by Holly Delany Cole - In the past few weeks, I’ve been involved in conversations with various nonprofits leaders (both staff and Board leaders) in which the idea of ‘ownership’ was raised by them in some form or fashion:
“Should the Executive Director of nonprofit be made a nonvoting board member in order to project a higher level of ‘ownership’ by the ED to potential individual or institutional funders?”
“What can be done about a group of founding board members who act like they are the sole ‘owners’ of the nonprofit, direct it as they do their respective businesses, and withhold from the first ‘executive director’ they hired any independent authority?”
“Who ‘owns’ the work of setting vision for the organization -- the Executive Director who was deliberately sought out and hired for his vision and charismatic leadership style, or the very engaged, knowledgeable long-time Board members?”
“Who mobilizes the agency to purpose following the unexpected and unwelcome resignation of the Executive Director – the Deputy Director or the Board? Whose charge is this?”
Of course, the answer to any of these questions must be found in conversations between the staff and Board leaders and the ‘right’ answer will be, contextual. It really does depend. Having said that, several thoughts come up for me as I muse about the varied situations:
1) Are the questions about ‘ownership’ really about something else? Clearly some of the questions that arise from either staff leaders or Board leaders about ‘ownership’ are cover for fundamental issues or flaws in some dimension(s) of board-staff practice, and these should be identified and addressed. CRE believes there are five essential characteristics of the most effective boards, including, a healthy, honest partnership between the Board Chair and Executive Director. A central part of our work around board development involves assisting Board and staff leadership to identify and assess their status along five dimensions and develop strategies to address the flagged issues. Check out our self-assessment tool, and let us know what you think.
2) Tension over feelings of ‘ownership’ should not be avoided. In their most positive presentation, feelings of ‘ownership’ translate to engagement, passion and energy by nonprofit leaders for the mission of the organization and for the task of governing. Of course, this ‘high-engagement’ works especially well when there is shared understanding and a common view about mission, strategy, values and, yes, respective roles among and between board and staff leaders. Less than this, and one risks first confusion and then dysfunction, or worse. The work of clarifying expectations about mission and roles is critical, particularly with boards which have historically played central roles in establishing an organization’s vision and programmatic agenda. Intentional work must be carried out to ensure full and honest discussions between staff and board leaders about these fundamentals so that everyone does row at the same time, in the same direction.
3) Feelings of ownership, productive or otherwise, often shift over time. In writing for the Program on Nonprofit Organizations for Yale University many years ago, Miriam Wood observed that many volunteer boards change their ‘attitudes’ over time, that is, founding board members become progressively less committed to ‘mission’ and ‘cause’ and more committed to ‘goals’ and procedures in what she terms, the professionalization of zeal. Initially, board members ‘are’ the agency, and as the organization grows in resources and complexity they may hire their first executive director who slowly takes on more of the ‘ownership’ of the organization even as new board members are recruited and the board members become differently engaged, as ‘governors’ rather than as ‘doers’. Around this point in an organization’s growth there may be productive or unproductive tension between staff and board, and/or between founding members and new board members. I’ve always been intrigued by these ideas and have seen this kind of thing play out repeatedly in various nonprofits over the years.
4) Shouldn’t the conversation really be about Accountability? When I hear the words ‘ownership’ and ‘nonprofit’ in the same sentence, I think, ‘community’, ‘the public’ and ‘taxpayers’. Nonprofits are a brilliant invention – they provide a vehicle through which citizens can mobilize resources to advance missions that benefit the public. As long as we the public are persuaded that the nonprofit leaders have the right problem analysis and they execute their missions capably, their organizations are supported by our tax dollars and our donations in various forms. In return for our support, nonprofit leaders (board and staff) are expected to manage resources responsibly and with integrity, and to accomplish their missions. It is a privilege and a responsibility to operate nonprofits, and as leaders we are obligated to work through knotty issues including, what ‘ownership’ means for us. It’s a trust thing with the public, and in fact, we are all owners. For an interesting discussion about the full dimensions of accountability in which nonprofits do and should engage, check out, The Many Faces of Nonprofit Accountability (Harvard Business School) by Alnoor Ebrahim (full paper or abstract).
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