A Place at the Table

Randell McShepard is one of Cleveland’s most in-demand executives. He serves on eight nonprofit boards already. And, in the past year and a half alone, Mr. McShepard, vice president for public affairs at RPM International, a company in nearby Medina that makes industrial sealants and coatings, has been asked to join 32 more.

“Because I manage a corporation’s philanthropic budget, there’s an underlying assumption that ‘he can write a check,’” says Mr. McShepard. “I’m sure that’s what makes me appealing. I’d like to believe it’s because I’m smart and good looking, but they know this guy brings a company checkbook and manages a corporate budget. That makes me a good candidate for a board.”

He is also black, which he knows helps increase his popularity as boards try to become more diverse.

In the fall of 2007 he was discussing his many invitations with a friend, Eddie Taylor, chief executive of Beverage Dispensing Solutions, in Lexington, Ohio, who said he also was inundated with board invitations. Two days later, another friend called Mr. McShepard and said she had been having the same discussion with three of her associates.

The six high-powered black professionals set up a breakfast meeting to discuss the issue. Mr. McShepard brought along a June 2007 report from the Urban Institute stating that, nationally, 86 percent of those serving on nonprofit boards are white.

“We all said this is ridiculous that we keep getting asked to serve on so many boards,” Mr. McShepard says. “We thought there must be a better way. How might we go about correcting the problem? We didn’t just want to gripe, we wanted to be helpful.”

They created the Minority Board Member Pipeline Initiative, a loosely organized group with a laserlike focus: to recruit more minorities to serve on boards, and to bring the recruits to the attention of local nonprofit organizations.

Efforts similar to Cleveland’s pipeline program are also under way in other cities, including Trustees of Color, in Wilmington, Del., and the African American Nonprofit Network, in Washington, which Mr. McShepard said he used as a model to help design the Cleveland effort.

The Council on Foundations, the national umbrella group for grant makers, is also planning a program, as part of its overall push toward greater diversity in the philanthropic field, to groom minorities for executive and trustee roles at foundations and to match them with opportunities. The program is expected to start next year.

“We want people who understand the role of governance and who also bring a diversity of experience and perspectives to their particular work,” says Steve Gunderson, president of the council, in Arlington, Va. “I believe they’re out there. The problem is that once they become visible, they are being used over and over again. We’ve got to attract a new generation of diverse leaders.”

Maxine B. Baker, president of the African American Nonprofit Network, echoes Mr. Gunderson’s sentiments. “You want diversity in ideas, you want people at the table who understand culturally the community the group is serving,” she says. “You want people who are seasoned, and you want young people. A full range of leadership at the table helps sustain an organization.”

Digging Deeper

Given how popular he is with Cleveland’s nonprofit groups, Mr. McShepard knows boards are making an effort to become more diverse. But sometimes, he says, they could try harder.

“The path of least resistance is often taken, and the path of least resistance is for board leaders to call on their immediate network — to call on people that look like them,” he says. “Or they call on people of color who are the usual suspects with a more high profile.”

He adds, “That was the case with me and my colleagues. We all work in positions that are very high profile, and people see our names out there. They are not necessarily digging a little deeper to find equally talented or more talented people.”

Mr. McShepard says that some black people he has spoken to want to serve on boards and would make good candidates. But, like many prospective trustees of any background, they are not sure what would be expected of them — especially when it comes to donating money.

“They’re under the impression that they will be asked to write a big fat check, and if they are not in the position to do so, they do not want to be embarrassed or shamed off of a board,” he says. He adds that it is more important that all board members contribute to the charity they serve, and the actual amount donated is not as relevant.

Vernetta Walker, director of consulting at BoardSource, an organization in Washington that works with nonprofit groups nationwide to strengthen their management practices, said the issue of intentionally diversifying a board can be tricky, but that the right approach is key.

“It’s all in how you position your organization and what you are looking for,” she says. A nonprofit group needs to consider the skills and expertise it lacks, she says, as well as factors such as candidates’ age, race, ethnicity, or disabilities.

Deborah W. Foster, executive vice president for strategic alliances and inclusiveness at the United Way of America, in Alexandria, Va., said one of the biggest challenges in diversifying boards is the view of what “leadership” means.

“Often boards of directors do need to go through the process to say what it is that is required of their board members,” she says. “Many define leadership as people who are corporate CEO’s, and once you do that, by design you have already eliminated many segments of the population.”

She advises local United Ways to focus on the specific needs of the organization and to hold an expansive view of what might constitute relevant experience. A board candidate might not be running a company, for example, but perhaps he or she has served as the head of a neighborhood association or is a leader in an academic setting.

Ms. Foster says she does not know the percentage of board members at the nation’s nearly 1,300 United Ways who are members of minorities, but she says that all the organization’s affiliates have been urged to diversify their boards.

“Strategic diversity management is a practice on par with good brand and financial management, and we treat it that way,” she says. “We see this as really key to our current success and future success as we look at demographic changes in the country and the world.”

Raising Awareness

After Mr. McShepard and his associates in Cleveland decided they needed to help find a way to get more minorities on local boards, they teamed up with an organization called Business Volunteers Unlimited, which for 15 years has trained and recruited people to help lead the area’s charities.

What Mr. McShepard and his colleagues “really bring is an incredible passion for raising awareness,” says Elizabeth Hosler Voudouris, executive vice president of Business Volunteers Unlimited. “They all believe that serving on boards is such an important thing to do — personally, professionally, and for the community.”

In conjunction with the pipeline project, Business Volunteers Unlimited held a training seminar in June for 80 prospective board candidates, which sold out in just two weeks and had 40 people on the waiting list. Another session is scheduled for October.

The seminars, which also are conducted regularly for nonracially specific groups, explain to potential board volunteers what will be expected of them and outline the ins and outs of board governance, such as legal responsibilities and fund raising. The group is in the process of matching 34 participants with various boards.

One of those new recruits is Tony Brown, director of human resources at the Cleveland law firm Thompson Hine. Mr. Brown, who attended the June seminar, is interested in helping young people develop job skills, and he says he was delighted when Business Volunteers Unlimited suggested Big Brothers Big Sisters as a charity he might consider joining. He is in talks with the group now.

He thinks many nonprofit boards are not more diverse because their leadership is unsure who to reach out to, and thus “recycle” the same people over and over. Also, he says, many potential candidates lack the personal network that would lead them to board service. “Even if I knew there was a board for a nonprofit, I would not know how to get on their radar screen,” Mr. Brown says.

He calls the training he has received from Business Volunteers Unlimited “eye opening. As I continued in the process I had a much better understanding of how boards operate and what the expectations are and just the whole gamut that I didn’t have before.”

Mr. Brown is exactly the kind of person the pipeline project was hoping to attract: accomplished minorities who were not well known in local nonprofit circles.

“What was interesting was that when the list came in of the 80 individuals who were receiving the training, the response was, ‘Wow, this is a very talented group of people. Why don’t we know about these people?’” says Mr. McShepard. “Clearly they were leaders in their fields but they were not on anybody’s radar screen. Soon we’ll have 160 minorities in the pipeline in northeast Ohio, and I think that’s a huge success.”