Are you thinking about serving on a non-profit board of directors, and possibly wondering how you
can be the most effective non-profit board member you can be for the cause or causes that you care
about? That's what I'm going to talk about in this video. I'm going to dedicate this video to going
through the types of questions that you should ask as someone thinking about serving on a non-profit
board to the non-profit before you start any kind of board service, and I'm also going to cover some
of the things that you should educate yourself on about nonprofit board service so that you can be
the most effective leader possible. Welcome back to my channel! I'm Amber Melanie Smith. I'm a
non-profit founder and executive director and now I do these videos here on YouTube to help
folks who are in the nonprofit or social change or social impact worlds with tips and strategies to
make the biggest difference that you can make. So I hope that you find this video helpful!
Don't forget to give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more content of a similar nature.
I also have a website FounderToFullTime.com where I have some online trainings for nonprofits and
other resources so I hope that you check that out and join in if it's for you. So I can tell you as
an executive director who of course works with my own board of directors and as someone who served
on other boards and has helped and supported other non-profits with boards, it's really important to
agree to non-profit board service with your eyes wide open, knowing fully what to expect in terms
of your legal responsibilities and powers what responsibilities you have and do not have as a
board member and to really just make sure that you are going to be the most effective leader for an
organization presumably that you care a lot about. Why? Well, if you don't prepare yourself well you
might find that the experience of serving on a board is not quite you what you expected. This
could of course cause you to want to resign early but that also harms the organization and could
set its mission back so it's just a good idea for both you and the organization that you care about
to make sure that you know what you're doing and it's a good fit and when you are able to meet your
expectations for the board service experience it can be an incredibly meaningful one so let's get
into how to prepare for serving on a non-profit board of directors I've broken this video down
into two main sections the first is questions that you should ask a non-profit before agreeing
to join their board and the second section is things that you should educate yourself on in
order to be an effective board leader so let's get into section one first which is those questions to
ask a non-profit and these are in no particular order so question number one is what is your
board recruitment process someone recently told me that they felt like joining a non-profit board was
akin to having to know the secret handshake that it was very mysterious and they didn't know how
to go about doing it but in fact nonprofits are looking for great board members all the time and
how it usually works is an organization's bylaws or governing documents will dictate the maximum
and often minimum number of board members that the organization is allowed to have and every year
presumably some number of board members will cycle off because board members have board terms of
whatever the organization says they are could be two years, three years, five years, etc.
So someone's going to be cycling off and then you have an empty seat to fill and then the non-profit
will be seeking a board member or multiple board members to fill the empty spot or spots
keep in mind that every non-profit's bylaws could be different so something that is in
the bylaws one organization might not be in the bylaws for another organization and
also keep in mind that every non-profit's board recruitment and application process might look
different some organization might organizations might have an open recruitment process where
they put the public the application out there in public and ask anyone who's interested to apply
some might just go through personal referrals in their network it really just depends so the second
question you should ask goes along with that first and that is can i see your organization bylaws
now i mentioned that these bylaws will talk about board member terms and number of board members but
it also has other things in there about how the organization expects to govern itself what percent
of the board needs to vote in order to have a vote passed like a majority or two-thirds etc
how board members can be fired or brought on and what the voting abilities of board members are so
reading the bylaws can educate you a little bit on what you might expect your capabilities as a
board member to be the third question you want to ask has to do with the level of time commitment
and work and types of work commitment you might expect when joining a board and the question might
be something like do you have a working board or a governing board a working board is usually
something that smaller or start-up non-profits have where the board members are almost acting
like staff in the sense that they are taking on many of the day-to-day activities of operating
the organization could be anything from accounting to marketing to running programs etc and there's
a wide spectrum of the amount of work that board members on a working board might be doing if there
are any staff of a non-profit at all it might be a little bit less if there are no staff the board
members might be acting as if they are staff as i mentioned before governing boards are more policy
oriented they focus on financial accountability reviewing budgets policy decisions drafting policy
making important critical decisions about how the organization will operate in partnership usually
with the executive director or staff ideally the organization that you are interested in serving
with will have something like a board agreement which will outline the specific
commitments expected from board members so time commitment number of volunteer hours per month
schedule of meetings length of board term stuff like that fourth you want to have someone
talk to you about or share with you a list of the organization's values these could be values like
a commitment to transparency or excellence or a focus on impacts or results or whatever those
cultural values and and philosophical values of an organization are you want to really understand
that the organization's values because this will give you an indication
of how they're going to behave in their day-to-day work and how what kind of environment you can
basically expect to be stepping into as a board member it's really important that your
personal values align well with the organization's values so that you can promote and uphold those
those values as an ambassador to the organization if you serve on the board fifth you want to
ask if the nonprofit has directors and officers insurance now it might be rare but in some cases
individual board members might be held liable for issues that the organization has whether
that might be debts or legal issues so you want to make sure that they have insurance
to add that extra layer of protection to help you as an individual board member not have to be held
personal uh personally responsible or personally liable and have your own financial assets um
compromised in the event that something bad happens with the organization sixth you want to
ask if the organization has a board giving policy and what it is oftentimes non-profits will expect
a hundred percent of their board members to make a financial gift to the organization
and the organization sets the terms for what that could look like it might be a dollar it might be
a thousand dollars it could be anything and you just want to make sure that you are clear on what
that is and make sure that it's something you're comfortable with before you agree to serve on
the board and another part of this is fundraising whether or not the organization has a board giving
policy that would ask you to personally give your funding to support the organization all board
members of any non-profit should expect to support and help with the organization's fundraising
asking their personal networks for contributions helping with fundraising events and campaigns
that is definitely a core aspect of all board service that every board member should be prepared
to undertake in some form or fashion and seventh ask if it's possible to talk to a
past board member just learn more about what the experience was like how the organization grew and
evolved during their board term some challenges or concerns if any that that board member had and
things that they really enjoyed and were excited about sometimes it can just be helpful to hear
from someone who's been there and done that so those were the basic questions that i would advise
potential board members ask of the non-profit that they are considering serving with in this
next section section two i'm going to talk about some of the things that you want to really take
a moment to read about educate yourself on about board service and possibly about the organization
you are looking at serving with as well there's really no limit to the learning that you can do as
a board member and i'm sure non-profit staff and and existing board members would just be thrilled
with any board member who really wants to immerse themselves in the education about this
but i'm going to talk about things that you can study and learn a bit about in two different
areas and the first is just learning about board service in general what it
means additional nuances etc like that and the second part is things that you want to educate
yourself on about the specific organization or organizations you are considering serving with
so let's talk about those things relating to just general nonprofit board service the first is that
there's sometimes a misconception with folks who are a little bit less familiar with the non-profit
space that nonprofit board service is like a paid staff position that's not generally true
mostly non-profit board members are volunteering their time and it's an
unpaid volunteer position to serve the community as part of the non-profits board
there are some situations where a board member might be able to be reimbursed for reasonable
expenses that they incurred on behalf of the organization or possibly re receive some kind of
acceptable amount of compensation for professional services rendered to the organization that are not
related in any way to their board service and typically an organization's bylaws and a policy
that they should have in place called a conflict of interest policy should outline this the idea
here is that board members receiving compensation from the organization that they serve could
present a conflict of interest that they would be receiving benefit personally instead of serving
the organization without that personal benefit so definitely look into those policies with the
organization next you really want to familiarize yourself with the basic legal responsibilities of
board members and i'm going to share three from board source the first is duty of care and that
is that every board member is required by nature being a board member to participate actively in
decision making with the organization and to use their best judgment while doing so the second is
called duty of loyalty and this kind of along the same lines is the conflict of interest policy i
talked about just a moment ago this has to do with the requirement to put the needs of the
organization above their own personal needs as it relates to decision making for the organization so
when you come across a vote or something that needs to be discussed you have to make sure that
you're thinking in terms of the organization's best interests and not the outcome of the vote
that's going to be best for you individually as a board member and the third is what's called
duty of obedience and this is a board member's responsibility to make sure the organization
is adhering to all of the the laws of your region your local state federal regional whatever they
may be that you're filing your paperwork on time for renewing your licensing and all that good
stuff and also as part of this duty of obedience you've got to make sure that the organization is
adhering to its its charitable mission um that it is not straying from its mission that is not doing
things outside of its mission that it is focused on its publicly stated charitable mission the next
thing that board members should educate themselves on and i mentioned this a little bit before but it
is fundraising basics one of the top challenges i hear from board members of any non-profit is that
it is sometimes intimidating to do fundraising if you're not familiar with it or experienced in it
the thought of asking your friends and networks for money can feel a little bit daunting
but educating yourself on fundraising basics will will show you that fundraising is not
just asking people for money all the time there's a lot more that goes into it it's
stewardship it's thank you notes it's networking it's doing public speaking it can be any of those
things and all of those things so educating yourself on what it really means to raise
money and all of the different components of it will help you feel a lot more confident
when you're asked inevitably to do this aspect of board work and another thing that board members
should educate themselves on in general is what the responsibilities of a board
may be but also what they are not if you have an organization that has staff members
a staff team of any size especially a larger staff understanding the line between
helping guide the organization and lead the organization and govern the organization as a
board member versus possibly risking micromanaging staff getting to in the weeds with the day-to-day
activities etc when an organization has hired staff to manage its operations
generally those day-to-day activities fall to the staff and the board steps back and takes a
more governing position so just something to think about and educate yourself on so that you can as a
board member have a harmonious relationship with staff now let's get into a couple of things you
want to educate yourself on with relation to the specific organization or organizations that you're
considering a board service with the first one is i hope pretty obvious and common sense is that you
really want to read through the organization's website and learn a bit more about how they talk
about their mission the stories that they tell and also their stated goals because an organization's
upcoming goals are the things that you as a board member are going to be partially responsible for
helping the organization meet second you want to get to know what you can about the organization's
staff if the organization has staff already and some depending on the size and
age of the organization may or may not here i'm talking about just some basics
about who they are as individual humans their experience when they came to the organization
if you have an opportunity to talk to them and get to know more about some of the the struggles and
challenges that they see for the organization that perhaps as a board member you might be able to
support um that's great too and third and finally educate yourself if you can on the organization's
finances both in the past and their current financial position
for past financial records in the united states at least you can find these publicly available
on websites like Guidestar where you can review their past 990s or tax documents
learn about their budget size the ways that they typically raise money or spend money and just
while you're going through these just note any questions that you might have and want to ask the
other board members about all right those are the basics if you are thinking about applying for a
non-profit board position i'd love to hear what did you think what questions are still lingering
what things are you still not sure about with board service leave those thoughts in the comments
below or if you've served on a board and would like to speak to some of the the pros and the
cons and the the good the bad and the ugly and all that good stuff leave that in the comments too and
we'll have um a lovely conversation about that and as i mentioned before if you are in the process of
starting a non-profit or developing a fundraising plan for a non-profit i do have some online
trainings on my website, FounderToFullTime.com, and I also have a newsletter if you're interested
in subscribing to that you can find the link in the description below the video finally I do have
a Facebook group called Change the World or Bust. We've got folks in there from all over the world
who are talking about their social impact journeys and their work and possibly even
their own board service and i hope that you can join us there too i hope that you found
this video helpful and useful and don't forget to give it a like and subscribe to my channel,
and ring the bell for alerts and all that good stuff, and i hope to see you next time. Okay, bye!