

According to the National Council on Nonprofits, board members are the fiduciaries who steer the organization toward a sustainable future by adopting sound, ethical, legal governance and financial management policies and ensuring the nonprofit has adequate resources to advance its mission.

         

The very nature of an honorable cause can sometimes bring around people whose intentions are not honorable. That's why I tell people who work at nonprofits to be very leery of anyone who comes in, seems to have all the answers, and then wants to take on a lot of responsibility with very little oversight. At first, the person seems like an answer to a prayer and is charming and willing to go above and beyond what is called for. But at some point, they can become manipulative and controlling. These individuals can cause fissures in an organization that can take a very long time to heal.

I've seen my share of bad board behavior. Here are a few tales that go under the heading of "Don't let this Happen to You!"

Cautionary Tale #1:

An arts group had managed to bring on board members from all over the community and wanted to make sure that its artists were represented. One

reliable actor was interested in serving on the board. It seemed like a natural match; the theatre had board members who represented the community and had the financial and legal skill set needed. Still, it needed someone to represent the performance side even though the Artistic Director was also on the board. Things were going well at first until the actor brought up a play that he had always wanted to do. The content was not keeping with the theater's mission, and the piece was voted down. The actor kept pushing, and the Artistic Director explained that it did not jive with the other plays they were considering. 

The actor persisted to no avail and then shifted his tactic to get the board to remove the Artistic Director. Luckily, the members saw through his manipulation, but it took months to get him off the board, damaging the group's cohesiveness. 

Cautionary tale #2

I was the executive secretary at a child welfare agency that included foster care. Ideally, foster parents are trained to take care of the children in their stead with the idea that it will not be a permanent placement but a place where a child can reside outside an institutionalized setting. At the same time, the state tries to facilitate reunification with their biological family. 

One of the foster care parents at this agency had nurtured a young girl

since she was an infant. The parents were getting back on their feet, and the state wanted to reunify the family. The foster mother understandably had grown close to this child, who was two years old, and had let a few people at the agency know that she was interested in adoption. She was told that unless there was a termination of parental rights by the state, the goal for the family was always reunification. The foster mother didn't want to help facilitate the supervised visits, making it difficult for the biological parents to meet with their daughter.

When it looked like the biological parents would receive custody of their daughter, the foster mother fled with the young girl in the middle of the night and left her husband and young son to contend with the press and legal fallout. The fact that a foster parent decided to take such a drastic action was bad enough, but the reaction from the Chairman of the Board of the organization was even worse.

She was a friend of the woman and called a press conference unbeknownst to the Executive Director to say that she completely supported what the fugitive foster mother was doing. This proclamation of support jeopardized several state welfare contracts, which would have significantly reduced the services the organization could offer and might subsequently cause staff lay-offs. None of this had crossed the Chairman's mind while she expressed her righteous indignation to the media.

 The woman and the child were found in the middle of the state. Luckily, she had not crossed the state line, or the legal ramifications would have been even more significant. The young girl was reunited with her biological parents, and the foster mom ended up in a world of legal trouble. 

 As a result, the Chairman resigned from the board. A new communication and board policy was put in place in which only the Executive Director could speak to the media on behalf of the agency. It took years to rebuild the trust between the government entities and donors with the organization just because one person decided to go rogue.

Here are a few suggestions on how to prevent a volunteer leadership implosion:

• Make sure you have liability insurance for board members and volunteers. These cautionary tales are a prime reason you need coverage if your board members go out of bounds and you are sued for damages.
• Develop a board handbook that each board member signs to ensure they understand their responsibilities and how to counter toxic behavior. Board members should attend an orientation where they can ask questions so everyone is on the same page. 
• Always ask a potential board member to serve on a committee first. If you start to see negative issues, you can deal with them before they join the board and serve as a legal entity.
• Do your due diligence. It's not enough for one or two people to vouch for the potential board member; do a background and reference check to verify their credentials. 

There is no better feeling at the end of the day than knowing that you made a difference in the world by doing charity work. Safeguarding that mission from someone whose intentions are unscrupulous, even if they seem magnanimous, is one of the most difficult challenges a nonprofit can face. Recognizing and stopping malignant individuals is a vital skill to hone and one that might determine the long-term sustainability of your organization. You don't need to be a monk from the 1100s to understand that.