5.1 Forget the experts. What do you need?

You know what zero-based budgeting is. Every year you zero out every line and rebuild the budget from scratch. You have to justify to yourself each program and each expense.

You can do the same thing with Boards. You start with the minimum number your state requires and then justify, really justify, each and every person you decide to add on after that, because…

A tiny Board of true supporters is always better than a big Board of trouble.

I’ve seen nonprofits look at their by-laws and realize that they’re supposed to have a minimum of eleven Board members and right now they only have five. So they go on a drive to get butts into seats…

But by itself, seat-filling is mission-killing.

Instead I recommend this. Always ask…

“Why do we need another Board member? Is this particular person someone we’re sure we need? Is this someone who knocks our socks off? Is this someone who we’re so thrilled with we’d do just about anything to get them on our Board?”

And most importantly…

“Is this someone we trust to hold the life of our organization in her hands?”

Now let’s look at how differently different nonprofits need to approach the issue of Boards.

“I just need protection.”
Say a group of you put together an organization where you work with teens to develop short plays about gangs and violence that they perform in high schools. You have a special way of doing this work. It’s taken you a good while to develop your recipe for success, but you’ve got it.

The teen actors love it, the teens they perform for shout and stomp after each performance. The teachers see behavior change because of the plays.

And the group of you who were the founders, and who are now the staff, do just fine raising money on your own. You don’t need help with that.

In this situation, I would want you to have artistic control.

I would want you to be able to pick a small Board of people who totally get what you’re doing and why you need to be left alone to do it your way.

I would not want you to ever have to put up with a Board member who decides that he knows best and hammers you to include a moralizing lecture before each play, which of course would instantly kill the spirit and effect of your work.

Let’s take another example. Say you’re the ED of an organization that does programs on unlearning white racism. You have lots of fans, but you also have some serious opponents, which is not surprising given how emotional and treacherous the topic of racism is.

You and your staff are geniuses at fundraising. Your program is working really well. And it gets better and better because you have a system for continuing to develop it. You could actually get along fine without a Board.

But there is one thing a Board could do for you that you really need—give you protection.

In that case, I’d want you to have a Board that does exactly that. When you get attacked on hate radio, and later the host calls your Board Chair and says she should shut you down, your Chair will tell him, “Our staff is doing exactly what we want them to be doing. We stand by them 100%. And by the way, thanks for the publicity.”

And I would want your Board to know that doing that one thing, giving you protection, is enough. Having the guts to stand with you is enough. Actually it’s a remarkable blessing. Just think how it would feel to have a Board that let itself be intimidated and ordered you to water down your program.

“I need the freedom to lead.”
Let’s say you have done well in your professional life and you have enough money to set up and run your own foundation and you have your own strategy for funding social change that you want to test.

Specifically, you want to support up-and-coming young leaders. You’re quite capable of finding them yourself. You don’t need RFPs, you don’t need a committee to make your decisions for you.

You find a young leader who impresses you and you write her a check. It’s that simple. There are no restrictions. You don’t care about service units. You want her to tear loose, follow her passion, use her strategic smarts, try things, and create new ways of leading social change.

If this is what you are called to, then I’d want you to be able to pick a small Board of loyal fans who would back you up in this experiment. I would not want you to have some kind of broadly representative Board that would veer off course and start fighting with you about funding crisis services when you want to fund new leadership.

“I need champions.”
Let’s say you’ve got dedicated staff, a mature program, and all your systems are running smoothly, but your passion is to reach more kids and families. To do that, you’ll have to raise more money.

So what you need and all you need are champions, and more than just a few. You want a strong group of people who will go out and ask for money. Actually go out and ask.

“I need an active, full-service Board.”
Let’s say you’re running a multi-service agency that gets city funding to provide programs for people who are homeless, or struggling with mental illness, or need vocational training, or all three.

You want a Board that represents stakeholders from throughout the community. You want a large Board. You want clients and former clients at the table. You want people connected to money. You want people who can keep a good relationship going with the mayor and city council. You want the whole smorgasbord of things a Board can give you.

And you want them to have systems in place for everything—meetings, fundraising, policy development, strategic planning.

But even though you develop a large Board with elaborate systems, you’re still doing zero-based Board building. You’re matching your Board model and members to exactly what you need for your mission and your local situation.

“I need a Board that makes all the major policy and strategy decisions.”
Say you and a couple friends have started a nonprofit that will speak and act on behalf of the community where you live. And you decide that its mission is not just to improve the community but to build democracy at the grassroots.

So you recruit Board members who are thoroughly representative of the community, all the diversities and differences. You develop a meeting structure so all opinions can be expressed but in the context that the overall welfare of the community comes first.

You help the Board create a way of working together so they don’t turn into a gridlocked, in-fighting mess like so many attempts at democracy do.

From then on, you move into the background. The Board leads and you as the staff follow. The Board makes all the key decisions, because the whole point of this nonprofit is for the community to organize and guide itself, to master empowerment instead of being passive recipients of services.