More Grant-Maker CEOs and Presidents Should Serve on Foundation Boards

Experience in philanthropy is becoming a more valued asset for foundation leaders.

In the past year alone, the Ford and Kellogg foundations looked within their staffs to find Darren Walker and La June Montgomery, respectively, to lead their organizations. California Wellness named Judy Belk, formerly of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, as its new CEO. And the Barr Foundation named Jim Canales, former CEO of the Irvine Foundation, as its first president.

But does trustees’ recognition of the value of philanthropy experience extend to the recruitment of new board members?

To find out, we looked at the boards of the 25 largest private American foundations we could find with websites that contained biographical information about trustees, a suggestion that came from Crystal Hayling, former CEO of the Blue Shield of California Foundation and a board member of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. We wanted to understand how many foundation presidents and nonprofit CEOs were serving on those boards.

Let’s start with the foundation presidents. Of the 295 trustees on those boards, we found just two current and seven former foundation CEOs.

That is surprisingly low. Why wouldn’t foundation boards want to include board members who understand what it’s like to run a foundation? Are foundation CEOs themselves, who often play a significant role in the recruitment of board members, threatened by the prospect of having another foundation CEO in the boardroom? Or do boards just not value experience in philanthropy among their board colleagues as highly as they value experience in other fields?

We think they should. Running a foundation well is uniquely difficult. Foundations are, after all, typically working on formidable problems that have defied market or government solutions. Performance measurement is complicated. The relationship between foundations and grantees can be fraught, with grantees hesitant to offer genuine feedback. The vexing, stubborn issues they deal with require collaboration across organizations and sometimes across sectors, but collaboration can be tough. What’s more, to make real progress often requires changes to government policy, but the policy environment is challenging, to say the least, in our politically polarized environment.

Given all of these obstacles, knowledge of philanthropy is a helpful asset for board members. Just as corporate boards look for members with experience leading companies, foundation boards would be well served to include foundation presidents.

But given how easily foundation leaders can become isolated, living in a bubble of positive feedback, perhaps another form of leadership experience is even more valuable in the foundation boardroom: that of running a grant-seeking nonprofit.

Here, not surprisingly, the numbers are somewhat higher—but they are still low. Excluding college and hospital presidents, who are different breeds, we counted just 21 current nonprofit CEOs and 18 former ones among those 295 board members. All told, just 13 percent of the trustees we looked at are running or have run a nonprofit that isn’t a college or hospital.

What’s interesting are the exceptions: foundations that have made a conscious decision to have a higher concentration of board members with experience running an operating nonprofit. Among the 25 foundations we examined, six had three or more such individuals on their boards: the Ford, Robert Wood Johnson, David and Lucile Packard, Kresge, and John S. and James L. Knight foundations and the California Endowment.

“Over the years, our board has consistently maintained that we cannot successfully execute towards our mission without the experience of community-based, community-minded leaders—with a track record and deep knowledge of addressing the needs of marginalized populations—serving on the board,” said Robert Ross, CEO of the California Endowment, whose mission is to improve health in underserved communities. “It’s not much more complicated than that.”

“The wisdom, knowledge, and experience that grant seekers bring to a foundation board are invaluable,” said Ford’s Mr. Walker, who noted that the foundation has included such individuals on its board for decades. “They understand what it’s like” to do the hard work the foundation supports, he added.

Family foundations can diversify their boardrooms this way, too.

“We specifically try to maintain [nonprofit leadership] experience as one of the collective competencies on our board,” said Carol Larson, president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. “We have half family and half non-family ‘general’ trustees on our board, and I am glad to say that we have experience running nonprofits among both our family and non-family members.”

These CEOs note the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest, given that they have grant seekers represented in the boardroom. But they see that as a manageable issue with the right conflict-of-interest and disclosure policies in place.

We’re not arguing against naming those with business or government experience to foundation boards. Those perspectives are valuable—sometimes essential. But leadership experience in philanthropy and the nonprofit world is oddly underrepresented.

In research our organization conducted almost a decade ago, we saw that foundation trustees were far more likely to regard their boards as effective if they had the right mix of skills and capabilities. Chief among them were nonprofit management; a detailed understanding of the foundation’s strategy, program areas, and target populations; and contacts that are potentially valuable to the foundation.

So board members recognize the importance of these perspectives—and yet they aren’t doing enough to find them and bring them into the boardroom.

Foundation boards should take stock, conduct an inventory of skills and capabilities, and ask whether perhaps they could benefit from including some folks with direct experience running a foundation or a nonprofit.