LVA GovernZine
#02-1
Welcome to the first issue of LVA’s Governance E-Zine. We established this periodic electronic newsletter to deal with some of the questions we receive about governance of volunteer-based literacy organizations. Our goal is to inform, entertain, and provoke conversations about the roles and responsibilities of boards and board members.
Each issue will contain one or two short articles, a few concrete suggestions, and a brief list of additional resources connected to relevant topics. We hope that you will continue the discussion internally as well as through LVA’s new listserv, LVAGovLive.
For most of you, the program and fiscal year are ending. You’re wrapping up your activities, have modified your long-range plan, and reviewed your CEO’s operating plan for the coming year. It’s the perfect time to sit back and relax. However, this is also the best time to examine what your leadership has accomplished during this year. How would you judge your performance as a board? As individual board members? How would you rate your CEO’s performance this year?
The word “evaluation” strikes fear in the hearts of board members. Board presidents ask, “How can I evaluate them, they’re volunteers? If I evaluate them, they’ll leave.” But evaluation doesn’t have to be confrontational; it should be used to remind board members of their responsibilities. It also ensures that the leadership has opportunities to discuss hopes, dreams, concerns, and questions with individual members of the board.
Board evaluation
Your goal should be: To evaluate the work of the board as a whole and the work of individual members at least annually.
Why? To be sure that the organization works and serves the needs of the community. You want board members who feel that their job goes beyond automatically approving financial reports, listening to and accepting committee reports, and rubber-stamping staff recommendations. You want board members who realize that they are the “owners” of the organization and, as such, are ultimately responsible for its future.
Who? The board president and/or the board development committee should be responsible for board and board member evaluations.
John Carver, a nationally recognized expert on Governance, states, “The board is responsible for creating the future, not minding the shop.” Evaluate boards within the context of their responsibilities. Members can be doing many things to help the organization, but are they really doing “board work?” For example, the accountant on your board also helps with bookkeeping. Is she doing board work or staff work? Recognize this volunteer staff work as valuable and necessary, but evaluate individuals according to what boards and board members should be doing to advance the mission of the organization.
Examine your board’s role in the following areas. Do you:
- Ensure results for the community? Have you spent time understanding what the community needs through surveys, meetings, examination of demographics, focus groups, etc.? Then, have you measured the effects of your organization’s work on your community? How do you measure success? How does your organization know it’s making a difference? Is your board monitoring program performance and the attainment of goals?
- Ensure necessary resources to serve the community? There are two parts here. Have you set up budgets? Do you study reports and monitor income and expenses? Secondly, are you involved in helping to provide resources for the organization? This may include everything from writing a personal check to speaking to possible funders, from locating space or other in-kind resources to adding names to the organization’s annual fund drive list.
- Plan? Have you created a vision of the future and examined it in light of changing community needs and resources? Do you go beyond rubber-stamping the staff’s operational plan to building a mission, vision, and values for the organization? Do you take time to dream about what the organization could and should be?
- Create policy? Have you developed policies that ensure that the CEO knows what to do? Have you built a strong framework in which the CEO can operate? Do you make decisions based not on individual events, but on general policy directions and the mission of the organization?
- Conduct board development? Does your board spend time enhancing its own skills and knowledge, looking for new members, and identifying leaders?
It is difficult to evaluate boards, or board members, without having first established written expectations or outcomes. John Carver calls them “ends.” If you determine where you want to be and what you want to happen, then you can go back and see if you have reached your goals. You evaluate your success in meeting these goals.
A place to begin: Look at your current board and assess what it’s doing by listing all activities from the last few board meetings – approval of a report from CEO, review of financials, discussion of policies and plans. Calculate the percentage of time spent in reactive activities like approving and reviewing vs. proactive activities like determining needs, looking to the future, determining policy. What changes do you want to make?
Don’t forget your CEO
Whether called the executive director, program director or president, the board has only one employee, and that’s the CEO. The annual evaluation of the CEO is a responsibility of the board. However, you can’t evaluate the CEO unless you and the CEO together have set the expectations for the job. CEOs should be judged not on how they do their job, but if they meet the goals and expectations that were set. This means that the expectations, or ends, must be clearly defined. Did the organization make the promised impact on community, did it attain the goals defined in the plan, did the CEO not violate policies, and did he/she provide you with the necessary information to do your work?
Part of the CEO’s job is to evaluate the staff of the organization to ensure that they meet the expectations set for and by them.
Ask Sue
We always send out a complete packet of information before board meetings. It includes financial reports, committee reports, general staff updates to the board, information requested by the board, etc. We’re frustrated that only half of the members read it before meeting, and so we waste time reviewing it again at the meeting.
First, look at what you are sending and when you are sending it to the board members. Do they have time to read these materials? Is the quantity of materials overwhelming to the busy people serving on your board? Keep the materials short and to the point. Provide a summary version upon which decisions can be made and offer supporting documentation only to those who request it.
Consider using a consent agenda. This puts the onus on the board members to do their reading before the meeting because, unless someone raises a question or objection, the materials in the consent agenda will be automatically approved. This helps to keep the board on its toes.
Don’t read the materials at the meeting. Wean the members away from relying on the CEO or the president to review every detail. Use the agenda to assign specific amounts of time for each issue, and remind members of the time limits. This will also ensure that your meetings don’t last forever. Your board members will be grateful for your careful use of their precious time.
One of our directors wants to become responsible for the newsletter. We really need her expertise, but are afraid she will not react well to suggestions from our executive director, since she is a member of the board.
Board members, who accept jobs such as newsletter editor, intake tester, trainer, etc., do so as staff volunteers, not as board members. As volunteers they work for the staff member responsible for that activity. Every job should have a job description and every job description should include “responsible to” as well as the duties of the job.
Resources
Here are some low cost publications from BoardSource – www.boardsource.com
How to Help Your Board Govern More and Manage Less
Evaluation of the Nonprofit Board
Self-Assessment of Nonprofit Governing Board Kit
Assessment of the Chief Executive Officer
Be sure to check out the Accreditation Tool Box and the Promising Practices Exchange for some sample forms and policies.
Continue this discussion on LVAGovLive. What questions or comments do you have about evaluation? To sign up, go the first page of LVA’s website, and click on the LVAGovLive button. www.literacyvolunteers.org
