“Lots of times we are afraid to ask our board members to do too much because we’re afraid they will be scared off. I have long observed that more board members resign for lack of meaningful work, than from being overworked.” – Linda Lysakowski
You met someone at the Chamber networking event yesterday, and now you’re thinking about asking them to join your Board of Directors. Or your Board Secretary wants to invite their best friend to join the Board.
Do either of these situations sound familiar to you? As social impact leaders, we all struggle with Board recruitment from time to time.
Before you recruit that friendly woman from the bus to your Board, there are some things to think about. Here are five items to consider before you draft the next Board member for your organization.
Improve the Board experience. It sounds a little counterintuitive, but if you want better prospects, you need current Board members to feel great about being a member of the Board. Your efforts to recruit engaged and excited Board members to your social impact organization will be much more successful when you focus on improving the experience of the Board members who are serving now.
There’s no such thing as a thriving social impact organization without an engaged and well-run Board of Directors. The organization’s growth and sustainability are directly connected to the degree of Board member engagement. Before you seek new people to serve on the Board of Directors, make sure that your current board members feel valued, excited to share your organization’s story, and are empowered to advocate for your cause. Without their help, your recruitment efforts will be much more challenging. At best, you’ll get yeses from the wrong people to serve on the Board. At worst, your social impact organization will be seen as having a rubber stamp Board without influence.
Several methods can improve the Board experience. These methods range from meeting agendas designed to keep everyone engaged to presenting generative discussions about the organization’s future that empower strategic decision making to frequent recognition of each Board member’s contributions to the organization’s success.
Run better Board meetings. How you run your Board of Directors meetings is crucial to getting new members started on the right path. It’s likely that the most significant amount of time your Board members spend with you is during a Board meeting. As the social impact leader, it’s up to you to make that time count.
If you struggle to devote enough time to prepare for a Board meeting and end up sending information to each Board member the day before (or even worse, the same day as) the Board meeting, you’re setting yourself up for a bumpy meeting and inadvertently signaling to the Board that your meetings aren’t worth preparing for.
Additionally, you’re not preparing them to do the work that the organization needs to have done. Each Board member requires information with enough time to review so they can provide insight into a discussion, advise on a topic, or make critical decisions. When this last-minute style becomes the way your meetings run, new Board members will never become engaged, active members who work proactively to move your organization’s mission forward. Understanding what your board needs and when they need it will prevent you from squandering valuable resources.
If you find yourself buried by the administration of the Board meeting and you’re struggling with even the basics, like compiling and sending meeting packets to each Board member a week before the meeting, consider getting help. Services like Board Meeting Sidekick make it easy for a Founder or small social impact organization to run first-rate, impactful, and engaging Board meetings every time. (See www.boardmeetingsidekick.com for details.)
Keeping your Board of Directors full of engaged and enthusiastic members can be challenging. When you include your everyday tasks of managing your staff team, working with donors, and running events, it can seem downright impossible. It might be helpful to look at this from a different direction. If you don’t set your Board work as a priority, you’ll create an even more significant problem. You’ll be spending a considerable part of your week managing Board members who don’t want to help, don’t show up to meetings, and don’t fulfill their commitments to the organization. This situation can quickly put you in a position of begging your Board for help, yet ultimately ending up doing the work yourself. This situation results in your Board members feeling unnecessary, so they leave, complaining they weren’t being used, and this sad cycle begins again.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this.
Identify skills the Board will need. Understanding what the Board of Directors needs before you recruit someone new will save you time, energy, and anguish of working with folks who will never get your organization it needs to be.
You can begin to chart your recruitment path by using a skills inventory with the Board of Directors. This tool can show puzzle pieces you’re missing to complete a full and thriving Board.
It’s well accepted that the composition of the Board has a significant influence on its effectiveness. The board skills inventory is an essential first step that should not be overlooked. When you have an accurate and up-to-date record of the skills, talents, and attributes of your current Board members, you can quickly identify what’s missing from the Board of Directors as a whole.
A common mistake made numerous by social impact organizations is using a narrow list of skills in their assessment. Most Board assessment tools include fundamental factors like race, gender, sphere of influence, and industry-specific skills. But it’s imperative that factors like generational representation, geographic representation, and lived experience are included. Social impact organizations seeking to thrive should focus on creating a diverse Board culture as much as they focus on skills. If your new Board members aren’t adding to the diversity and culture of the Board, it won’t matter how many strategic skills a candidate has.
It’s not about you. When talking with a prospective Board member, have you ever said, “Being on our Board won’t take much of your time, I promise.” Or, “Do you want to join the Board? We’re one member short.”
How you talk about your organization’s Board and what you’re seeking will considerably change the quality of candidates you’ll attract. For example, if you look for someone who has an extra hour each month to spare, then that’s what you’ll likely get. When it comes time to write a thank-you note, make some phone calls, or attend the annual event, they will look puzzled because you told them that serving on the Board will only take one hour a month.
Changing our mindset about Board service will shift how you talk about your organization and the Board. In turn, this shift will affect how you recruit Board candidates and will attract a new sort of Board member. A Board member who understands the challenges of Board service and is eager to do the work and intentional about making an impact.
Cultivate this new mindset and let it seep into all of your communications, including the emails you send, the social media posts you share, your website copy, and the discussions you have.
Focus on how not who. Just as shouting out your car window about a job opening you’re seeking to fill is unlikely to yield any quality candidates, using every social media platform and group to find the right Board member promises to be just as ineffective. You must become intentional and strategic about where you’re sharing your organization’s Board recruitment message. Determine the places and platforms where folks will want to hear about your Board opportunities.
This approach requires you to think about your ideal Board member. The more you understand how they think, the organizations they belong to, and where they spend their time, the clearer you’ll be about where and how to connect with them.
After defining those factors, develop your messaging to be authentic and tailored to your ideal candidate. Here are the essential components that every Board recruitment message should include:
A call to the ideal Board member audience with a soft ask
A concise overview of the impact your organization makes
Show folks who are being transformed by your organization
Create a clear call to action with guidance on the next steps
When you’re intentional about building your Board of Directors, you will recruit people committed to seeing the organization thrive.
Building and improving your organization’s Board of Directors is arguably the most critical objective of a thriving social impact effort. So as a social impact leader, the task of recruiting new Board members is paramount. Your goal is to have Board members who: are active participants in your organization’s mission and champions of its cause, can advocate for the resources your organization needs, eagerly show up to do the work, and proactively seek to support you.
By focusing your attention on improving the experience of your current Board and strategically recruiting Board members who add to the culture and effectiveness of your organization, you position your organization for success and your community for transformation. This process will require developing a disciplined practice and a fair amount of your time. But, if you commit to this process, it will be the best and wisest investment of time and effort you’ll ever make.
