By: ML Bennett, MPA, CAP®.

President & CEO, The Arc of San Antonio.

Marion Lee penned last July that “In 2005, Barbara Taylor, Richard Chait and William Ryan wrote Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Board.  This book and its follow-up: The Practitioners Guide to Governance as Leadership from Cathy Trower are not easy reads, but well worth the effort.  Chait and his co-authors present functional Board governance as a series of how-to’s (modes and mind-sets) versus the more common concept of to-do’s (tasks and technical).  In his book, Chait introduces the concept of the “generative or sensemaker” mode of governance added to strategic and fiduciary modes.”

The generative mode should be in high gear given the challenges of the past year and those to come. Few if any of us face the same circumstances, demands, funding streams or future that we did in March 2020. In that generative mode, says Trower, boards “’generate’ 1) insight and understanding about a question, problem, challenge, opportunity, or the environment, and 2) a sense of the organization’s identity in order to most effectively respond to the problem or environment, or to seize the opportunity that best reflects what the organization is, how it sees itself, and what it values.”

While that generative responsibility of the board may be applied to many aspects of an organization’s arc through time, I suggest that now more than ever it needs be applied to framing the question: where does organizational advocacy reflect and support mission? Our missions are to significant degree guided, assisted, and/or constrained by governmental & political realities playing out at every level of our society. Advocacy is the tool available to address those realities and turn them, in positive, supportive ways towards the needs of our constituents and our services.

Boards, by definition, should bring a diverse perspective on the community we serve. They also should provide perspective on the governmental/political issues that frame a portion of our reality. More importantly, they bring connections and relationships that may assist promoting our mission and its needs to those who make decisions that affect us. We are in the midst of societal discussions about all manner of topics and agendas that do ultimately reflect in policy and funding stream decisions that affect our ability to serve.

Chait points out, “Governance as leadership requires that Boards cultivate the art and skills of retrospective sensemaking, nuanced discernment and robust discourse. (oversight, foresight, and insight).” An illustrative point, as some are concerned about the line past which nonprofit organizations may not tread in attempting to influence public policy.

Advocacy properly done is clearly a legitimate function of nonprofit organizations. Boards and senior staff must be clear about what is appropriate and allowable as to manner of advocating for the cause; once those guidelines are clear, it is time to move ahead on those issues of greatest import to your mission.

The Arc as a national organization defines it thus: “Advocacy on the individual or systems level is acting with or on behalf of an individual or group to resolve an issue, obtain a needed support or service or promote a change in the practices, policies and/or behaviors of third parties. Advocacy is essential for promoting and protecting the civil and human rights of people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities and for establishing, maintaining, or improving their quality of life.

Discussion of an organization’s position re: public policy and legislation should be based in a solid grounding of the organization’s history, mission, current capabilities, etc. It is vital that the organization’s leaders establish a methodology and an expectation that taking a position on public policy issues and clearly communicating those positions to all relevant parties is an integral part of mission.

It may be eight months since Marion’s post, but it’s been a year “+” since “recent events have placed unparalleled stress on the nonprofit community.  Some of this stress might be mitigated in future if we practice more of the generative state of governance focusing on leadership as well as stewardship.” Let us continue towards “doing better work.”

By Marion Lee, CFRE

In 2005, Barbara Taylor, Richard Chait and William Ryan wrote Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Board.  This book and its follow-up: The Practitioners Guide to Governance as Leadership from Cathy Trower are not easy reads, but well worth the effort.  Chait and his co-authors present functional Board governance as a series of how-tos (modes and mind-sets) versus the more common concept of to-dos (tasks and technical).  In his book, Chait introduces the concept of the “generative or sensemaker” mode of governance added to strategic and fiduciary modes.

The principles and themes of Governance and Leadership were derived from four questions the authors felt were key to the on-going conundrum surrounding Board performance.  Of these four questions, the following is the pivotal apex:

Why do nonprofits work so hard to find good Board members but let them become disengaged intellectually and lacking in definitive goals?

All nonprofit organizations want “good” people on their Boards.  “Good” is defined slightly differently in each case but generally consists of people who believe in the mission, are representative of the community, have or are connected to affluence and/or influence and have skills and talents that can be of use to the organization.  Once good Board members are found, the functionality of a Board goes awry when the:

1. Board Chair lacks confidence or is reluctant to commit time, energy and skill to lead the Board and hold themselves and others accountable.
2. CEO and Staff feel threatened by or do not know how to engage the Board. This scenario promotes the creation of Rubber Stamp Boards: Board follows Staff propositions that are considered “no-brainers” requiring little hard thought.
3. Board members have not accepted their responsibilities and roles. This leads to Boards that have Mid-Level Effectiveness: Board commits to low level thinking usually about proposed solutions to pre-determined problems presented by Staff.

In the simplest of terms, if a Board member’s brain is not engaged in critical thinking and problem solving, they will have little to no positive effect on the organization other than as a list of names. As one former employer said: “Give them something to do that makes them use their brains! If you don’t, they will get involved in things you don’t want them to or be, like dead fish-they stink!”

High-level effective Board members are leaders.  They discuss crucial questions that require critical thinking and have an emotional and intellectual understanding of the organization’s mission, vision and programs.

The true key to high functioning governance lies in the character of the Board Chair who will create a model for good Board governance that can last decades or turn around a lackadaisical team.  A high-level effective Board Chair may not have years of experience on nonprofit Boards, but they do know how to lead and inspire by:

1. engaging the Board in critical thinking as a team,
2. delegating specific responsibilities to team members with well-defined goals,
3. supporting individual members and committees offering assistance as needed,
4. holding team members accountable and taking appropriate actions,
5. working in tandem with the CEO or Executive Director

Chait points out, “Governance as leadership requires that Boards cultivate the art and skills of retrospective sensemaking, nuanced discernment and robust discourse. (oversight, foresight, and insight).”

Recent events have place unparalleled stress on the nonprofit community.  Some of this stress might have been mitigated if we practiced more of the generative state of governance focusing on leadership as well as stewardship.

It isn’t enough to just work better as a Board; we must do better work. 

By Covita Moroney

In working with our clients, particularly in the context of organizational assessments, Lee+ Associates team members consistently encounter nonprofit leaders who fully embrace the importance of demonstrating their program’s impact. My work with a current client (and past experiences as a nonprofit manager) quickly surfaced this core fact: most nonprofit staffs are completely occupied with the planning and delivery of their programs, and have little time to design and implement data systems for program evaluation and/or need increased expertise and analytical capacity to operate robust evaluation efforts.

President and COO of the San Antonio Area Foundation Rebecca (Becca) Brune recently shared her thoughts about data and nonprofit sustainability for this article. I was fortunate to work for Becca at Methodist Healthcare Ministries, and learned to listen attentively when she shared her insights and reflections on community, nonprofit program evaluation, and sustainability.

Prior to our meeting, I emailed Becca a question that nonprofit managers would want answered by a foundation leader with her depth of national and local experience: ‘Regarding nonprofit financial sustainability, what one area of information (data) has the most potential to strengthen a nonprofit, if collected and analyzed properly? Why is that factor so pivotal?’

In our meeting, Brune zeroed in on this point: “For nonprofits, your efficiencies, sustainability, and scale come from the strength of their program. How do you strengthen programming? Through Evaluation.” She shared that analytics is not just about funders being able to quantify return on investment and impact in a community. “Analytics and tracking outcomes is about agencies improving the services they offer. And there’s not a single nonprofit out there who doesn’t want to do that. Nonprofits represent a critical mass of data – a gold mine of information to better optimize interventions and impact”

Brune noted that only the strongest nonprofits with financial reserves and technological sophistication can direct resources to sustain the data infrastructure required for evaluation—the skills, tools, and knowledge to implement best practices. “The strong get stronger while others continue to struggle.” Drawing a Venn diagram, Becca addressed a possible path forward: “We’ve got three spheres — nonprofits, funders, and the community. There needs to be dialog between funders and nonprofits about analytics. And it may primarily be a conversation that funders need to have among themselves.”

Funders like the Area Foundation have begun exploring how best to support the development of technical skill sets and tools for evaluation—to empower agencies to truly demonstrate progress on a community issue. For example, San Antonio agencies who partner with SA2020 may receive new support to improve their evaluation practices for program metrics that align with SA2020’s shared outcome indicators. A two-year grant from the Kresge Foundation was awarded to SA2020 in support of its mission to track the city’s progress in key areas.

We at Lee+ Associates hope this commitment to program evaluation continues as we work with clients to achieve sustainability through Campaign Management, Human Resource Development, and Operational Capacity Building, including data systems and management. Our team has worked on both sides of the nonprofit/funder table, including qualified individuals helping agencies increase their capacity to collect and analyze data—creating evaluation frameworks that align with best practices, funder requirements, and SA2020 outcome indicators.