Of Baby Boomers and Boards

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According to Linda Crompton, President and CEO of BoardSource, the number of nonprofit board members needed each year is 26 million.  Yup, you read that correctly:  both the size of the need and the frequency of the need.

This in and of itself is a huge challenge.  Couple this with the reality that the majority of those 26 million seats are filled each year with Baby Boomers, and the challenge becomes even greater, and more serious.  Though a nice, sizeable generation, there is still a finite—and being honest, diminishing–supply of Baby Boomers, and within that, a limited number who choose to give back and serve on nonprofit boards.

So yes, if the message hasn’t been received yet, let’s say it again:  boards need to make board member recruitment a serious priority. I’ve ranted before in this space about the importance of strategically crafting boards to ensure that a nonprofit board has the right array of talents, demographics, connections, and personality characteristics needed for the organization at that particular point in its life cycle while working on the strategic priorities of the time.  So, I am not going to repeat that rant. 

Instead, I’d like to acknowledge the increasingly inherent tension we face in recruiting board members:  the need for responsible board members who volunteer their time and commitment versus the increasing scrutiny of board performance and desire to hold them accountable.

To be honest, if all we wanted by having a board was to be in compliance with the law, it would not matter who were board members.  But if we are smart and want the best for our nonprofit, we need board members who understand their roles, who want to execute their responsibilities knowingly and conscientiously and who understand that the buck stops with them.  But the very individuals who make good, dynamic board members are the very same people who understand that this volunteer commitment comes with a set of performance standards.  And people, from Attorneys General to donors to the media to the IRS are paying more and more attention to whether boards are reaching those performance standards.

So how do we prevent the really good people from getting scared off?  How do we prepare ourselves to respond to their hesitancy, their uncertainty, their weighing of the scales of giving back on one side and risk on the other?  First, we must be honest.  Yes, there is a legal standard of performance.  Yes, there is some risk involved.  But that standard is easy to reach and that risk is greatly reduced by understanding your role and responsibilities.  So second, we teach board members what their roles and responsibilities are and we provide on-going professional development—just as we would for any other professional position—for board members.  We, as an organization, invest in our board members so board members can fully and knowledgably invest in the organization.