Joining a Nonprofit Board? Read This First

Seeking frustration? For readers working in for-profit companies, accept a volunteer slot on the board of a not-for-profit. It could be a homeowners association, a nature preserve, a city commission, or an arts group.  Participation in any of them will sometimes cause head-smacking aggravation. It’s far different than managing companies with sales and profit as their goal.

Don’t take my cautionary remarks as negative. I support public service. Participants often bring great expertise and a desire to serve the organization and the community. For successful businesspeople, it’s giving back, and it can bring enormous satisfaction.

From my experience volunteering in the types of organizations listed above, here are insights that don’t guarantee making successful volunteering easier, but may help explain the differences.

Divergent Goals

Corporations seek to make profit, hopefully ethically, to reward investors and employees. If they do something for the community in the process, even better. While there may be differences over how to reach profit, no board member views profit as unimportant.

On a homeowners association (I’ve served on four), while everyone wants a safe and nice place to live, divergent views abound on what owners want: higher reserves, better landscaping, no short-term leases, dogs, or no big dogs. You get the picture. All legitimate ideas, but it’s a hassle to get consensus on anything.

Sources of Members

In a corporation, directors are either inside senior executives or executives picked from other organizations. Dollars to doughnuts, most outside directors have business experience. They want the company to attain its financial targets. After often-lively debate on how to get there, they march as one. They will approve the corporate strategy including financial objectives.

In contrast, let’s take a city planning and zoning commission whose job it is to approve building plans and whose members are routinely asked to waive or change zoning out of hand. Commissioners often represent differing interests. Some promote density; others want more green space and livability. Yet others want more tax-bearing buildings and others want more low-cost housing. All these goals have merit but are different enough that there often is no articulated goal other than some visionary pap. Serving on such a group takes patience, wisdom, and tolerance for frustration and a willingness to compromise to a point where everyone is unhappy.

Commitment to the Organization

Commitment in a corporation springs from unity of purpose: a desire to achieve a measureable goal. People are compensated and receive incentives to reach agreed-upon targets. They are evaluated periodically and rewarded for success. The evaluation process promotes those who do well and weeds out those who don’t. The latter don’t last. It’s the nature of companies.

Let’s take a performing arts organization for a comparison. Many don’t have measureable goals for trustees. Requirements vary. Some require a large dollar donation, others a small one, some no minimum. Some groups require trustees to serve actively on committees, attend performances, and buy tickets for prospects. Some boards are huge, mostly to get more trustee donations. A few groups — the Metropolitan Opera for one — have different levels of trustees based on contributions, each with varying responsibilities and privileges.

Again, with such diversity of requirement, it’s little wonder that that getting trustees on one course is a bit like herding cats. Possible but difficult.

Motivation for Participation

The driver for corporate leaders — as we have written — is to implement financial and growth plans. It’s simple. Competent men and women climb the ladder and may reach executive levels where they directly influence those plans. It’s a tough climb, and those who can’t deliver won’t make it.

In a not-for-profit, motivation is not always clear. The majority of trustees in performing arts groups are usually passionate about the art form. Membership in a homeowners association is often defensive — I hate the job but it has to be done. In a nature preserve board, motivations vary: Do we protect birds or all wildlife in general — so it goes. On city commissions, expertise varies. The appointing group, often a city council or city manager, picks people who reflect its views. Trustees are sometimes timeservers whose sole aim is trumpeting the cachet attached to membership of a prestigious board. Whose values prevail?

So when you join that volunteer board, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the great management and leadership ability you show in your day job will quickly bring the same success on the voluntary side of the street.

If you would like some ideas on how to handle frustrations, please let me know. If there is enough interest, I’ll write another column.