The relationship between the Executive Director and the board is like having multiple dance partners. Someone’s toes will get stepped on.

It’s an arranged marriage – the partners often have never met when they get together.

I would add that the relationship is one in which people of good will struggle to find out how they can be partners and often fail at the task.

Consider this: The Board is in charge. The buck stops with them, and they are legally responsible for the organization. On the other hand, the Executive Director/CEO is significantly more knowledgeable about the nonprofit’s field of service than the Board ever will be, simply by virtue of the time spent learning.

This disparity can be, and often is, a barrier to an effective working relationship between the ED and the Board, more often in small and mid-size nonprofits. All too often one of the following scenarios plays out:

Deferential: Board members become overawed by their ED’s command of information about their field of service. They believe they can never know enough about the organization, so they simply opt out. They may still show up for meetings, but they abdicate all their legal responsibilities. They might also be called a “Go Along to Get Along” board, because they never ask questions. Interestingly, this type of Board is often highly supportive of the ED, creating a pleasant but unbalanced relationship.

Wrongly focused: This is the kind of Board in which the members focus on what they know best – management and operations. They regularly direct the ED in the details of his or her work, and they fail to address their legal and functional responsibilities of assuring a future for the organization. This becomes highly frustrating for the ED because, unless they are not qualified for the job, they know the management piece and, frankly, don’t need a board member telling them how to do their daily tasks.

Business-like: We’ve all heard the cry – “Why can’t nonprofits be more business-like?” In one very important sense, this is a good question to ask. Nonprofits must be well run and must utilize good financial and management practices. What the business-like board fails to acknowledge is that the nonprofit sector is very different than the for-profit sector, and there are different requirements and approaches.

Then there are the individual board member challenges. Consider these true stories:

• A board member has been given early retirement from his job, so he mounts a campaign to discredit the highly competent ED on whose board he sits. He wants her job, and he’s not shy about letting people know it.
• The ED of another organization who is chair of the board and who meets with that ED on a weekly basis to talk about the tasks she will be doing that week and how she should do them.
• The ED whose preference is for a rubber-stamp board and who demeans, openly in board meetings, any members who dare to ask questions.

Every Executive Director knows that he or she will never have an ideal board. We would all be delighted with a board that focused on their work and developed a good partnership with the ED. So what does that relationship look like? Here are a few thoughts:

• It is based on mutual, expressed respect.
• Everyone has a commitment to constructive, respectful and healthy questioning and to open, thoughtful communication.
• All the team members have clearly defined roles which, when combined, result in a balanced relationship.
• The Board and ED view themselves as partners in achieving mission. Each partner brings something to the “table” and is valued for what they bring.

Building this relationship is a lot of work, but the result can be a vibrant, productive group that is successful in making the world a better place.

Thanks to NPQ’s Nonprofit Newswire, published daily by the folks at the Nonprofit Quarterly, I’ve just read an interesting but disturbing article. The key statement is that the authors (university researchers) found that consumers perceive nonprofits to be “less competent than for-profits.” This belief makes people “more likely to buy products from for-profits than non-profits.” [Click here for the full article.]

So why am I writing about this in an article about governance?

Because changing this perception is ultimately up to you as board members!

And you do want to change these perceptions because, in our world, “buying products” is equivalent to making donations. True, donations are grounded in shared passions. But, more and more, that is not enough. I attended a fundraiser for a small nonprofit recently, and, because I believe in the value of what these people do, I was prepared to make a donation of $50. Not a lot of money, but a decent-sized gift for me.

I didn’t make that donation. During the course of the event, I realized that the people involved in this organization, while deeply committed to their work, were not knowledgeable about financial matters. It came down to the fact that I felt no assurance that my credit card information would be treated with confidentiality.  The gift envelope is still in my purse.

So what’s a board to do?

At the very least, recognize that your organization will be much more effective if it has a good level of management competence. The more you have built the capacity of your staff to manage finances, human resources, operations and evaluation well, the better use you can make of the contributed resources given to you.

You need to build your capacity too. All board members need to beef up their financial knowledge, for example. I cannot count the number of board members who have said to me, “I can’t understand financial reports, but I don’t have to. Our Treasurer takes care of that.” If you say this, you are violating your legal Duty of Care as a board member.  All board members must understand the financial reports and their implications for the future of the organization.

But it doesn’t end there. Once you have built your agency’s capacity to operate effectively, and once your board is skilled at its responsibilities of planning, budgeting, financial oversight and policy setting,  you need to let people know. Start with your donors. Tell them how you are investing in improvements so their gifts are better used. Tell the whole community as well. The more you tell the story of your commitment to competence, the stronger will be the community’s support of your work.

You can change consumers’ (donors’) perceptions. It’s not easy, but it is essential.

It’s not easy being a board member. The work we have to do on a board is not intuitive. Nor is it the kind of work most of us do every day. We are human, and we want to be successful in what we do. However, what we do may not be the right thing for us to do in the board room.

Lately too many situations on this challenge have come to my attention, so it’s probably time for a little reminder about one of the most important aspects of being a nonprofit board member.

Our work is not to do the work of the organization we lead. Our work is to set the future path and to provide oversight to those who do the operational work. But the operational work is familiar to us. The strategic thinking and planning is not so familiar. So we tend to gravitate to what we know best.

Here’s an example – appropriately disguised. Fred has been a volunteer with his nonprofit for years, and he’s a board member of long standing as well. When he’s working a volunteer shift, other volunteers often come to him with complaints. He enjoys this role of being able to help them, and he truly believes he is helping the agency by taking care of the problems brought to him.

What’s wrong is that this isn’t Fred’s job. There is a staff person who has the responsibility for supervising volunteers, and he is making it impossible for her to do her job. He often isn’t aware of staff directions or plans, so his work to solve volunteers’ problems often creates more challenges.

Simple to solve, you say? Just let Fred know that this is someone else’s job, and he’ll stop, right? That depends. Fred sees himself as the only one who can do this and gains gratification from being in this important role. Any suggestion that he stop makes him angry. The resulting tension undermines even the best-intentioned organizations and boards, so no one says anything to Fred.

If you are Fred, or think you might be, please stop and realize that your board service is not about you. It is about your organization’s mission and how well all of you on the board can work cooperatively to further that mission.

“There is no question that the nonprofit sector has a board problem.” These words begin Governance as Leadership, a new book about nonprofit boards by three leading writers in the nonprofit field, Dick Chait, Bill Ryan and Barbara Holland.

Bill Ryan was keynoter at the fifth annual Nonprofit Governance Conference held here in Tacoma. Ryan reported on the results of the research he and his co-authors conducted over the last three years into what can be done to improve the effectiveness of nonprofit boards.

At the core of the report is the concept “that there are three modes of governance that comprise governance as leadership.” These modes are fiduciary, strategic and generative. The first two are easier to grasp because they describe the work that many effective boards are already doing. When working in the fiduciary mode, boards are focused on stewardship of assets. In the strategic mode they, in partnership with management, chart the organization’s course for the future.

Generative thinking is something else again. We are all familiar with it in our work and in our lives. We are always gaining knowledge, observing activities and gathering data. What we do with all that – the conclusions we reach or the ideas that are generated – are the result of generative thinking.

The trouble is, nonprofit boards don’t do this. At least not very often. Ryan laid out some strategies they can utilize to bring generative thinking into their work and thus to create governance as leadership.

This is a very important book. Anyone on a nonprofit board should read it. It is available at from www.boardsource.org or www.amazon.com.