Hi, I'm Robert Ballantyne of the Social Profit Institute. I'm here with Sherry Jennings have also short.
We're coming up on Take two.
I'm Robert Ballantyne of the Social Profit Institute. I'm here with Sherry Jennings, also of the Social Profit Institute and of Sound Governance. And today's program is about how to recruit board members to your nonprofit or social profit board. Sherry, is this a topic that people ask you about?
Oh, Robert, my goodness, yes, all the time. And most of the time, what I'm hearing is, we can't find enough people who know about financial topics, or we need somebody who understands bookkeeping, or we need somebody who can help us with designing our programs. And I always stopped them right there. Because that's not necessarily what they should be looking for. What do you think about that? Robert, what do you think about boards that are looking for people who can provide technical services?
Well, one of the things I'd like us to do is divide this topic and add another podcast, what we're going to do is talk about what you do when you have a board that's actually part of the operation of the organization. But today, what we're going to be talking about is the organization that has a paid staff. And boards often look for people who have technical services for the organization, this is really a poor idea. Because if you hire people who are there, to provide technical services, financial services, legal services, they're going to think that they're being recruited to the board for that ability. And they don't understand — they usually don't understand — that they're really there to govern. And their technical expertise might be requested by the staff, but it might not. And what we're doing is inviting the board to meddle. And one of the themes that will be coming up many times when we're doing these podcasts is: boards shouldn't be meddling and taking away from the accountability of the staff. So to look for people with those specific skills is not fair to either the board or to the individual. So right,
yeah, look for? Well, I, I, I'd like to point out that one of the reasons that it's not fair to the individual is, they're getting paid in their day job to do these things. And it's not fair to ask them to serve on a board and provide those services for free. So I just, I'd like to point that out, because you do have paid staff who are being paid to do these jobs. And while it may be nice to have people who have a certain expertise that staff can depend on, it's it's not necessarily the reason that you need to recruit those those kinds of folks. So who do you look for? Well, it's most important to have people on your board who understand the community and understand that how people in the community are affected by the organization and what the organization must achieve on on behalf of those people in the community.
And what you're looking for is people who can provide real wisdom to the board. And it's important that they that they understand or come to understand what it is this organization must achieve. You need people who are really, truly caring, and something else, you're looking for people who are capable, capable enough to be able to understand the importance and duties of governing. And that's something a lot of people have to learn. And at another time, we're going to be talking about how to orient people to your board, because you want people who know how to govern. What else Sherry?
I think that you just raised a really important point. It's so important for the board to do its job of governing first. Anything else is superfluous. And understanding that is really important. And and when you're looking for someone to be on the board, it generally helps if you have people who are well connected and, and and have, like you said, Robert, that general caring for the for the community, because once they understand that it's their job to be stewards on behalf of those folks in the community, they really understand the importance of governing well. So you got to have people who are not just connected though in terms of what is, and what is currently, but people who can see and dream ahead, people who can talk about what must be as opposed to what currently is. I don't know, Robert, you might call them what? Visionaries?
Definitely! What I find — many people who even have a lot of board experience, are accustomed to letting the staff do everything. And so what they think their job is going to be is making sure that the organization is just running well, and we teach, that's not enough. You need to be forward looking, you need to understand what your organization must achieve. And you've got to be able to, as a board member, hold the staff accountable for achieving that. For that purpose, you need to be outward looking, you need to see what is possible, not just how well are the finances doing? Are the program's well attended? Or whatever the ongoing business of the organization is, you need people who are prepared to be outward looking. And so when recruiting people, you need to talk about all of these things with those folks, are they willing to take on that kind of a responsibility, because that is the business of real leadership. And what you're looking for is people who will work well with the other members of the board, and put the board in a position of real leadership. And it means that as individuals, they need to be leaders as well, not leaders in the sense of being a renegade on the board, but possibly bringing new ideas to the board. So you're looking for somebody who's going to be very much engaged, and without involving themselves with the staff, make sure that the organization achieves what it must.
Right, Robert, so to go back to your original point, which was it's, it becomes a temptation when you have people who are too mirrored in staff operational roles. If somebody on the board is mirroring something, mirroring the role on the staff, there's a tendency for them to become too embroiled and engaged with the day to day operational nature of the organization. And even though that might sound like it's a good idea, it's a bad idea for a couple of reasons. One is the board, even if they meet regularly, month, month to month, there they can't know all the nuances and and, and challenges and opportunities and realities that that come with running the organization day to day. And that's why we're suggesting you want the board to be lifting itself above that, to be able to see that that horizon and to see what's out there. And what's possible. Let the staff do the job of running the day to day and allow the board's wisdom to come to the forefront, in terms of all the expertise and the experience in the background and, and everything that you can offer as a board member, to begin to scan that environment to see what's possible, not just what is.
I have one final thought. And that is the business of recruiting new board members doesn't belong only to the committee that set up to recruit new board members. The nominating committee does have a job. And many organizations have it as a legal requirement to make sure that there is a new board. But one of the things we teach is every board member should have recruiting new board members in their mind all the time. And as they're reaching out to the community, they should be mentally recruiting people all the time. How would this person work on a board? Is that person somebody that we should look at in the future? And use their network all of the time. Because that way, you're not running up to the time of the annual general meeting wondering if you're going to have enough board members. You're always looking for new people that are going to refresh your board and bring new wisdom to the work of the board. So I like the idea of people doing this all of the time. All of the board members recruiting all of the time.
And and just one final thing from me, Robert, I had an organization that transitioned from thinking they had to have people with certain expertise on the board, to one where they were really focused on doing just what you said, looking at you know who who might be good to on the board. The CEO recently told me that he's fielding phone calls from well connected people in the community every week who want to be on that board.
That's truly inspiring. Thank you for that, Sherry.
Until next time, you're listening to the folks of the social profit Institute. We'll be talking to you again soon.
Okay, what I will do with this is, I will make a text of this and I'll send it to you. I'll do it with...