Board Community Reach

Following up on yesterday’s post about boards, today’s post is about the community reach of individual board members, a very good quality to examine when recruiting, and the impact that can have on the board.

This article from Stanford Social Innovation Review examines that.

An excerpt.

“I am convinced that skill at fundraising and governance alone do not an excellent board member make. Nor do such skills alone ensure that a nonprofit organization maintains a durable, deep connection to the wider community it serves.

“A third skill—I call it civic reach—distinguishes a great board member from a merely adequate one, a world-class nonprofit from one that is simply functioning. Take a couple of examples: Back in 2005, Rochester Area Community Foundation’s (RACF) smart, highly engaged board had few well-known civic leaders. With the guidance of Jennifer Leonard, the foundation’s president and executive director, RACF aimed to become greater Rochester, N.Y.’s “catalyst for community change” and realized that movers and shakers could extend the institution’s influence. RACF added to its board the CEO of the city’s chamber of commerce, the CEO of a leading advertising company, the area’s school board president, a noted venture capitalist, a former United Way campaign chair, and the head of Rochester’s downtown development group. In just one of the positive outcomes, the chamber incorporated RACF’s recommendations into its annual state advocacy platform, resulting in $7.8 million in restored child care subsidies, plus crucial support for after-school funding.

“In another example, the board of directors of Make-A-Wish Foundation International, a nonprofit devoted to granting the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions, shifted its composition to achieve a worldwide leadership profile. Previously, the organization was governed by chapter affiliate representatives from various countries, a decidedly internal focus. The new board boasts a powerful cadre of business leaders with the prestige, power, and contacts to open doors worldwide. Two board members illustrate this new heft. Jim Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide, connects Make-A-Wish to Europe, Asia, and North America, prime markets for both Disney merchandising and Make-A-Wish civic engagement. Tim Kilpin, general manager and senior vice president for Mattel Brands, provides Make-A-Wish with cash contributions from the company’s toy sales and facilitates business relationships through its worldwide network. Savvy, connected players like Fielding and Kilpin—people with profound civic reach—serve as global thinkers for charities while they tend to their own business interests. As a result of its new board, Nonprofits must have influential board members who connect them to the communities they serve Make-A-Wish more expertly navigates its corporate and individual relationships, ties its work to corporate social responsibility efforts, attracts a wider range of corporate sponsorship dollars, and manages its wish granting on a worldwide scale.

“POWER TO THE WEAKEST SECTOR

“Board members with civic reach compensate for the inherent limitations of the social sector, arguably democracy’s most critical, yet weakest, arena in terms of money and power. Social ventures generally lack the commercial sector’s profit-driven muscle and the public sector’s power to mandate by law and levy taxes to raise resources. Nonprofits need deep civic roots to thrive. To scale up operations, they need strong relationships with leaders in business, government agencies, and elective office. The sum of every board member’s civic reach is the soil in which those roots grow. Boards anemic in civic reach oversee organizations that are weak in civic relevance and resilience. Such organizations might have a range of funding sources and may run well operationally. But they rarely find themselves plugged into the civic power grid, where decisions about community and individual needs are largely made. Even with success, organizations deficient in civic reach often stand as capable orphans, unaccountably disconnected and alone, wondering why the recognition they think they deserve lies beyond their grasp.”