Keeping Boards Active Is a Shared Responsibility, Say Governance Experts

When a charity’s board members are burned out, or not performing up to their potential, who’s responsible for making it better?

It depends on whom you ask, says Jan Masaoka, a former management consultant in San Francisco who spent many years advising nonprofit leaders. Charity officials with relatively little experience will say it’s the board chair’s job to rejuvenate an underperforming board, or they will say it’s a shared responsibility of the board chair and the organization’s executive director, says Ms. Masaoka, “But when you ask longtime successful executive directors about board problems, they say, ‘It is my responsibility.’”

Many board problems can be traced back to the executive director, says Ms. Masaoka, now editor of Blue Avocado, a publication for nonprofit leaders. When trustees are burned out or not fully engaged, she says, “executives like to complain because it makes it look like a board problem, when it is the executive director working to get the most out of the board, rather than working to strengthen the board.”

Feedback from Trustees

The bad economy may be placing more demands on nonprofit trustees, but a poorly performing board usually involves some failure on the part of a charity’s staff, says Simone Joyaux, a Foster, R.I., consultant who advises nonprofits on governance issues.

“If there is trustee burnout, it’s because we don’t know how to use them effectively,” she says. “The fatigue on boards comes from inadequate leadership by staff.”

It’s up to the executive director and other key staff members to help trustees understand what good governance is, says Ms. Joyaux, to ensure that board meetings are interesting and well run and that trustees who are asked to raise money and undertake other activities have plenty of support and adequate training.

Adds Ms. Joyaux: “I asked one development officer who was not happy with her board, ‘Do you call them on the phone and ask them what they need?’”

Ms. Joyaux, who also sits on charity boards, says trustees can get burned out when chief executives and fund raisers ask them to seek money from their friends, even when those people have no interest in the cause.

“If I am told to use my connections and get my friends to give, I am fatigued,” she says. “I am tired of trespassing on my personal relationships. I am tired of being thought of as an ATM machine. Don’t talk about the needs and dollar goals every minute.”

Many trustees also get disengaged because they lack meaningful work to do, they are always simply reacting to committee or executive recommendations or reviewing financial reports, Ms. Joyaux says.

In her view, such cases often involve executives who fear giving the board too much authority.

“There are executive directors who intentionally disempower their boards,” she says. “They want bubble-headed boards who just agree with them.”

But nonprofit boards can excel if they receive the right kinds of support from staff members, says Susan Meier, vice president for consulting at BoardSource, a Washington nonprofit group that works to improve charity boards.

Because of the struggling economy, staff leaders at those organizations, she says, “are recognizing that we can’t return to where we were. Too much has changed, and that requires us to engage boards at a higher level.”

That means trustees must go beyond fiduciary oversight and help their organizations confront deeper questions about the mission and how it can sustain itself financially in a radically changed environment, she says.

As for board members, Ms. Meier says, “a lot of them get excited when we talk to them about having more of a strategic contribution. Trustees begin to light up, as if to say, ‘You mean there’s more to this than viewing financial statements?’”