80x3 Podcast Series - Part 3: Early Childhood Budgets, Boards, and Brain Development
CCenter for Inclusive Child CareFeb 7, 2024 at 10:01 pm30min
NNarrator
00:02Welcome to Inclusion Matters, a podcast about children's development from the Center for Inclusive Child Care.
PPriscilla W.
00:08Welcome to Inclusion Matters a podcast from the Center for Inclusive child Care. I am Priscilla Weigel back again with my amazing guests for part three of our conversation, early childhood budgets, boards and brain development. I have Amanda Ziebell Mawanda and Art Rolnick back and also Jamie Bonczyk. And we are really having just an amazing conversation about some important things that support quality care for all children and support the people doing the work and providing the care and the families and the whole community. And so our topic in this third part is really looking going to be looking at boards, nonprofit board of directors and Jamie, I would love to jump in with you telling us about your personal experience as a director of a nonprofit organization, providing early care and education to children. And thinking about how educators and administrators really can engage and make sure that they're ensuring buy in for their board members. And also talk a little bit about recruiting some of those key people because a board has a really important role in supporting this whole thing.
JJamie B.
01:40Yeah. So for three years, I was an executive director of a nonprofit. And before that I spent eight years as an administrator that also reported to a board. So I feel pretty comfortable in working with boards. But I don't know that everybody who works in a nonprofit child development center is a does has as much access as I did. So I'm going to kind of answer your question in two different ways. What I found, first and foremost, I'll just say like, as an administrator, I worked in Headstart organizations, and they have federal requirements of who should be on your board of directors like what kind of backgrounds those people should have as far as like understanding finance, and understanding child development. And so as I was an executive director, and people moved off of our board, and I would work with the board members to say, hey, I think we could for sure can do an open call. But right now, we don't really have anybody who's got a background in marketing. But that would be a really good thing to have a lens of somebody who has ideas. So we looked at some of like, what is Headstart doing and like, maybe we should aspire to do some of those things. But the people who served on our board had a background in child psychology. There was a person who had a background, having worked at DHS, but wasn't in that role at the time, a background of somebody who had worked in philanthropy in another state, we had a person who had was a public health nurse, we had a lawyer, we had people who worked in investment of public, an accountant, and so looking at kind of like fully fleshing out the board. Also, on that particular child development board, we had a former parent, we didn't have a current parent. And there's different reasons that different organizations might choose to, like, do one or the other. But we thought it was really important to have somebody who had lived experience in the Center, but also was going to have some space away from when we had to discuss certain such certain things. And so, you know, I think that it's important to think about all these different considerations of who are the people that are going to be not only looking at your fiscal health of your organization and your strategy, but what's in it for them, like, why did they care about this issue? And like, what networks did they have? Because, you know, it is a nonprofit, there's going to be needs that are like, above and beyond what the organization can do. So I think, from the perspective of like, who are these people, who do we want. I think we want a lot of people from different industries that actually care about early childhood education and care, on the board of directors. I don't think you want all people that all know the same thing influencing your board. So that's my first perspective. And, how did I go about finding these board members was we worked with the Minnesota Council on nonprofits, we like put out open applications, but also sometimes it was board members recruiting other board members. It might have been people that I knew from a former job to say, hey, we're gonna have this. Are you interested? Do you know anybody you could recommend? Then there was a whole like application process and an interview and we did all these things. But you asked me a second point, Priscilla, which is how to staff like engage with their boards. I think everybody, at all aspects, want to feel proud of the work that they're doing. And I think that the if you're not directly talking to the board, there are reports that go to your board of directors if that's your executive director working with the board, the the executive director wants to, I would say, they want to say like this is what's going well. Of course, you're going to talk about what's not going well. But I think that the biggest thing is like, tell, if you're an assistant teacher, you're a classroom teacher, the bus driver, keep the person that reports to the board, like, there's got to be a way to inform that person so that they can share your stories in a way that makes sense to the board. You know, I was brought in sometimes, when I wasn't an executive director to meet with the board and give some real life. So I think that there's a lot that goes into this relationship of who do you know, and there's some power dynamics that are here, and different organizations do things in different ways. But ultimately, if we have an all in approach of we know what the mission is, we know why we're all here together, we know what value we bring, and we know why we're doing this together, then all of the relationship pieces like I think, move more cohesively together, and it feels more like we then meet.
PPriscilla W.
06:10Yes, and I do think speaking as a nonprofit executive director, who has a board, one thing that and thankfully, our organization is the size that allows for this, I don't know if a larger organization would be able to do this, but we've had, we have staff spotlights, so, you know, staff come to the board meeting the people doing the work, and they talk about what their job looks like on a day to day basis. And then they share, you know, some of that impact that they've had individually in their role. But I feel that we can always do better at having the board feel the we and to articulate we as an organization. So sometimes it's it's hard to feel a part of things when you're not regularly engaged in the work. And so how are nonprofits really pulling in their board members to understand the work and Art, you sit on a lot of boards, and, you know, clearly from our conversations in these parts, three parts series, you you have passion, you've you've adopted and taken on the passion of those organizations, we can hear it when you're talking about the work that they do. How have those organizations achieved that for you as a board member? What have they done? What are some thoughts?
AArt R.
07:32Sure, I'm getting into this space, believe me, I was very naive. You know, I'm a research guy, and now I'm getting into the nonprofit in the public policy space directly. And what I learned, right, almost right away, and this is United Way going back 20 years, Warren Staley was Chair of the board, he was CEO of Cargill, and what I learned is when you get business people involved on your board that have an influence, even if they don't know the issue, and they're ready to learn, like, I don't think Warren Staley knew anything about early ed. But once we sat down and talked about it, it was an easy sell, if you will. The reason I like some business people on the board, is there going to want to look beyond just how much money an organization raises. Many times nonprofits, they talk about how successful they are in raising money, because people are going to ask, what are you doing with that money? Are you having a difference? How can you show you're making a difference? They're going to make them more accountable. At least that's what I've seen. And I'm over the years I've been on a dozen plus boards, Minnesota, nationally and even internationally. And I find that typically, a business person will ask that question, and others may not. The other reason I like a business person or a former political person is, again, nonprofits, they can do wonderful things. But when it comes to taking like early at to scale for a whole state or country, you've got to be in you've got to be in the political space. And so I want people who can help us get into that political space and have influence. So if you have CEOs from Fortune 500 companies, that's a big deal. Now, I was very successful in getting Doug and Julie Baker, Doug was CEO of Ecolab, and Julie was on the board. I think they may have been on the United Way board too. And they became national spokespeople for this issue. And so, part of the recruitment you need people from the community. Clearly you need people who understand nonprofits and know how to, you know, motivate the workers, but you also need some people on that board that can take you to scale on certain issues. Ours clearly is one that we needed in especially in Minnesota. What happened with United Way United Way working with Warren Staley created another a nonprofit called the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation, and it was a combination of United Way, Warren Staley creating Cargo creating this nonprofit, and they invited a number of CEOs, Best Buy, Target, Ecolab, General Mills, Blue Cross Blue Shield. And that's when we created Parents Aware and we created the scholarships. We did. And mentors, we did a pilot study all with private money, partly raised by United Way, partly raised by mouth itself. But it was these business leaders that really made the difference. So when I'm looking at boards, Jamie has mentioned a number of important types of people, I would add to that, a somebody who's in the political space and has a business background, should be on that and most boards, I think, at least that's my experience. If you want to move beyond just what you're doing, but taking the good things you're doing as a nonprofit, even the things that you're not doing that that's not working, letting the the public policy space knows what's working, what's not working, from your experience, and what you should take to scale. I think you need those types of people.
PPriscilla W.
11:00Ok. That's very helpful. And Amanda, I know that Propell does a lot of work with board development and board work, and you do as well in that in your role. What are things that are coming to mind for you that you feel our listeners should know?
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