RECRUITING NEW BOARD MEMBERS SHOULD BE A COURTSHIP

 

I hear from several of my nonprofit clients that board engagement is a challenge; getting board members to do more than just show up once a month for board meetings has proven more difficult than they expected. I like to work from the assumption that community members who agree to join a nonprofit board do so with the best of intentions of giving back, making a difference in their local community. And I do believe that’s true. What I’ve also come to believe, however, is that the average community member doesn’t really understand what being a board member for a small nonprofit organization entails.

So, how do we get our board to be more engaged?

The bigger question for me is: how can you get board members who are already engaged? People who understand your nonprofit, your mission, the expectations you place on board members and what ‘engagement’ looks like to your particular organization?

I’ve talked in several of my presentations and seminars/webinars about what I call the upside-down funnel. In the upside-down funnel, nonprofit organizations are recruiting board members directly from the general public. Adding people who have no experience with board membership, have never spent a minute volunteering for your organization, and don’t know what will be expected of them. They typically either complete just one term or step down early and maybe they just stick around to be on one of your committees. From the committees, these previous board members then select one particular event, program or project that they enjoy, drop out of the committee and ask to just be called once a year when that event, program or project comes around again. And maybe they stick to it, or maybe they just fade back out into the general population.

Think about the shape of a funnel and imagine that you’re holding it with the wide end up and the narrow part at the bottom: you’ve take the general public onto the board, and as the funnel narrows they’ve descended onto a committee, then a project or event and then dropped out of the funnel completely.

I’d like to see groups flip the way they sift people through their funnel; creating a pipeline of engaged board members who climb their way to the top…just like you would at a major corporation. You start by recruiting volunteers from the general public. (Ignore that you have empty board seats! It’s perfectly fine to have empty seats while you wait for the right people to rise to the top, as long as you’re meeting the minimum state requirement for board members.)

Train your volunteers, educate them about the organization, and give them items to work on that help advance your mission, your events, programs and projects. Then look around and select the best, most committed, reliable volunteers and ask them to join one of your committees.

The committee members who have proven that they’re willing and able to put in the time, who understand your organization and its mission, who are excited by and engaged in the work and making an impact in the community – those are the people you invite to apply for a position on your board.

Notice I used the words invite and apply. It should be a privilege to serve in such an esteemed capacity. And you should, eventually, wind up with more applicants than you have seats on the board. Now you get to handpick the best, most engaged people to serve on your board.

Flipping the funnel and creating that pipeline is a slow process, to be sure. But let me ask you: would you rather have a board filled with disengaged members who rarely do more than show up for a monthly meeting or a bunch of empty board seats but a cadre of engaged volunteers and active committees advancing your mission and helping you make a deeper impact in your community?

We need to court our community members, get to know them, find ‘our tribe’, the people who just click with the mission. Making public pleas for new board members, in my opinion, seems a tad (or more!) needy and gives the impression that you’ll take anyone you can get and are willing to accept the bare minimum. Let’s play the long game instead. It may not solve your engagement issue today, but in the long term I think it will pay off.