While the best practices are followed, an organization thrives. In absence of them, growth is minimal. Whereas some wrong moves can quickly lead to the deterioration of the organization. What are those wrong moves? Again I have tried to club them as common mistakes in the following infographic.
- High Handedness?— Many times people who take up the role of officers in a voluntary organization forget that they are just servant leaders. They think that they autonomous and can work in an authoritative manner. Just because, not many were keen in taking the roles, they take advantage of the situation and look down others. They try to show all kinds of high handedness, specifically who questions them. They try to snub, bully, badmouth people who genuinely ask question in the interest of the organization. They forget that the opportunity given to them is to hone their leadership skills as well work for others. By being authoritative and autocratic, they kill the organization. When the trend continues, it can directly be seen in the membership attrition since many members do not want to continue in an organization where such high-handedness is prevailing.
- Non-compliance of Statutory Compliance?— The key tasks meant for the executive committee is to come out vision, mission, long term goals and most importantly to meet the statutory compliance. It is said enough about this in the previous best practices section. Getting the hands dirty by doing all compliance requirements may not get oneself enough visibility and hence the excom members pay scant respect towards any issues related to the compliances. If none of the excom members are interested in getting involved in this area, with the permission of the members they can think of engaging a paid consultant who can get things done. At any cost, these hygiene factors can never be compromised. In order to focus in this area, basic awareness related to compliance shall be made a must to all the excom members while they take charge.
- Black Box?— This is related to the communication and transparency. When autocratic leaders exist, members are kept in dark. They never knew what transpired in the board meetings. Sometime even fellow excom members would be kept in dark. Toady in any organization, members would be curious to know the fund position and how the funds would be better utilized. But in a deteriorating organization, no details on them would be shared with the members. Either excom would have never deliberated on such critical issues or not be keen in sharing the outcome of the meeting with the members, if deliberated. Such acts are again because of the high handed attitude and scant respect for the members.
- Process Failure?— As organizations evolve, processes become mature. Refined and defined processes help people to work with ease. For example, creation of standard operating procedures, documentation on credentials and passwords, various policies should be properly documented and archived. This would come handy during the change of guards. In absence of processes, people spend time and effort in reinventing the wheel. People with short term gains, never bother about processes and other fellow members.
- Biased Transactions?— In corporate world, there is concept called?Related Party Transactions. It means, the board of directors shall avoid engaging with their family members and close friends in securing any big contracts. While the corporate law does not bar it, it comes with very specific guidelines on related party transactions. In the professional bodies too, the excom members should avoid giving contracts or consultancy assignments to relatives and close friends. But it is quite common to see excom members without honesty and integrity indulge in activities with a conflict of interest. After all, the idea of taking a voluntary role is for improving leadership skills like honesty and integrity and not for making money.
- Lavish Spending?— Greats leaders always work conscience and pay due attention while spending common money. Where as the other category of people never bother about spending money left and right. It is customary that people spend their money initially and get it reimbursed from the organization. But it is also essential to get a “in principle approval” before initiating any expenses. Another bad practice is to club all the expenses under one bucket as combined expenses and not giving details or producing individual vouchers and bills. AGM is the only body, where questions can be raised on expenses and any other financial transactions. But in many AGMs, very few people ask for clarifications. People who indulge in financial irregularities snub the people who ask for details. Somehow, such genuine members would be projected as villains inside the organization. When such bad practices are followed, it would set a bad precedence for the lavish and unwanted spending by all the other excom members. In mu experience, I have seen a leader who spent unimaginable money towards a milestone event, which resulted in huge debts for the organization. At the end some of the good Samaritans had to work hard to raise funds post the event to break even.
- Vested Interest?— Some members join the board without having any clarity on roles and responsibilities. They join the board only for vested interests. They do everything keeping their selfish interests in mind. Some times the interests would not be monetary in nature and hence will never be explicit. When such vested interests continues, an organization that has evolved over a period of time would perish in no time.
- Non-sustainable Initiatives?— Some leaders try to bring in some new initiatives that are not sustainable in the long run as well not warranted at all. This is just to hide their failures. The new initiatives may not even align with the vision and mission of the organization. Without knowing the intent, few people start admiring the new initiatives and others follow suit. In this kind of scenario?, the critical failures such as statutory non-compliance would be swept under the carpet.
If you want to take up any volunteering roles, please think twice before accepting such roles. There is no point in collapsing an organization as well spoil your own reputation. You need to remember the best practices as well the common mistakes mentioned above. Then only the best use of volunteering would be really achieved,
