Once again, I’d like to welcome back Maureen Carruthers (pictured at left).  Maureen is a non-profit consultant, and the force behind the excellent blog “Low Hanging Fruit Communication” which covers many topics including social media for non-profits.

Maureen’s goal is to help nonprofit leaders reach their right people more quickly so their organizations have a greater impact,  She has over ten years experience working in and around nonprofit organizations, most recently as the Workforce Development Program Manager for the Dayton Tooling and Manufacturing Association, where she managed a robot competition based on theBattleBots television series. Previously, she managed the Orchestra Forum program for theInstitute for Cultural Policy and Practice and served as House Manager for the Delaware Theatre Company.

I have spent some time on Maureen’s blog, and I highly recommend you check her site out.  I learned a lot!  You can even sign up for Maureen’s free e-class and newsletter.

Want Better Meetings? Know when NOT to meet

Here is another great article from Gayle Gifford for Step By Step Fundraising- (pictured at left).

Gayle brings over 30 years of experience to her work with nonprofits – from her personal activism for peace, disarmament, environmental, human and civil rights, to her professional work as a consultant and former director of development and senior nonprofit manager.

She is one of fewer than 100 individuals in the US who hold the advanced fundraising credential, ACFRE, issued by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Gayle learned her craft as Director of Development and Communications at PLAN USA, as Deputy Director/Director of Development and Marketing at Save The Bay, and as Director of Development at CityYear RI.

I urge you to read more from Gayle’s fantastic collection of articles and learn about her consulting services by visiting her site, Cause & Effect. I also would recommend that you check out the book Gayle wrote called “How am I Doing, the 1 hour guide to evaluating the performance of your nonprofit board” available through Contributions Magazine. – Jim Berigan

What does your Board Treasurer do?

Unless your organization is very small, with no or very few staff, it’s unlikely that your board Treasurer is directly managing the finances of your organization. In staffed organizations, day to day financial management is done by a chief financial officer, a business manager, the Executive Director, a bookkeeper, or some combination of all of those positions.

So what does a Treasurer do?

It’s pretty common practice for the Treasurer to chair the Finance Committee and present a report of the financial condition at the Board meeting, usually taking the statements that have already been prepared by the staff financial officer and reporting them to the Board. Treasurers tend to focus on the issues that matter to them most. For some, that’s cash position or year-to-date to budget. For others, it’s how the organization is doing compared to last year. Sometimes corrective action is recommended.

While monitoring the financial condition is a basic role, I have higher aspirations for the ideal  Board Treasurer. I see this individual as the facilitator of a financial brain trust within the Board (through the Finance Committee) that can help the organization think very strategically about the relationship of mission to money, both short and long term.

So here are a few items I’d like to add to the Treasurer’s job description:

• facilitate strategic thinking within the Board about short- and long-term financial vitality
• develop financial literacy among all the directors
• establish a dashboard or set of key performance indicators that tells the Board at a glance how the organization is doing on critical measures (after facilitating a discussion with the Board on what those critical measures are)
• regularly report to the Board on that dashboard

Along with these basic duties:

• ensure prudent asset management in accordance with financial objectives and Board-approved policy
• ensure that staff implement strong internal controls
• oversee development of and monitor compliance with Board-approved financial policies
• chair the Finance Committee and ensure that it achieves annual goals and objectives
• ensure that staff properly receive and give receipts for all moneys due and payable and deposit all moneys in the name of the organization in authorized financial institutions

What’s in your Treasurer’s job description? I’d love to have you share.

Related posts:

Three things your Vice President could do

You’re not the boss of me – Board Chairs and CEOs

Recently, I was asked to serve on a non-profit board of directors. This has got me thinking a lot about what goes into making a good board member. It also got me to thinking about all the bad behaviors I’ve experienced from board members during the years. These are the traits I hope that I don’t exhibit, if I choose to serve on this board.

So, here are ten examples of board member actions I’ve actually dealt with in my non-profit career that have really turned me off. Of course, I won’t use any names, but sadly, these are real-life situations.

1. On two separate occasions, with two different organizations, I’ve had board members mis-use alcohol and actually get drunk to the point of making other people uncomfortable. The first time was at a golf outing and the second was at a board meeting/dinner that was held at a restaurant. Both situations required damage control afterward.

2. I had another situation, where the owner of a local computer store offered to donate several used, but refurbished computers to my organization. We didn’t really need the computers, but I wanted to develop a better professional relationship with this computer store owner, so I happily accepted the donation. I figured, I’d find some families in our community that didn’t have a computer at home for their kids and pass the computers on to them. The computer store owner was very happy, and said he’d deliver them to me later that week.

Well, one of my board members coincidentally happened to go into that computer store shortly after and overheard the owner tell one of his workers that those computers needed to be delivered to me. The board member heard that and asked why we were getting those used computers. The owner explained the situation and the board member flipped out. He said we had enough computers already and didn’t need any more. So he canceled the donation, right on the spot without consulting me at all.

Later that day, the computer store owner called me up and told me what had happened. My board member had really offended him, and I had to fix a relationship that I was working on building. This is a perfect example of a board member sticking his nose into day-t0-day management, where it doesn’t belong.

3. Here’s a great one. One of the non-profits I worked for had two portions to each board meeting- the public session and the closed session. The closed session was only used for sensitive staff issues that the general public didn’t need to hear about. One of the board members, however, would regularly bring his wife to the meetings, and she would stay for the closed sessions. We pointed out to him that since his wife wasn’t on the board, she shouldn’t be there. He responded by telling us that he would tell her everything that happened at the board meeting afterwards, anyway, so she might as well be there to hear things first hand. For many different reasons, this particular board member had great influence on the board, so she ended up being allowed to stay. This made other people, including myself, very uncomfortable. This is an example of a board member not understanding the concept of boundaries.

4. I was shocked when I learned that this one had happened. I worked for a non-profit once, where I put together an informational packet for board members that had private financial figures in it. Later on, I learned that one of my board members had passed this packet onto a person who was interested in getting onto our board. We didn’t know this new person at all. We had never interviewed her. She had not been introduced to the board at large. But, our board member thought it was ok to share private info with strangers. This is a failure in understanding the confidential nature of some portions of board meetings.

5. I worked for a non-profit summer camp once. The summer camp only lasted nine weeks per year. It would make sense then, that board members would want to schedule some time to visit the camp while it was operational. I know summers can get busy, but nine weeks, when you know the dates ahead of time, is still a pretty big window to plan a weekend get-away.

Well, we had a board member who did not make the time to visit the camp at all one summer. I was not the executive director of the camp, so perhaps I wasn’t privy to the reasons why he didn’t show up, but I was high up enough at the camp to realize that the board member who didn’t make an appearance, still had lots to say about how we ran the camp.
If you are going to make a commitment to be a board member for a non-profit, you have to make it a priority in your life, even if that is inconvenient from time to time. Service to a non-profit shouldn’t be only when it fits into your schedule. If you can’t go “all-in”, there’s no reason for you to be on that board.

6. I have written numerous times about how a non-profit needs to carefully cultivate relationships with local businesses. If we are going to ask them for donations and try to sell them ads, we should really do everything we can to make purchases from their store during the year.

Well, I once had two volunteers come back to my office and tell me that while they were out selling ads for a program we were creating, they went to a local electronics store. They introduced themselves politely and asked if they would be willing to purchase an ad with us. The manager broke into a tirade about how terrible our organization was!

A couple of months earlier, it turns out, one of our board members had gone into that store to buy a computer part. He talked to the manager for at least 15 minutes about the part and after all that time, my board member told the manager that he had seen the same part at WalMart for fifty cents cheaper. Therefore, he was NOT going to buy the part at the Mom& Pop shop, but rather go back to WalMart to save money.

The manager told my volunteers that they had some nerve to come in asking him to buy an ad for our school when we couldn’t even toss him an extra fifty cents. Needless to say, the volunteers were very embarrassed. I had to later go into the store personally and apologize on behalf of our organization.

7. Here’s another experience that was not handled well. I was part of a non-profit once and the board received a letter from a family in the community that was critical of the way we handled an event. The letter offered specific examples of the problems and expressed frustration and a reluctance to volunteer again due to the incidents detailed in the letter.
However, the family who wrote the letter did not sign their name, as they wished to remain anonymous.

A few members of the board were very offended by the letter, and they became singularly focused on finding out who had written it. In fact, they became so consumed by discovering the identity of author, that they totally ignored the reason why the letter was written in the first place.

Board members need to keep their egos in check. They shouldn’t be defensive, if they truly want the organization to prosper.

8. In yet another example of poor board behavior, I worked for a non-profit that had a very drama-filled board. Everyone was older than I was at the time, but many of them acted like children.

The worst of this came from two grown men. To each other’s faces, they were friendly and care free. However, in private, I had to hear constant complaining coming from each one of them about the other. I kept telling them to talk to the other one and settle things between them, but that never happened. I felt terribly caught in the middle and my relationship with both men became very strained because of that. Ultimately, that hurt the organization.

9. I worked for another non-profit that was very traditional and old-fashioned in its leadership. In fact, the board was made up of seven people. All seven were men. All seven were white. And all seven were over the age of 50. And, to make this worse, a board appointment was “for life”. The only time we ever got new board members was when one of them died or chose to retire.

There was no spark of imagination from this board. No diversity of thought. Everything was totally monolithic and predictable. And none of them made any move to change this situation. I think it’s a board’s responsibility to keep itself fresh and relevant to changing needs in society. This entire group was guilty of only looking inward. In the long run, that has hurt that particular organization.

10. The last example of bad board behavior I’ve experienced first hand comes from a group I have been involved with over the years as a volunteer and supporter, but not involved officially on a board. This organization requires many volunteers to provide its service, but surprisingly, there is no volunteer manual, no welcome letter, no official expectation sheet whatsoever. In fact, they don’t even have a unified volunteer policy.

Therefore, what has happened is that the same very few people end up doing almost all of the work and most of the so-called supporters avoid any responsibility at all. This has caused a handful of people to be overworked, stressed out and resentful of the people who hide out from volunteering.

While it’s very easy to be mad at the folks who aren’t helping out, I have to lay a lot of blame at the feet of the board members, who know this problem exists, but hasn’t done anything to solve it.

There are many examples of organizations who have figured out how to institute a fair volunteer policy. And, many of these groups have posted their volunteer policies online. It’s not hard to see what other groups have done and tailor a plan to your specific needs.

The board just needs to realize the problem it currently has on its hands and then do something about it.

Photo by: Evil Erin

Here is another great article from Gayle Gifford for Step By Step Fundraising- (pictured at left).

Gayle brings over 30 years of experience to her work with nonprofits – from her personal activism for peace, disarmament, environmental, human and civil rights, to her professional work as a consultant and former director of development and senior nonprofit manager.

She is one of fewer than 100 individuals in the US who hold the advanced fundraising credential, ACFRE, issued by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Gayle learned her craft as Director of Development and Communications at PLAN USA, as Deputy Director/Director of Development and Marketing at Save The Bay, and as Director of Development at CityYear RI.

I urge you to read more from Gayle’s fantastic collection of articles and learn about her consulting services by visiting her site, Cause & Effect. I also would recommend that you check out the book Gayle wrote called “How am I Doing, the 1 hour guide to evaluating the performance of your nonprofit board” available through Contributions Magazine. – Jim Berigan

Past time to evaluate your new Executive Director?

Posted by Gayle Gifford on September 13, 2011

What are you waiting for?

You owe it to your new ED and to your organization to complete this review ASAP.

As a Board, this interim evaluation can answer the questions that should be on your mind about this new hire:

• What impact has this Executive Director had in their first months in office?
• How well has the ED fulfilled our expectations at this point in time? (Caveat: How clearly were those communicated to the ED at the time he/she was hired?)
• How is this Executive Director perceived among key stakeholders outside of our organization? Inside of our organization?
• Have we established the ideal relationship between the Board and the Executive Director? What do we need to do to create that?
• Is this an Executive Director we want to keep? If yes, what can we do to ensure that happens? If not, what are our next steps?

Your new ED is likely hungry for formal feedback. A well-constructed review also provides an opportunity for your new ED to answer some questions of his or her own:

• Is this job all that I expected? Is it a position that I want to continue serving in?
• What does the Board appreciate about my performance to date? My staff? Other constituents?
• Are there areas for improvement in my performance?
• What is working well about my relationship with the Board? Individual board members?
• What can be improved in the way we work together? How?
• What does the Board want me to accomplish in the next year? Over the next five years? How does this mesh with what I’d like to accomplish?
• What do I need from the Board to succeed in this position?

You’ll find a sample review process in our free Toolbox.