March 8, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
The NAACP operates with an uncommonly large board of directors, and it is unlikely to change that approach, writes Dan Prives in his blog, Where Most Needed.
As a result, says Mr. Prives, who previously worked as the finance director at World Relief, the organization will probably have a hard time finding a strong chief executive and will have an even more difficult time modernizing its approach in the wake of this week’s announcement that its chief executive, Bruce Gordon, plans to resign.
The NAACP has a 64-member board of directors, even at a time when most national groups have realized that smaller boards are often more effective, Mr. Prives writes. The Red Cross, for example, has been so heavily criticized for its board operations that it announced in the fall that it plans to slash the size of its national board from its current 50 members to 20 or fewer by 2012.
But Mr. Prives says there is little reason to believe the NAACP will decide that smaller is better.
“The NAACP seems destined to become a nonprofit media icon from another era, sort of like the Jerry Lewis Telethon for MDA, for as long as the leaders of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s want to keep it going,” he writes. “The contrast with the Red Cross is this: 9/11 and Katrina both seriously damaged the reputation of the organization, which created external pressure for change at the Red Cross. But there’s no comparable external pressure on the NAACP. Without that pressure, there won’t be board changes, and without a change of board, the organization will be stuck in the status quo.”
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