Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

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

As we lead up to the launch of our third annual Board Leadership Training Series in October, we’re happy to share a new guest series featuring previous participants and what they have learned. Last week, Laura Otten of the Nonprofit Centre at LaSalle University’s School of Business, kicked off the series with a few words of wisdom. This week, Alan Levitan, the Board President for the Arts Council of the Morris Area, offers several great, practical ideas for any of you who serve on a nonprofit board.

Board President Alan Levitan, Board 1st Vice President Anh Molloy, Executive Director Anne Aronovitch of the Arts Council of the Morris Area

Alan Levitan

Last year, I attended several of the Dodge Board Leadership Training Series workshops as part of a team of participants from the Arts Council of the Morris Area. Now in its 37th year, the Arts Council has long been committed to “bringing the arts to the center of community life.” With a passionate belief in the important and vital role that the arts play in our lives, the Arts Council continues to find new and creative ways to deliver its wide variety of programs, as well as to work towards the building of a sustainable community in which the arts are an integral part. The Arts Council’s able staff is complemented by a dedicated Board, currently 26 strong with a diverse representation of artists, professionals, business people, educators, and community volunteers.

Since I first became a member of the Arts Council’s Executive Committee, and especially in the past 2½ years that I have been President of the Board, the Board has focused on how to strengthen the organization as a whole: from fundraising and marketing to finances and governance. But I have come to realize that an important component underlying all of those areas is the strength of the Board itself. While all of the Dodge Leadership workshops that we attended were useful, it was the “Care and Feeding of Quality Board Members” workshop in the Spring of 2010 that provided an important framework for work in that area. Attended by our Executive Director and two other Board members, in addition to myself, the workshop provided very valuable information that we embraced with gusto.

So what did we learn and how have we applied what we learned? Here are just a couple of the areas that we began to focus on:

Board Recruitment & Development

To strengthen our process of identifying individuals whose passion, expertise and commitment match what the organization is looking for, we developed/revised several tools that were suggested during the course of the workshop:

• We revised our Board Profile Form, including a new “connections” section which will help in fundraising as well as in recruiting volunteers and new board candidates.
• We developed a method for allowing prospective Board candidates to get to know the Arts Council’s programs and activities before moving to the next step of being recommended to the Board.
• We developed a Frequently Asked Questions summary that gives an important overview of the organization. We have already used it with potential Board candidates and will use in our new Board member orientation program, in addition to sharing it with our existing Board.
• We have begun to reassess the role of the Nominating Committee, recognizing the important greater role that it can and should play in the life of the Board. No longer just focused on proposing new candidates to the Board, the Committee will be taking on a greater role in educating and developing Board members. As a natural outgrowth, a change of the Committee’s name from Nominating to Board Development is being considered.

Board Commitment

To strengthen communication with and among Board members, as well as to reinforce the responsibilities and expectations of Board members, we created several new tools:

• We developed an Annual Commitment Letter to refresh our knowledge of what we originally signed on for and to renew our commitment to the organization we all love.
• We developed and are using new Board assessment tools that include an assessment of initial Board members by the leadership, a member self-assessment, and a group assessment activity, currently in the planning stages for an October retreat.
• We have already set our calendar dates for the entire year for the Board and all committee meetings to allow for better interaction between Board/committee members.
• Our Executive Director began a monthly e-mail to Board members with a calendar of the organization’s events—not only Board activities, but also all staff-led programs and activities taking place during the month. We believe that by disseminating these dates in advance, we are encouraging Board members to become better educated about the organization through attending programs and events.

Board Meetings

In strengthening the Board to attract and maintain good Board members, we realized that we needed to take steps to ensure that we keep those Board members engaged, particularly in these times when Board members often have busy careers and/or diverse community commitments.

Using tools from the workshop, we began to reframe the structure of our Board meetings with the result that both the content and the value of our meetings are in positive transition. We are moving away from “historical reflection” (i.e. what has happened since our last meeting) to proactively focusing on the elements of our strategic plan, using our Board for what we have determined to be a huge strength: brainstorming big issues and mapping courses of action. We learned there are better ways to disseminate committee work, event planning and other “routine” organizational business information without wasting valuable time listening to reports at meetings. We also now begin each Board meeting with an “Arts Moment” that engages the Board in an arts experience. After all, we are the Arts Council! So far we have incorporated both music and poetry into our meetings.

I can honestly say that most of the actions highlighted in this blog were a direct result of what we learned at the Dodge workshop. However, I believe that a key reason we have accomplished so much is that the four of us attending the workshop met less than one week later to debrief what we had learned and to summarize what we felt was useful to bring back to the Board. This summary became our “to-do” list that kept us committed to accomplish as much as we have.

We hope that we have taken on the challenge that Laura Otten described in the last blog, and we echo her sage advice.

In addition to his role as president of the Arts Council of the Morris Area, Alan Levitan also serves on four other non-profit boards and one public company board. Mr. Levitan is the former president and CEO of Kings Super Markets and currently owns a consulting firm specializing in helping food manufacturers go to market as well as assisting large retailers increase sales through a combination of improving marketing, merchandising and promotions skills.

Over the past six months, teams of board members and nonprofit executive leadership attended Dodge Technical Assistance workshops including Nonprofit Lifecycles, Assessment, Board Care and Feeding, and Strategic Planning, among others. We have heard terrific feedback and ideas from many board members who are actively applying the learning to their board work. The “Developing Your Board Leadership Series” is their forum to share what they’ve learned.

Today, Liz Mitchell shares with us the turnaround story of the Printmaking Council of New Jersey.

The Turnaround Stage: A Phased Approach

Completing the Dodge Board Leadership Training Series and hearing the many stories of fellow nonprofit leaders has helped me begin to see the Printmaking Council of New Jersey as the little engine that could.

Like many nonprofits, the Printmaking Council of NJ (soon to be the Printmaking Center of NJ) began in the living room of a group of impassioned individuals. Florence Wender and a few fellow printmakers came together over 37 years ago to formalize their ideas and create an artist cooperative with an educational outreach program. The mission of the organization uses the uniqueness of this timeless art process as a tool for building community through in-house and outreach programs, exhibitions and an open printmaking studio for working artists of all levels.

My connection to the Printmaking Council has been as an active member for many years. Over time, I began to see that there were functional difficulties within the organization. In 2008 the little engine began to stall. I had always felt that PCNJ was a true gem, and I was seeing it lose its polish. I decided to join the Board of Directors to bring my prior board experience to bear on the challenges at hand. At the time, the organization was in a state of flux and the board was faced with hiring a new director. It was clear that new leadership was needed to move the organization forward. We also needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the model of the organization, which was still operating much like an artist cooperative and faced a prolonged decline in the process.

Liz Mitchell

In June 2008, Linda Helm Krapf was hired as the new Executive Director and brought with her more than 25 years of experience working in the nonprofit field. It was clear to Linda that the organization was in the Decline Stage of its nonprofit lifecycle, and to successfully navigate the Turnaround Phase would take tremendous focus and resolve. Shortly after Linda arrived, I was asked to become the Board Chair of the organization. As we were adjusting to the newness of our positions, the Board and staff began to review, define and prioritize the major organizational challenges. We believed that nothing was so broken that it couldn’t be fixed. In Susan Kenny Stevens’ book, Nonprofit Lifecycles, she describes this stage as “Where Rubber Meets the Road.” I could not agree more!

What we had going for us was experience, tenacity and some refined tools in our toolbox. What we had going against us was that we had a long, long way to go. Over the next 18 months the board began a phased approach to making the necessary changes needed to get the organization back on track. We began to evaluate the organization examining PCNJ’s policies against nonprofit best practices, which identified the weakest points and greatest vulnerabilities. We patiently and bravely took this time to complete a laundry list of items in the “Fix What is Broken Phase.” This involved: creating checks and balance systems; resolving conflicts of interest; hiring qualified staff; and establishing program goals around excellence. We then moved to the work of updating stale curricula, assessing profitability and holding successful fundraising events. Over time, we accomplished an overarching goal to repair strained donor relationships and win the trust of members. A remarkable synergy between the board, staff and members was born in this time.

The next phase was a vision quest. We held salons for open discussion among the membership and found creative ways to engage our stakeholders. We used the following words of Linda C. Crompton, President, Board Source, as a mandate to keep focused and move forward:

“True leaders will recognize that there is opportunity embedded within the financial crisis and seize the moment to evaluate, restructure, retool; in short, to regenerate their organizations. All former bets are off, and the leaders who ask the generative questions—in effect, question everything—will build organizations that come out the other side of the turmoil stronger than ever.”

In September of 2009, we were ready to chart the future course for PCNJ. This process defined the capacity of the organization. We used our creativity to imagine the best Printmaking Council of New Jersey, and planned for the way to give that image purpose. Strategic planning became the new engine that would drive the mission and programs.

In the process of strategic planning we realized that even though we had worked hard and successfully cleared many hurdles, we did not yet have a fully trained board with the experience to execute our ambitious goals. This realization came just as the invitation to join the Dodge Training hit my email. Serendipity was at play as the training sessions that followed yielded invaluable information and real world experience for our board members.

We coined these months in Dodge training as the “Getting Our Governance Ducks in a Row Phase.” Five PCNJ board members participated in Dodge training, creating a critical mass of understanding of the complexities of nonprofit management. Training also clarified the responsibilities each member needed to make. The board began to see and experience a shift in the way they manifest their commitment to PCNJ, and the foundation of the organization began to shift and stabililize. Every time board members responded to the new responsibilities that they helped to define, the organization took a giant step forward. The result is that we now have a shared plan and strategy that has everyone’s mark on it.

Phillemon Hlungwani gives an artist presentation in the PCNJ Gallery. Phil participated in PCNJ’s international print exchange with the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The difference at PCNJ is palpable and is evidenced by the support and response from our funders, and through the enthusiasm of our membership. The training has strengthened the board, creating a more focused and value-driven organization. As we round the bend of the Turnaround Phase this new knowledge has helped inspire courage, even though we can’t always fully see what lies ahead.

Board members have talked about “aha” moments at Dodge training. One I remember best was during “The Care and Feeding of Quality Board Members.” Laura Otten took us through the section on board meeting agendas and introduced the models of consensus and strategic agendas. Those of us attending realized that PCNJ was actually fully prepared to define the structure of the agenda for our board meetings beyond reading reports and putting out fires, and into a strategic agenda format. Together, we had laid the ground work, navigated the phases, stayed focused, and let ourselves be inspired by our shared commitment. Being able to take advantage of a sophisticated tool such as a strategic agenda defines the other, less obvious benefits of the work we just accomplished and the training that supports the work – the benefit of efficiency. In these challenging times, our ability to stay relatively small requires that we operate with utmost efficiency. Efficiency allows the engine to work like a Swiss watch. Aha!

PCNJ now has a strong working engine clipping along towards the future with everyone “on board.” Two years into our turnaround we have made lasting and fundamental change. We have replaced: fear with courage; haphazard decision-making with best practices; planning out of convenience with strategic planning; and austerity with prudence. It’s thrilling to now witness the momentum that follows. PCNJ now attracts individuals who are passionate, not only about the arts, but also about doing a job right and recognizing that although challenging, the work of turning an organization around can be infinitely rewarding.

Liz Mitchell has been the Board Chair at the Printmaking Council of New Jersey since 2008. She has also served on the Foundation Board at Raritan Valley Community College for the last ten years, most recently as the Vice Chair. She is an educator, curator and collage artist who makes artist books and installations. Her work is collected both nationally and internationally. She has completed three artist in residencies at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa and most recently held a solo exhibition in the Ben Shahn Gallery at William Paterson University in Wayne NJ.

* * *

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7-10
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Follow the Dodge Foundation on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook