Episode 242: Board Mission Drift - The importance of keeping on point with mission based strategy
It's so nice to have you join me, Randall, on this edition of around with Randall. I had a friend, who is a long time professional colleague as well. Reach out to me as he and some other, individuals that live in a totally different city were struggling with something that really wasn't in his professional realm, but more in a volunteer community perspective.
And he was reaching out to me to ask if I had any thoughts. Which brings us to kind of the conversation today. The circumstances in which my friend was dealing with was he's on a board and it's a newer nonprofit, and I don't mean like in the last year or two, but it's not 50 or 60 years old.
And there was a very wonderful, philanthropic, generous individual who got all of this started a little more than a decade ago, closer to two. And there's a heavy hand of this founder, still involved in the organization, probably more so than what is best. And the question was around governance and how to handle this idea of how do we handle tough conversations about the appropriate governance that we need as an organization, or in this case, they need and this idea of mission drift, meaning that the founders interests were slightly shifting.
All of this led to a series of conversations I had with my friend about maybe some things that he might think about as a board member, to figure out how to move the organization through this. And today we want to take this apart. There are times when we either have one or the other, and maybe it's more of an and at times, hopefully not often, where there's mission trip that the organization was focusing on things in a very meaningful way, around a certain direction of the mission and it shifts and or the founder or someone else in the organization really positioned themselves in a way that they want to go a certain way.
Now they're shifting or they're influencing too much authority. All this to say is, is that it can happen. And the critical question becomes what we do about it. So we want to talk a little bit about why this is a challenge and what happens when we don't handle it correctly. And number two, as always, want to give you practical tactical solutions as to how you might be able to fix it.
So let's start with the bigger question. And around kind of this idea of governance. Now, in this particular podcast, I'm going to refer you out to other podcasts that I've done that are very technical into some of the various suggestions or areas where you might have some interest. The first is if you want to talk about good governance overall, you can go back and look at episode 68 of Around with Randall.
But that leads you into kind of a broader question about what some of the processes that are really important. Why is this a challenge? What are the outcomes when we don't take care of governance in a proper way and have mission drift, or possibly a founder who's pushing us in certain directions that we don't want to go? Well, the first is, is that there's confusion and really confusion on multiple levels.
But most importantly with our stakeholders is that we have challenges around people having lots of options to make gifts. But to different nonprofits. But all of a sudden they're confused because they're not quite sure what we're doing or maybe what you're doing, what the nonprofits doing. So they in that beginning of that string, if we're really doing our job correctly in terms of building relationships with community, we're asking people what their passion is and we're connecting it back to what our mission is.
And you start moving away from that mission and that connection changes. Obviously, that hurts finances, that hurts fundraising, that hurts connection. In terms of community leadership. This can lead to really some issues about where maybe some of your most loyal donors start restricting gifts in incredibly limited ways because they're concerned you're not going to do with the money with you promised.
Trust is broken. Number two is it leads us into this idea of credibility when drift occurs, or there's confusion in governance or people aren't sure what the mission really means or what you're trying to do to execute on that mission, this trust begins to diminish, and particularly in the world in which we live, where larger donors and maybe you are, or an organization you work with is receiving government support.
I work with a couple of nonprofits in the mental health, particularly with kids, where a large percentage of their revenue is government support, Medicaid, in particular, or other programs that government state governments primarily provide. Well, you don't want to lose that trust in faith, that credibility. So it means that your community partners can walk away very quickly.
So number one is confusion. Number two is trust. Number three as mission creep goes further and further, either because the organization is not paying attention, there's too much influence from a founder or a small group. What generally happens is one of two things. The reason it's allowed to occur from a board perspective is that there's board passive passivity and or groupthink, which means and we'll get to the idea of attracting board members here in a minute.
But if all that you get are the same people who think the same thing, that can move the board to start doing and asking and strategize around things that may be not aligned with what the mission was, it was really meant to be or currently is. The other part of it is you could have board members who want it on their resume, and that happens.
And all of a sudden when that occurs, their passive nature doesn't push back, say, whoa, wait a minute, what are we doing here? Which brings us to number four. If there is a sense that there is confusion about the mission, about what we're trying to accomplish, that the strategy is not clear. Good board members won't come on your board.
Good point. Board members, if they ask 1 or 2 reasonable questions, and really good ones who ask a lot are going to smell it. They're going to walk away. You'll also have board members that are currently executing fiduciary responsibility that will find reasons to get off the board. The ability to retain strong board members will believe because they're like, well, this isn't worth it.
It's not worth my time. This is what I signed up for. I don't want the problems. So not only is there board groupthink or passive nature, but then you start either not being able to track good board members, or you start losing the good ones. Number five then leads into the challenge of staff turnover. As we look at the tenure of CEOs and major gift officers and chief development officers philanthropy officers diminishing.
One of the reasons why is because it's confusing. It's anecdotally, at least for the people that I know and I affiliated with over the years, very clear that somebody will take a little less money if they have two things clarity about and reasonableness about what they're trying to accomplish. It's reasonable to accomplish. And it's very clear it's what I'm accomplishing.
And number two, there's a pipeline, meaning they can actually accomplish it. I've seen people in really well-paid jobs leave because they're like, I just want to deal with chaos. I'll go do something else, even for a little less money. Good people are hard to find. And so when you start losing staff in that turnover, it may not be just finance, or maybe it's the head of the missions, or maybe it's the chief operating officer or someone who's leading a part of the nonprofit work that goes on the front lines.
Man, good people are hard to find. The last thing is, is kind of the more grand stage of the challenge around reputation, risk and public scrutiny. People start asking questions and man, when you get to the stage, it's hard to recover that these power struggles and all of a sudden now maybe there's a little attention in the media.
And I don't mean like, you know, 60 minutes, but there's a local newspaper or possibly a blog or Facebook. And we live in a world where everybody has the ability to comment. It doesn't take long for that drift to become pretty important. And so how do you then begin to figure out, whoa, we've reached some really bad positioning in terms of who we are and the communities beginning to realize this.
So there are six things that come out of this particular challenge. The question becomes what you do with it. And this is where we spend a few minutes talking about the tactical. I want to give you things that can make this, if you have a challenge with the mission is not very clear. Things aren't exactly driven strategic league to tie into the mission.
There's a founder or a small group, people that exert a mental amount of power. What do we do about it? So I got seven things we're going to go through fairly quickly, but they all start with a premise. And they this premise covers any suggestion if you're a employee, if you are the CEO, the chief deployment officer, you're someone who interacts with the board.
You're not a board member. There is an important realization that occurs that starts with the premise that you're not one of them. If this is solely being driven by staff, what I find is, is the staff tends to run into brick walls and everybody gets frustrated, angry, disappointed. They make enemies. Things don't go very well. So what does that mean?
What's this premise? You have to be one of them. You have to find people who are members of the board that are willing to stand up and say, this isn't right now. Maybe they don't do it in the board meeting, per se, and they're accusing someone of, you know, malice of the mission, so to speak. But board change comes from inside the board.
It doesn't come from just the staff know the staff may be behind the scenes, pulling strings, maybe getting board members to align may realize, hey, this board member over here feels the same as this board member, but they're not talking to each other. Let's put the two in the room together, see if they come to some type of conclusion that they could work together.
But at the end of the day, it has to be internal to the board that someone or some small group saying says, we're not doing this. The reason I know this is I'm not the person I've been in that position a couple times. I've been brought on boards and I'm very clear with don't do it quite as often as I used to, but I'm very clear with the organizational leadership as well as the board leadership.
Do you really want me? Do you really want me? Because I'm not going to sit in the corner and keep my damn mouth shut. I'm going to tell you what I think. I'm a kind of an expert in this space now, so everything's going hunky dory. I think we should celebrate that. But if there's drift or too much influenced by a founder or too much influence by a small group, I am not the guy who just takes it.
I will fight now. I've also been accused of being a bull in a China shop, so sometimes I'm a little pushy. It's I get older. It is kind of what it is and kind of learn to accept it. I try to moderate it as much as I can, but you're going to have to find board members that are in a way aligned with this concept.
They're willing to do some of these seven things. They're willing to push for things to do the right thing. They're willing to find other people like them who are willing to cede all the power structure. The founder, the mission drift leaders know. So what are the seven things that these kind of people on your board can do? The number one thing is, is to strengthen education, clarity of role.
So one of the things that I advocate incredibly highly is that orientation, proper orientation is beyond critical because that's where everything has set. We'll come to you in a moment about another thing that talks about how you select board members. So that's going to come up. I'm not forgetting that, but I'm starting with this idea of education and role clarity.
Your job description of your board is critical. And then how you use orientation to describe who you are, what you do and how you do it. You can go back to episode 13 to hear about the process. I believe in that allows orientation take place for a board, very specific things. But if there's not annual conversations around fiduciary, I'll share fiduciary responsibility strategies, strategic relationships where the organization's board is versus the staff, what roles they play.
All of these things need to be reinforced to ensure the board's doing the right thing. So number one is what is our process to educate who it is that's leading us, the board members, as to really what they should be doing. Number two is a constant process of reviewing the mission, especially if there's a little bit of drift or there's a push to move away from it.
I'm not saying that missions shouldn't adjust a little bit. If you're a nonprofit that serves, people in and this is a terrible example, but you get the point in, you know, the horse transportation business over time, over the last 50 years, 75 years, 100 years, hundred and 50 years, that's changed. There are many people riding horses to work.
So it's not that missions can't change. But if there's a radical change and don't, it doesn't align with what we actually should be doing, that's a problem. Number two, if there is mission change, it should be discussed and voted upon by the board. It shouldn't be subjugated to some corner. This means periodic review conversation, really ensuring that the programs and the things that we do, the strategy, the fundraising that we're communicating out and in relationships we're building, aligned with what we're stating is our mission.
So number two is a constant conversation about mission, vision and the values that those deliver. Number three is critical, is ensuring in your bylaws and that they are not ignored or overruled or just plain say, I don't like it. You need to implement and enforce term limits and succession planning. Everybody needs to get the heck off the board.
There are arguments about it being two, three year terms, three two year terms, three, not three year terms for nine years. I think there's a lot of conversation depending on the size of the organization, its tenure, things of that nature that are reasonable in terms of which one of those fit you. But if you don't have term limits and then you don't enforce them, what you're going to get is a reduced reliance on the group and more reliance on one person or small group that seems to keep coming back.
I also would advocate that there should be some time off between board membership. If you have a bylaw process where you have two three year terms, someone serves two three year terms, they take a year off and they come right back on. I'm not sure that's actually healthy. So some of this is about power. It's about group control.
You need to have a established committee. I like a governance committee out of the executive committee. Depending on the size of your nonprofit in the board, maybe there's the executive committee nominating committee that really enforces this. In episode 78, I did a special podcast based upon an article that I saw around creating a very specific executive board level role, like the chair, but this is the governance chair or governance official who monitors.
Are we doing the things our bylaws are we doing things our best practice like? And it's a board member that they're unpaid. This is what they do. Episode 78 might give you some tools that allow you to highlight change your bylaws if you need to, someone to enforce the good governance that you're looking for. Number four is creating a stronger board policy and enforcement.
And this all comes down to two things. In my opinion. Number one is, as we mentioned, adherence to the bylaws and having things in the bylaws that make sense, term limits, things, job descriptions, things of that nature. The second thing is, is that there should be strong conflict of interest when you have a founder who pushes too hard.
I tend to find that there's a little bit of conflict of interest as well. It's not meant to be, you know, the World's End, but people have to move on. People have to understand that once they found something and bring on a board, they just become one voice, maybe a little louder. But you can't have a board of, you know, let's say 15, 17 people with one being the founder and the other, you know, there's one.
And then let's say 17, the other 16 don't count. Everybody's equal. So these bylaws, these conflict of interest are critically important. A part of that is establishing what the job description of the board is. In episode 176. I go into the details here because it should be more outward looking about relationships with a limited focus on governance. If done correctly.
I'm all for, you know, making sure the 990’s reviewed and we all watched the finances. I'm all for that. But if that's all your board meeting is, what you end up with is too much insulation around what we do in the board meeting, rather than the relationships we should be making with the people out of the board meeting.
So number four is adopt a board process enforcement process. Include your job descriptions. Again one episode once 176. Number five sometimes you need outside voice. And maybe this is the advantage I have when I come in. I it's not that I don't care because I do, but I'm not afraid to stand up and say that's just wrong. We're not.
You shouldn't be doing that part because I'm not bull in China shop. I just don't care. I'm going to do what's right. It's kind of where I was raised. Number two is I'm okay taking the Speers. Yell and scream at me. Call me everything you want. My job at the end of the day, is to get on an airplane, get in a car and come home and see my wife and kids.
So I'm not going to harbor any long term political concern or personal retribution. Don't care. Got to do what I got to do. Sometimes you have to bring in an outside facilitator, a consultant or someone who can help people work through this. Now, most of the time I don't have to be that heavy voice, because great consultancy in these kind of situations is all about the prep work, having conversations before I go on walks in the room, listening to people's opinions, figuring out what the pressure points are.
If I do my job well and I've had these situations before, most of the time, the great work hopefully that I'm doing happens before I ever get in the room. So realize that you might ask some questions of your consultant or your external facilitator like, hey, what are you doing before? Before we get into the meeting to see if we can ratchet down the temperature.
Number six is about metrics. I believe board should have metrics based upon the job description that they have. Again, that job description podcast was 176. But I believe in board metrics. I built out a chart that shows here are the metrics we should be probably highlighting. Certainly attendance is part of it. Everyone needs to give as part of it.
How many people are you introducing? How many people do you connect to? Are you involved with the referral process? Are you part of when needed and necessary, not forcing your way in part of the relationships that maybe the staff is building? From a philanthropic fundraising perspective? How many of our board members are doing that, having a dashboard for the board of their responsibilities and putting it up there forces them to think about what their job is and what the organization is trying to accomplish through the board, rather than, hey, I want to do whatever it is I want to do.
So how do you build some metrics and put them up, just like we would advocate in a staff meeting so everybody can see them. The last thing is, is about recruiting and retaining the right board members. So the first thing that needs to happen is, is a really strong realization that this should not take five minutes. All too often, our nonprofit boards, let's say December 31st, is your answer.
January 1st is the beginning of a year. If you're, you know, July to June, move the dates. Is that sometime in September, October, somebody says, oh, we got four board members going off. We need four new board members coming on, and they go into a board meeting. Since anybody know anybody and you end up selecting someone that one of the board members knows well, this is how you get into group think and into mission creep, because people tend to hang out with the people that they align with.
It's not that we don't want good people, but if everybody has the same view, then we don't get to where we need to go in terms of what's possible for the nonprofit, in the organization as a whole, where the strategy fits our mission because everybody thinks the same. Episode 197 I go through a 14 month process that it should take to get the right board membership.
It's about the process a committee or a group that owns that process that has benchmarks that they're meeting, that we're looking for the right thing. We're not looking for the guy who lives next door to me. We're looking for social connection groups in our community where people that we want to engage with are and do. We have representation in those groups so we can get into them, talk with them, connect to them.
The idea is, is that you need a diversity of thought, a diversity of experiences that when we bring together, creates a rise in the wholeness of what's possible. And so take a look at how you recruit and how you go through kind of the selection process and try to make it at least eight months or a year about lots of conversation.
We're interviewing every potential board member telling him who we are, what we do, what's important. We're asking if they agree we're asking them to think about it. We're giving them data or 990 or the 990 or other. What is it we can do to open the conversation? So it's not just, oh my gosh, we got to find some board members.
There are moments where a small group of the board or founder, there's an issue. This isn't the solution. Number eight. It's just a commentary. You can fire a volunteer in episode 101. I go through this. It's not easy and it's not fun. But sometimes somebody needs to leave for a myriad of reasons. This is where the process for which you go through these conversations is so important.
To make sure you're doing it correctly. 95% of the time or more. With the right conversation, they will resign. And there's the 5% that seem to be painful. But my greatest counsel is this you look at it in a holistic way, and episode 101 can help you fire up a founder, fire a board member, fire a volunteer in the right way so that the organization which is the most important and its mission live the end of the day, all of these seven solutions, seven options are all about making the organization the center point.
Not an individual, not a small group, but the work that the organization does to make the community a better place for the people it serves, for the community that should be serving. And if nothing else, you sit around that you'll be okay. You will find your way. This is not easy. These can be painful and emotionally charged conversations and issues, but anything worth having is worth fighting for.
Sometimes we have to lean in and accept that. Hoping today gives you some of those solutions and options to really make sure there's not mission creep. There's not a founder's pushing into far small group meeting, exerting too much power, really driving possibly what's in the best interest of the nonprofit in the short and in the long term? Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett Philanthropy two per week or so.
I write about a lot of different things, from things I see in the world to nonprofit work, how it philanthropy.com backslash blogs and get an RSS feed right to you. 90 second read. Just things that are maybe to get you to think a little bit, maybe of interest. And if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast helpline to become.
I really want to enforce this concept of the need for nonprofits and the world in which we live. There's a lot of ups and downs right now. I think we sometimes, sometimes don't even know whether or not the up to send downs are coming or not. But what we do know is, is that we have to find a way to take care of our community and nonprofits serve that function, that it's the it's the whole filler between for profit business, free enterprise.
Who doesn't want to do what nonprofit seeks is not profitable. And number two, it's is the other side is the government. One is free enterprise, two is government. You go, I guess, renumber it. But in the middle as a whole, that's what nonprofits are. We take care of the people who fall into the hole, who don't fit over there.
And the government can't help. But free enterprise doesn't want to remember. Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. At the end of the day, you're someone you work with, someone you're part of, a group of someone’s who make things happen for the people and the things and the priorities of our community that are wondering what happened.
That's pretty cool. I hope you feel that. Hope you know that it's important. I hope you feel, hey, even though there are challenges like our misaligned board and mission drift, I'm making a difference. Let your volunteer CEO, Chief Altman, officer, gift officer, operations person play the whoever. Thank you for what you do because you're making a contribution to your community through an organization better.
And that's what a what a wonderful gift, what you deliver every day to people who are beating. I'll look forward to seeing the next time right back here on the next edition of Around With Rent. Don't forget, make it a great day.