Creating Opportunities

I often hear from nonprofit board members that they got involved in an organization to make a difference, but that once they joined, they feel useless – no one calls on them to truly be involved.

If you read the Board Engagement ~ Conversation Checklist blog post then you know that one of my suggestions was to sit down and have a chat with each of your board members. Whether you’re the organization’s Executive Director or the Board President, it would be good for you to know what motivates each individual who’s engaged in your board. Even better if you can determine their passions and hobbies.

And employ them.

This post is meant to help you take those one-on-ones one step further.

For many people, volunteering is high on their priority list. However, not everyone wants to give their time to a nonprofit doing the same things they do in their job/career/profession. So, while you might be thrilled to have a lawyer, accountant, marketing person, etc. on your board if directors, they may be less than thrilled to only be valued for their legal, financial or marketing prowess. Knowing what else they enjoy, or are good at, and utilizing that knowledge could be extremely beneficial to your nonprofit, in both productivity and morale.

The best example I can give you is a personal one from my past. My company was hired by a winery to perform a “turnaround”. This six-year-old business had been losing money since it opened, and I was brought in to turn that around and make it profitable. While employing strategies to raise the level of business operations I began getting to know the people who were working at the winery. It was intentional, but also just a really nice perk of being with these people three days a week.

I observed that there were several hours when the winery wasn’t busy or had no customers at all. This is similar to the people on your board, who don’t have much to do in between board meetings. The owner, who had previously noticed this had instructed everyone to spend their down time researching how to make or describe wine or World War II history (the winery was located in a former WWII Army post) so that they’d have more to talk to as they performed wine tastings.

But even that didn’t keep our 30 or so employees busy enough.

What I learned is that one of our oldest employees, who was awesome with customers and had a very extensive knowledge of wine, loved cleaning! She could spend hours attacking the smallest bit of grime that no one else even noticed. I’ve never seen anything like it – I do NOT possess that gene – BUT after noticing this about her I made a trip to the store and the next day (without saying a word to her), she found all sorts of sparkly new cleaning supplies. And this made her very happy. And it made the winery a better place.

One of our other employees made a few comments about how “sad” the winery yard was and that it would be better if there were more flowers or even a garden. It turns out she loved gardening and shared photos of her yard with me. After that, I gave her $100 in petty cash each season and told her to do what she could with it. She had a great time, and the winery yard and entryways were more vibrant and well-tended.

It turned out that one of the other ladies at the winery had a secret desire to design chalkboards. I gave her permission to go online and find inspiration and turned all of our chalkboard and whiteboards over to her. In no time she created some of the most beautiful – or humorous – signs inside the winery. Our employees and customers enjoyed them, took photos of them, and admired talking to her about it. In fact, she got so good at it, other wineries started asking her to do theirs, too.

And I’ll never forget a young man who worked at the winery. He was one of those people who can remember every scientific fact he ever hears and can turn around and explain it well to people who can’t grasp science (like me). He was brilliant. But bored. One day I couldn’t get a piece of office equipment to work, and he asked if he could take a look. Unleashed, he was so happy to be in the office, making printers work, being on the computer, and being involved in the whole process of wine from production to labeling to describing it to customers. I promoted him to Assistant Manager at the ripe age of 23 because he was so passionate and great at being an involved and engaged leader; all of the cogs rolled more smoothly when he was part of the management team.

But the most surprising discovery, for me, was the six and a half foot tall, very muscular, career military gentleman who towered over the rest of us, had a booming voice, and a great sense of humor…and a love for craft projects. I did not know this fact until one day he came to work with what looked like a little square coaster made out of corks. When I asked him what it was for, he reminded me about the hole in the bathroom wall where the door handle had pushed through the drywall. He made a bumper pad out of the corks he collected the previous day and adhered it to the wall over the hole. It worked like a charm. After that, small repairs and big cork art projects were all his!

When you have one-on-one conversations with your board members, don’t just ask what they’re passionate about, don’t make it an interview, just have a conversation and be observant. Look for when their eyes light up. What are they talking about when they sit up a little straighter? What questions do they ask? What suggestions do they make? In many cases, the things they bring up are clues as to what’s important to them.

Because, yes, the lawyer can give legal advice, the CPA can do your tax returns and the marketing guru can create your mass emails…but what will truly connect them to the organization? How can you create opportunities in your daily operations, your fundraisers, your programs for them to spend more time assisting your nonprofit with success and growth?

Allowing your board members to perform tasks that bring them joy and fulfillment will create a sense of loyalty and will go a long way to helping them perform some of their more obligatory responsibilities to your nonprofit, like being an ambassador, a cheerleader, and a fundraiser. Ultimately, the goal is to have a board of directors filled with people whose eyes light up, who sit up a little straighter, and find volunteering with your organization to be another of their passions.