Which kind of board is yours?

Here’s a new contest for you:  what board does the most and worst damage?  The contestants are Rip Van Winkle, Eager Beaver, Ostrich, the Monkey threesome, and Elpis, the Goddess of Hope.  The competition is tough, the outcome up for grabs.  Only one fact is known for sure:  all do damage.  Unknown is the extent of that damage.

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Recent events, some public, some not, have me, once again, wringing my hands over the lack of performance of nonprofit boards.  Take Sweet Briar College in Virginia. It opened its doors in 1906 and announced this March that it would close those doors in August 2015.  According to all reports, this Eager Beaver Board didn’t consult with faculty, alumnae or current students, three key stakeholder groups.  It took the Attorney General (not a category of people who generally move quickly or reach snap decisions) of Amherst County a mere four weeks to file a lawsuit saying closure violated the terms of the will of the College’s founder.

Should Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring’s thinking be correct and Amherst County’s Attorney General has no standing to file the lawsuit she did, alumnae and students have already said they will bring their own lawsuits.  By the end of the day of the announced closing, alumnae had set up savingsweetbriar.com, and was soon accepting donations.  By the second day,  they had raised $1 million; then  $3 million, and as of this writing, more than $5 million.  Not yet the $20 million needed to keep the school going, but moving in the right direction.  Did the Board do all of the reasonable inquiry that was required?  If it did its due diligence, why aren’t more facts being shared?  Did it live up to its Duty of Care, Loyalty and Obedience?  Or, did the Board jump the gun?

Sadly, though, if my options are an Eager Beaver Board over Rip, the Monkeys or the Ostrich, I think I would take the Beaver.  Long periods of sleep, failing to look and hear (which leads to a board doing evil) and buried heads in the sand lead to things far worse than what may be a premature decision to close an organization.  The latter could be rescinded if additional information—albeit information that should have been known before making such a resounding decision—comes to light; but the consequences of the other players can neither be rescinded nor easily overcome.

Real life but not in the limelight examples abound.  Take, for instance, a board that allows the executive director to remain in position long past becoming aware that she is and has been doing nothing for quite some time; but because both she and all board members are nice people, the board has agreed to keep her on until she finds a new job.  How about the board where everyone had suspicions for years that the executive director hired unqualified staff, made up the finances as he went along, played favorites with staff and clients, and was an all-around bully and did nothing?  When the board finally got around to firing the individual, the organization was—and still is—on life support.

Or the board that wanted to hire a consultant to fire the volunteer who was managing the daily operations and the books and gave herself the title of Deputy Director?  The organization is living month- to-month, yet better to spend money on a consultant to do its job than do its own job.  They don’t trust her, but can’t fire her, either.  Fortunately for these organizations, their egregious behavior has not risen to, or been called to, the attention of higher authorities.

Not the case in New York, where State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman  is investigating the Board of Trustees of Cooper Union, the acclaimed college which had been tuition free since its inception, until its board moved to start charging.  He has filed lawsuits against two New York City nonprofits for board behavior that included pilfering, forgery and other clearly illegal behavior.  I’ve yet to work with Rips, Monkeys and Ostriches that haven’t had some clues, inklings or “gut feelings,” all ignored.  Why?  Too much work.  Honest; I get that answer all of the time. 

And lastly we come to the Elpis models –  those boards that live on hope.  They hope performance will improve and the executive director will suddenly step up.  They hope money will miraculously come in, despite their failure to do anything to make that happen.  They hope the terms of the grant are being met despite the fact that they don’t have enough staff to deliver on the promises.  They hope that everyone, including themselves, know what they are doing—though clearly they don’t.  Hope is a nice word, but it is a passive verb, not an active one.  When a board suspects things aren’t going well, that things aren’t happening as they should or things are happening that shouldn’t, it is action that is needed, not passivity.  Action verbs produce change, not hope—or sleep or eyes and minds that refuse to see.