I’ve been an admin staff member for many nonprofits over the years in a variety of roles and these are some of the common areas that can cause friction between board members and admin staff as well as among board members themselves.
BOARD MEETINGS
Add meetings to your personal calendar including the date, time, location, and the access link if it’s an online meeting
Whether you meet monthly, quarterly, or as-needed, as soon as you know the meeting date, time, and location, add it to your personal calendar. It’s so much easier to delete a meeting or edit the details than scrambling to find the details the day of or, even worse, five minutes before the meeting. Your admin staff have a lot of responsibilities supporting the organization so taking responsibility for your own calendar really helps.
Read the agenda and any accompanying materials
Write down any questions you have. If appropriate, email the Board Chair/Treasurer/Secretary before the meeting with any minor clarifying questions or edits. If you have a large question or concern, contact the Board Chair beforehand.
There’s a lot of ways a board meeting can get off track but this is an easily preventable one. When you get the agenda, read it as well as any accompanying documents. If you see an error or have a quick clarifying question, contact whoever sent it and copy the Board Chair. Conversely, if you have a big concern about something you see in the agenda or materials, contact the Board Chair and discuss how to handle it. It might need to be a separate discussion with someone, it might be a separate agenda item or handled some other way but bringing up some hot-button issue out of the blue in the board meeting not only derails the agenda but is not likely to be resolved at that time in that format.
Stay on topic
This is one of the most common ways a board meeting goes south. I’m all for inspiration striking during a meeting but time and time again I see a board member say “Hey, here’s an idea!” and send the discussion off on a related – or sometimes unrelated – tangent which entirely derails the meeting.
A strong Board Chair can sometimes recover the meeting from this disruption but there are several better methods: first, wait until the current discussion is complete and then ask that your idea be added to the next agenda, second, wait until after the meeting and email your idea to the Board Chair, third, wait until after the meeting and email your idea to the appropriate committee and copy the Board Chair.
Show up
Part of your responsibility as a Board Member is to attend meetings. That’s where the work gets done so if you joined a board and find you cannot attend the board and/or committee meetings then you need to hop off this board. It’s frustrating to everyone to have a board member show up occasionally who clearly is out of the loop and wants remedial information including meeting dates and times, more info on decisions that have already been made, etc. but even worse to hold a board seat that someone else might use to really be involved with the organization. You can support the organization in other ways if the board commitment isn’t the right fit at this time.
PROMOTION
Promote the organization
More than any staff position, including the Executive Director, the words of board members to external stakeholders, members, the community at large, etc. carry the most weight. You are the best ambassador because you’ve committed your precious time and energy to the organization so show up to organization events, tell people about the organization’s work, staff booths at expos, etc. and tell people why you’ve committed your energy to the mission.
INTERNAL
Read and respond to emails from staff
Staff is trying to support the organization and would appreciate the support and respect of a response.
Get involved
Volunteer for a committee, take on an officer position, help out at events and do it all with a positive attitude and enthusiasm. That goes a long way to the success of the organization.
Respect committee work and board decisions
There’s few things more frustrating than Monday morning quarterbacking especially when decisions have been made and/or when the activity is in progress and most especially when you were not involved in the planning and preparation in the first place.
Successful organizations have effective committee work where the small group handles the majority of planning, decision-making, etc. and brings reports to the full board for discussion, clarification, etc. If you had a chance to review something at a board meeting that a committee produced, it’s your responsibility to do so and raise any questions or clarifications at that time (see Show Up to the Board Meetings). Once that material is approved then you need to get on board and support the decision. What you definitely don’t want to do is wait until the day of the event or whatever and then say “How about we change this element or add this activity?” That would be disrespectful to the committee and the admin staff who’ve done all the work and received board approval and often just plain too late to change anything.
Support the staff
Your admin staff works really hard to support the organization. You are all on the same team so please treat the staff with the same respect and consideration you would your fellow board members. They are not your secretary or personal assistant. They are there to ensure the organization runs smoothly and efficiently so doing your part (See Put Meetings on your Calendar, etc) creates a productive, efficient working environment where your mission can be the focus.
Stay in your lane
This goes along with supporting the staff but unless you are a working board handling all or some of the admin work, your job is visioning, fundraising, etc. and you can let your admin staff do their job. The most successful organizations anywhere – nonprofit or for-profit – hire great people and then get out of their way and let them do their job. Micromanaging daily tasks or activities that fall under someone else’s job description will cause frustration and could easily lead to a great staff member quitting the organization.
