Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Introduction by Wendy Liscow
Program Officer

Laura Otten, Executive Director of the LaSalle University Nonprofit Center, has been the lead consultant working with the Dodge Foundation to design a comprehensive board training series, now in its fourth successful year. If you have missed a workshop or would like to share some of the key “take-aways” with your colleagues, check out the Dodge Foundation’s Board Leadership Training Video Series. There are interviews with each of the workshop trainers on key board development issues including: the most critical issues facing boards today; the importance of understanding organizational lifecycles; implementing assessment practices that measure what matters; strategic planning tips; and how to recruit and keep strong board members.

A sample video from our most recent Care and Feeding of Board Members workshop is below. However, if you are interested in the topic of improving your board engagement through the creation of more productive board meetings, we suggest you read the complete blog post…it just might be what you need to transform your board.

Want to rachet up your board’s performance? Change your agenda.

By Laura Otten

My 23-year old son has his first board meeting for a nonprofit coming up. He is so excited, so thrilled at the opportunity to help, a bit nervous that they view him as a finance “expert” but his joy at the prospects of this board service is palpable. I hope he’s equally excited after the meeting.

This fear is not just a mother’s fear; it is a fear I have for the vast majority of board members attending their first meetings. Though I’ve no scientific information to bear this out, my anecdotal information is overwhelming: nonprofits lose more board members through boredom at meetings than they do through fear of fundraising! Think about that. And funny thing about this is that you can turn a boring meeting into an engaging meeting in far shorter course than you can turn a reluctant fundraiser into a confident one.

Oddly, what makes board meetings so boring is the fact that the vast majority of boards do not do board work at board meetings! It is really that simple. If you look at a typical meeting agenda for most boards, it looks something like this:

XYZ Center Board Meeting: 20 January 2012

8:00am-9:30am

Approval of the minutes of the last board meeting

Reports

• Executive Director Report

• Finance Committee Report

• Committee A Report

• Committee B Report

• Committee C Report

• Committee D Report

New Business

Adjourn

This process, start to finish, can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to three hours, or even five or six (as I hear far more often than I should). Assuming a board is meeting every month or every other month, a typical board meeting should last no more than two hours, with 1.5 hours being an ideal. Obviously, grappling with a large or particularly contentious issue might force a board meeting, on occasion, to go beyond that time frame, but that absolutely should be the exception rather than the rule.

In following this agenda, however, a board is not doing board work; it is merely collecting data, albeit data that it needs to do good board work. But when board meetings focus on learning about things that have already happened, things over which board members have no control—as they have already happened—boards are not doing their work. They are being sponges, soaking up important data, but data they should be using to move an organization forward, not simply absorbing; they are learning about what happened instead of thinking about what could and/or should be. This data should be shared and absorbed in advance of a meeting, so that board members are equipped to use that data productively at board meetings. (Compounding the boredom factor is that far too often these reports are simply read aloud at meetings, taking away from board members any initiative they might have.)

I can guarantee you that no board member joins a board because s/he wants to be a sponge. Rather, they, as you might expect, want to make a difference, make a contribution, give back, help others, etc. In order for any of these to happen, we must engage people’s brains; droning on about what has passed just doesn’t do that.

So, what do you? There are multiple options, none of them scary in and of themselves; they are only scary in that each signals change. All, however, must address both form—or content—and function. (more…)

By Nina Stack, President
Council of New Jersey Grantmakers

Diverse perspectives improve effectiveness.

A bold statement perhaps, but a belief that is being embraced more and more in the corporate world, and we hope, in nonprofits as well. Why have for-profits moved to making sure their Boards are diverse? Because they recognize that successful companies today need to have a management that is more globally oriented and culturally diverse. Because having that produces better decisions and stronger organizations.

This holds true for nonprofits as well, and it is why my organization, the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, is partnering with New Jersey’s American Conference on Diversity to explore creating The Board Bank, a board matching service for diverse leaders in the state who want to connect with nonprofits and foundations. We thank the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for recently sending out a survey to its grantees that will help us gauge their interest in this idea. If you’d like to take the survey follow this link. All responses will be kept confidential and will be enormously helpful as we work to create this new resource designed to ensure that New Jersey’s diverse voices are well represented.

The idea of finding a way to help foundations and nonprofits identify diverse trustees has been on the docket of the Council for some time. In recent years, there has been a good deal of discussion about board diversity in the philanthropic community. As CNJG considered how it might help our members identify potential trustees, it seemed natural to enlist the American Conference on Diversity as a partner. With some planning grant support from the Albin Family Foundation, the Community Foundation of New Jersey, the Eastman Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we began earlier this year researching similar programs throughout the country, considering criteria for inclusion, and formulating a business model for long term success. An advisory council made up of highly-regarded diverse professionals from all over the state has been providing frank and invaluable input into the development and execution of The Board Bank.

We expect that through The Board Bank, institutions within the State’s social sector will have access to diverse business and community leaders looking to actively participate in the governance and leadership of organizations while serving as trustees. Individuals who wish to expand their community and philanthropic involvement will be matched with organizations seeking to ensure that their Board reflects the significant and rapidly growing diversity in New Jersey.

There are two very important outcomes we see for this program, and both are critical to improving the quality and relevance of services rendered by NJ’s social sector:

• The Board Bank will inevitably boost the amount of knowledge and expertise available to foundation and non-profit Boards.
• It will be a unique and valuable resource for companies looking to become more connected and engaged in the communities in which they conduct business.

The American Conference on Diversity expects to launch The Board Bank in 2012. Look for more information then on how your nonprofit can become a “Member” or how your business or leading institution can become a “Partner.”

Nina Stack is the President of Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, the statewide association for corporate, family, independent, and community foundations. She is a regular contributor to the Dodge blog.

Board leadership is critical for successful nonprofit organizations. Board members are your ambassadors; they develop strategy, help fundraise, and give your organization a level of professionalism and cohesiveness that it needs to thrive. When your board isn’t functioning well, your organization isn’t either.

Fortunately, there’s help.

Dodge has just announced a new round of its Board Leadership training series, an intensive, step-by-step program to build a stronger and more effective Board of Directors for your organization.

We have teamed up with The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University’s Business School to present a FREE, comprehensive series that has three components:

1) FOUNDATIONAL OVERVIEW: Two mandatory introductory full-day workshops: Assessment/Lifecycles and the Board Bootcamp

2) DRILLING DOWN: A series of six follow-up intensive workshops on the most pressing Board Development subjects

3) INSTITUTIONALIZING THE LEARNING: Access to our “Just In Time” consulting, as well as an opportunity to apply for a matching grant which pays for a consultant to work with your full Board on any area that your organization has identified as a priority.

Please note: all workshops are limited to 25 participants and will fill up quickly. Preference will be given to Dodge grantees and groups who attend the two mandatory Foundational Overview workshops (Assessment/Lifecycles and the Board Bootcamp) and are working towards eligibility for the matching grant.

View the full workshop series and schedule, and register online here.

Image: Joe Geinert

With only three weeks until the October kick off the Dodge Foundation’s Board Leadership Training Series, past workshop participants share valuable “takeaways” that have changed the way they work. The series began with Laura Otten of the Nonprofit Centre at LaSalle University’s School of Business. She challenged board members to make a commitment to gain the tools to become a more effective governing force. Last week, Alan Levitan, the Board President for the Arts Council of the Morris Area, reported how his board made changes in their board recruitment and meeting structures. This week we hear from both the Artistic Director and Board Chair of the Lydia Johnson Dance Company who provide their unique perspectives on how the workshops influenced their perception of the challenges they face. It doesn’t matter what size your organization is, or where you are in your organizational lifecycle, these workshops promise to be transformational.

Changing the Face of Reality
By Lydia Johnson and Camilla Finch Teitelman

Lydia Johnson, center, with dancers Kerry Shea and Jessica Sand

Lydia Johnson: Artistic Director and Founder

When I first arrived at the Dodge Workshops I was hesitant to share all of the reality of our small Dance Company’s situation. We were presenting full-scale performances with 10 professional dancers in both New York and New Jersey. We had recently performed at Jacob’s Pillow (a prestigious dance festival). We had received insightful and deeply positive reviews from the New York Times, and Backstage Magazine and articulate listings in About The Town in The New Yorker. A well-known New York arts Blogger had come forward asking to feature the Company in a series of articles on the creative process. He wanted to follow the creation of a new dance from start to performance and publish photos of our rehearsals on his blog. We had plans for a Gala Celebration of our 10th Anniversary at both our home theater, SOPAC in South Orange NJ, and in New York at The Ailey Citigroup Theater. Our dance classes were steadily growing and we had an expanding scholarship program for underserved children who wanted to dance.

But this was not the whole picture! There was a reality that our glowing reviews and newly redesigned website did not expose. Our dancers are paid by the project and thus the scheduling around their other commitments and jobs is extremely difficult. We have no office. We had no paid administrative staff. Our Board is a small group of dedicated supporters who meet in each other’s houses. At that time, they were constantly trying to figure out how to divide the never-ending list of volunteer jobs for the next event. Our equipment was unbelievably old and difficult to use. I had to race back and forth between two 10-year-old computers when I was working since one would not open PDF’s and the other held our old hard drive- based database. I functioned as Executive and Artistic Director and Administrative Assistant. I choreographed, taught and did publicity and all of the secretarial work. The Board members who had been with us for a number of years were exhausted from doing everything from cutting up vegetables for fundraisers to planning how to raise awareness of our performances. And most importantly, our understanding of the process of focused fundraising was just beginning to emerge. We were consulting with a development professional but only sporadically.

Ensemble for DUSK, Lydia’s two-part Gorecki ballet

I assumed we would downplay the difficulties of being so small and underfunded. True, we were accomplishing miraculous things with almost no resources, but what we couldn’t possibly have seen, without the Dodge workshops, was that this path we were on had been traveled many times before by creative nonprofits who were now integral to their communities! Nonprofits we admired and aspired to be like had actually been where we were now!

As David Grant began to speak on the Lifecycles of nonprofits, I felt the lifting of the burdens I had been carrying. The burden of thinking we were alone in this experience, that the difficult path was unique to us and therefore somehow our “fault.” The burden of thinking we would be judged harshly if anyone really knew how we were functioning. The burden of being unable to ask questions regarding how to progress since we were reluctant to expose the whole situation – assuming it would shock and upset possible advisors.

Josh Kurtzberg and Laura DiOrio

What a revelation the workshops were! We were given the tools to place our journey in perspective. We had markers and concepts with which to understand our strengths and our limitations. And most importantly we began to understand the tools to change and grow in ways that simply would have been impossible without the structured information and warm support we received.

Kerry Shea and Eric Vlach; Laura DiOrio and James Hernandez, from Lydia’s Untitled Bach

We realized, for example, that while our programming was at a “mature” level, our infrastructure was at a “start up” stage! Well okay that wasn’t such a bad realization – I began to honor and respect even more the wonderful people I was working with and to respect our persistence and ingenuity in moving forward given a pool of resources which were as yet inadequate! The pathway we were on had been traveled before. It had colorful and clear signposts! We were in good company – we were in fact a part of the community of growing nonprofits – and our strength could be expanded by opening up to the pool of collective knowledge I now realized existed. •

Camilla Finch, right, with founding Board member Rayna Pomper

Camilla Finch Teitelman: Board Chair, Founding Member

There was a moment of truth for me during the Dodge fundraising workshop that helped LJD put in place many new changes. Allison Trimarco (the instructor for the Board as Fundraisers workshop) said “You can’t continue to work at this level of sacrifice. It’s just not sustainable.”

We had all known this for years but hadn’t found the right way to change it. We knew the next level for LJD was right around the corner, but we didn’t seem to be able to get there. Of late, we had put in place a number of new initiatives. We had added two new board members—bringing our grand total to six, we expanded our fundraising activities to include individual asks in addition to mail solicitations and income from performances and events, and we began writing more grant applications. But it clearly wasn’t enough. It just took too much to keep the organization going at the current level; moving it forward was another matter.

Going to the Dodge workshops galvanized us to treat LJD more like a business. (Although if I had known what a lousy business running a dance company is I might have had second thoughts!) Our Board meetings became more structured. Board roles were more defined and responsibilities laid out clearly. We faced and changed some of our fiscal management and changed our view of fundraising from a huge sometimes embarrassing chore to a game, even a puzzle. And finally, the Dodge workshops gave us a platform from which to discuss issues that we had often found difficult. “That’s OK, but you know Dodge said…” I dare say was uttered more than once.

In the future, I can see using other tools we learned at Dodge, including strategic planning, methods for assessing our programs. And of course, rubrics for the board and all the activities of our organization! •

•

Lydia Johnson, (Choreographer, Artistic Director)

Originally from Massachusetts, Ms. Johnson is the Artistic Director of Lydia Johnson Dance, which has received generous support from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in 2008, 2009 and 2010. LJD performs and teaches regularly at SOPAC in South Orange, NJ where they are Dance Company in Residence, as well as at The Ailey Citigroup Theater in New York. The Company performed recently at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts. LJD was founded in 1999 and has received additional support from The Garden State Arts Foundation. The Company has been featured in a series titled “The Creative Process” written by Philip Gardner and photographed by Kokyat on the New York arts blog Oberon’s Grove.

Ms Johnson studied at SUNY/Purchase and on scholarship at The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. She continued her studies in New York with Finis Jhung and Sara Rudner among others. She presented her early work in New York at numerous dance spaces and founded One Night Stand, a series of Co-operative showcases, which allowed choreographers to present new work inexpensively. She has received a Monticello Foundation award sponsored by The National Association of Regional Ballet as well as a Harkness Dance Center Space Grant from the 92nd Street Y.

Camilla Finch Teitelman, LJD Board President

A journalist by trade, Ms. Finch Teitelman worked on the ABC Network News programs, 20/20, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and Business World with Sander Vanocur. She has also worked in print journalism with, among other publications, Crain’s New York Business. A native New Yorker, she moved to New Jersey 17 years ago where, along with Lydia Johnson and Rayna Pomper, she began the process that led to the founding and development of Lydia Johnson Dance. Currently LJD’s Board President, Ms. Finch Teitelman is moving into the nonprofit sector and is near completion of a Certificate in Nonprofit Management.

Performance photos courtesy Oberon’s Grove

If you’ve been following along the last several Mondays, you know that we’ve been hearing from grantees who have recently taken part in our Board Leadership Training Series workshops and are now telling their stories  about how they are applying what they’ve learned to their organizations. Allison Trimarco of Creative Capacity kicked off the series with some really helpful and humorous advice about fundraising. We also heard about fundraising from Matt Finlay. Ruth Fost talked about organizational succession planning while Liz Mitchell shared her organization’s turnaround story. All of these experiences, as well as today’s excellent post (John Gattuso of the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance talks about losing and choosing board members), are, we hope, helpful to all of you folks in the nonprofit world who are struggling with the same issues.

We encourage you to comment on any of these blog posts with your thoughts, your questions, or your own organization’s struggles and stories and get a conversation going. At Dodge, we see this blog as a community forum – a place to get and give information – so your input is always welcome.

Stepping Up, Stepping Down

I joined the board of the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance about six years ago and have served as an officer for about four—first as vice president, now president. It’s been a period of rapid growth for the group, which was founded in 1996 as an all-volunteer organization and now has a staff of six.

I sometimes say the organization is in its adolescence: constantly changing and prone to growing pains. And while growth can be exciting, it’s also tricky to manage. Good planning is essential, but, as we learned at Dodge over the last couple of years, a plan will only go so far if we don’t have the people to execute and revise it. Thinking about what the organization is going to do is only half the battle. Knowing who is going to do it is equally important. For our trustees, and especially for our leadership, that meant getting a handle on the issue of board succession.

Ironically, one of the first and most important lessons we learned is to get comfortable with the idea of losing board members. Initially, I felt that a trustee resignation was a sign of failure. And, in truth, we lost several people in my first few years whom I regarded as part of the organization’s brain trust—some of our most experienced and accomplished members, not to mention a couple of our biggest donors. But I also saw a new generation of trustees step in and fill the void. We were lucky. The transition happened more or less organically, because we had people ready to move into leadership positions. But what if the situation had been different? What if nobody was prepared to lead? Clearly, this is not the sort of thing you want to leave to chance.

With Dodge’s encouragement, we came to realize that losing board members isn’t a defeat. On the contrary, it’s an opportunity to reinvigorate the board with new people, fresh ideas, and a broader network of supporters. It’s unreasonable to expect trustees to serve indefinitely, and it’s unfair to the organization to retain board members who aren’t fully engaged.

As a first step, our executive committee decided to do a simple check-in with our fellow trustees. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a phone call to discuss their thoughts about the organization and their plans for the future. Did they feel their time and talents were being utilized effectively? Did they have an interest in a leadership role? Did they intend to continue serving on the board?

As it turned out, some trustees were thinking about stepping down but were reluctant to do so out of a sense of loyalty. They needed to know that it was possible to exit gracefully, with the organization’s thanks for their years of service. Just by starting the conversation, we gave them permission to leave the board with a sense of accomplishment instead of guilt.

Of course, the other half of the equation is finding new trustees. Until recently, our method—if you can call it that—depended mostly on personal recommendations. Typically, one of our board members would suggest a candidate and, after a little bit of vetting and a meeting or two, he or she would be invited to join the board.

Now we approach board nominations much as we would a new hire. It starts with an analysis of the skills, experience, and personal qualities the organization needs. We solicit names of potential nominees from our trustees and associates, narrow the list down depending on how well the candidates meet our criteria, then interview each one. It’s a fairly involved process, but it works. We recently welcomed five new trustees and three non-trustee committee members. Equally important, we’ve already started identifying prospects for our next round of nominations.

Finding and cultivating new talent is one of the key responsibilities of board membership, and it requires a sustained effort. Admittedly, it’s not always the most comfortable thing to contemplate—nobody likes to think they’re replaceable. But when the time comes to step off the board—and sooner or later that time comes for everybody—we should do so with the knowledge that we’re leaving behind people who can do the job at least as well as we did, if not better.

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John Gattuso is president of the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance, a nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the natural resources, open spaces, and productive farms of Hunterdon County, New Jersey. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Milford, New Jersey, where he runs a design and communications firm.

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