Читать книгу Nonprofit Kit For Dummies - Stan Hutton, Beverly A. Browning - Страница 57

IN THIS CHAPTER

Making forming the board your first priority

Recruiting the right board members

Recognizing the roles of a board of directors

Training your board members for full engagement

Most nonprofit founding visionaries don’t prioritize the task of first getting their governing board onboard with their vision. The board isn’t formed after the founder has written the mission and vision statements for the new nonprofit — the board needs to be involved in the creation of these two items when members are starting to develop the new nonprofit’s first strategic plan document (see Chapter 4).

Here’s a story about a nonprofit visionary who did not prioritize building a board of directors upfront. Jeffery decided to create a nonprofit organization — to help women who are single, pregnant, and homeless get off the streets, learn better parenting skills, and enter the workforce by the time their child is old enough to start kindergarten. Working alone, he wrote his mission and vision statements. He also drafted a strategic plan for the new nonprofit. By the time he started trying to recruit board members, he had set the mission, vision, and organizing documents in stone without input from any board members.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, no board member wanted to buy into Jeffrey’s dream without having the ability to work as a team to create the mission, vision, and strategic planning documents. Jeffrey forgot that board members are vested stakeholders who should be recruited, trained, and included from day one of a new nonprofit start-up process. He failed to make forming his board of directors, upfront, a priority. Now he faces dealing with a lack of trust and a high degree of animosity between him and his new board, all of which could have been prevented if the board members had been onboard first and involved in the year-one strategic plan for the new organization.

Having a founder experience tunnel vision by doing all the upfront strategizing alone isn’t the route to take for anyone dreaming of starting a new nonprofit organization to benefit the greater good. Though board members may be in disagreement with the founder, everyone needs to plan together and be objective in the development of critical start-up documents that will shape the trajectory of the organization. So, take the time upfront to build a good board, and work with its members to achieve your collectively written mission, vision, and strategic plan.

Check out File 3-1 at www.wiley.com/go/nonprofitkitfd6e for a list of web resources related to the topics we cover in this chapter.