Nonprofit Arts Organization Boards: An Epilogue

You don’t have to follow what others call “best practices” if it doesn’t work for your community.

If you are a nonprofit arts board member, you have a chance to build something great. And no, the best way is not to copy what your fellow arts organizations are doing. In fact, it might behoove you to look at other kinds of nonprofits that fit under the IRS guidelines.

If you have your 501 (C) (3) letter, you are a nonprofit. That is not in question. It would take an act of severe bad faith to lose that status. Severe, as in criminal. The IRS is not checking up on whether your organization fits within their status descriptions. You know that already. In fact, you’re banking on it. You’re skating by on not-all-that-thin ice because no one will stop you.

And so you keep producing art. Maybe it’s for art’s sake. Maybe it’s for your artistic leader’s sake. And people buy tickets or donate or whatever, and you’re generally happy about that.

It’s like driving 70 in a 60-mph zone (or, say, 120 in a 100-kph zone), assuming you’re driving sober and are awake at the wheel. No one’s likely to stop you. In fact, you can justify your speed (in your head) by determining that everyone else is going 70/120 as well.

The thing is, driving above the speed limit increases the likelihood that if you should crash, you will die. That’s probably why the speed limit was set at 60/100 in the first place.

And so you keep presenting art. Maybe it’s for art’s sake. Maybe it’s for your artistic leader’s sake. And people buy tickets or donate or whatever, and you’re generally happy about that. The IRS isn’t coming after you for driving 70/120.

But what we’ve come to learn, especially after many, many years of economic downturn for nonprofit arts organizations is this: the best way to seem essential (and fundable) is to be essential (and, therefore, fundable). To be essential—driving the speed limit—may not be all that exciting for the artists. But it’s what the community needs. And it will not only keep your arts organization from dying of irrelevance, it will likely thrive instead.

The generations of donors who gave to arts organizations as a form of civic rent are dying out/have died out. If you are depending on your 80-year-olds to save you, you have no plans for the future. Maybe you don’t care if the industry expires in a few years. Artists existed and created art long before arts organizations existed to produce art. And they’ll exist and create long after the sector has vanished.

If you believe in your charity, isn’t it your responsibility to both speak for the community to your organization and to speak for your organization to the community?

So the question arises: what does your community want and what does it need? There are no reports that say that your organization’s productions solve any community problem except for the lack of your organization’s productions. That’s almost the dictionary definition for “irrelevance.”

What might help you, then, is the knowledge that your board need not fit some precedent in performing its tasks. Those “5 Most Important Responsibilities of a Nonprofit Arts Board Member” need not take the form of a group of people sitting around a table following Robert’s Rules of Order.

You can do anything you want, within reason and laws and rules. There are lots of kinds of boards. Your board needs to adapt to your community. It shouldn’t be limited to serving some longstanding predetermined dog-and-pony show. As long as you serve the community first by using the arts as a tool, not as a final product.

In the state of Washington, your board is required to have three people on it. Evidently, that’s true in a lot of states. Beyond that, there are other rules of incorporation that determine what you have to have in the formation of your nonprofit corporation.

Those three people might be the only board members you need. And if you have them report to the executive director (who should probably be an ex-officio, fourth member of the board), the rest of what would have been board members might be more effectively used as fluid task forces. Or, you can have a 100-member board (not recommended by me, but maybe by your community) in which your board members handle the five responsibilities in waves, like directing a high school play with 65 kids in it.

Maybe meeting once a month is too arbitrary. In a 3-person board, maybe it’s better to set up your committees and task forces to report based on the project they’re doing. In a 100-person board, maybe it’s best to make a rule that tasks an executive committee to handle all parliamentary requests. For that size, maybe once a year is plenty.

Maybe a Robert’s Rules of Order board is right for your community. But if it’s the only way you’ve ever tried, perhaps it’s time to expand your thinking to find exactly the right fit for you.

It's totally up to you.

It’s easy to copy what others are doing, regardless of effectiveness. It’s more difficult to fashion a board that works exactly for your community, but the point of engaging in the exercise is to increase effectiveness in solving or mitigating your community’s problems, as you have promised to do.

There is a movement afoot internationally to resize, reduce, and reimagine boards for nonprofit arts organizations. If your arts organization is doing nothing except producing art, your board of directors probably ought to be resized, reduced, and reimagined…if not replaced. Or removed.

As it turns out, size really doesn’t matter. Flexibility does. Impact does. Solving a problem does. Do what is right for your community, not what’s convenient for you, and you’ll have a better chance of thriving. (And, of course, so will your community.)

Based in Kirkland, Washington, Alan Harrison is a writer and speaker specializing in nonprofit organizations, strategy, the arts, and life politics. His columns appear regularly in major publications. Contact him directly at [email protected].

If you’re feeling generous or inspired, just click on the coffee cup above. You don’t have to, of course, but if you can afford it and find some value here, please provide the desperate need for caffeine.

Alan is always looking for good opportunities to write and consult for nonprofits that need a hand. And, of course, that elusive Perfect Opportunity?.

BIG NEWS: Alan’s new book, “Scene Change: Why Today’s Nonprofit Arts Organizations Have to Stop Producing Art and Start Producing Impact” will be published in January. CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER IN THE UNITED STATES. If you live in the UK, CLICK HERE.

Alan will be speaking on May 19 at the Washington State Nonprofit Conference at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Tacoma, WA. The publisher has pre-printed a LIMITED NUMBER of books so that attendees can purchased a signed copy right there at the event.

A few more copies may be made available for those booking conferences, reading engagements, and speaking engagements. Recruit your local bookstore, conference panel, or boardroom to get a visit from Alan. Let Alan know if you want bulk copies for your board!