I get a ton of questions about how to recruit a GREAT board of directors,
especially when you're first starting a non-profit organization - but
the fact is you can recruit and vet a
slew of board candidates the same way that you would a
job - with an application and interview process! So in this video I'm going to
talk a little bit about how to set up a board application to recruit great
candidates, the types of things you want to make
sure to ask, and what to do afterward to get some of those great
board candidates in to your organization. Welcome back! If
this is your first time to my channel, my name is Amber Melanie Smith,
and I make these videos to help aspiring changemakers with tips and strategies
to help you change the world and live a life of impact
and purpose. The videos often relate to starting a nonprofit, creating a social
impact, and more. If you're not familiar with my
story, I started a non-profit many years ago
and it is now my current full-time job, so I have been able to see from the
very beginning, starting from scratch, zero dollars in the bank, what do you do -
how do you grow a non-profit, recruit a board, raise money, etc. So I talk a lot
about a lot about those experiences here on
this channel and provide tips and strategies - things that
I've learned, things that I wish I'd done differently, to help you out if you are
on a similar social impact journey. So I hope this
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ring the bell to get alerts when my next video comes out! Okay,
so let's get into the topic. So before i get into what you would want to
include in a board recruitment application i want to
talk a little bit about some of the advantages
of recruiting board members through an application
process as opposed to some other means. The first is that creating a board
application process and having candidates go through that
process really helps you clarify what you are expecting from board
members and as i've talked about in a couple of
other videos this is really important because if someone joins a
board which is a big commitment thinking that things are going to be one
way and then those expectations are not met it can lead to them resigning early
it can lead to conflict it can lead to all sorts of
things that you want to avoid so that you can focus on pushing your
mission forward which is why you're starting a non-profit in the
first place so doing this recruitment process through an
application will make it clear you'll be able to
articulate in writing what you're looking for
and the candidates will also be able to articulate and writing who they are and
what they're all about the second thing is that it's a fair
process when you put an application out there
and you are willing to accept candidates from around your community to
share their skills their time their talent with you
it is a more fair process than just picking out your friends to be on the
board and also having all those amazing skill
sets on your board will definitely help you
make progress towards your goals an application process also helps you
identify the strengths and skill sets of your candidates
and as i've talked about in some past videos this is
really really important because you want to be recruiting
the board members for that board term whether it is a year
two years three years whatever it may be you want to make sure that the skills
that they bring to the table align with what your
organization needs at that time in its development for example if you're
just starting out you want to make sure you have some strong fundraisers on your
board so having people tell you about their
skills in sales or raising money or marketing to
help inspire people to give money these are all going to be
important things that you want to know from your
board candidates at that time in your stage of development
it also helps you identify the values and the motives of board candidates you
know whether they're trying to join the board so they can have something
prestigious on their resumes or if they genuinely care about your costs
a lot of that can come out in an application process
and to that end an application process will help you weed out those who are not
going to be the best fit who are not ready to truly
commit to the cause or give the time and energy that your cause
needs if you put those expectations up front
whether it's the length of the board term how many hours per month they're
going to be expected to contribute to your cause
the skills they need to bring to the table the dollars they need to help you
raise all of that stuff it is going to scare
away the people that you do not want on your
board and that is a good thing because the people who remain
are going to be a better fit okay so in this part of the video i'm going to talk
about what are some of the things that you
actually include in the application itself
now first you want to make sure that your application
the link to do it the document that you're requiring people to fill out
whatever it is it is somewhere that you can um
share online perhaps on a website something easy that you can put in an
email so that people can find it and access it
effectively applications should be in written form you can do
a document you could do i've used google forms for board applications whatever
your tool of choice is make sure it's in writing because that's
how you get all this valuable information about the candidate the
first thing you want to get from candidates is of course the
basics the contact information who they are i've asked for linkedin
profiles in board applications as well
that is kind of like a way of sharing your resume they could also
share their resume kind of gives you some sense of their job experience what
talent skills they might bring to the table that way
and also can give you some really interesting insights talks about
if it's a linkedin profile you can see like who else they know that you might
know or who they might have connections to
that might be valuable supporters in the future as
well along the lines of getting this basic information you also want to ask
where they're located this is very simple but you want to make sure that
your board members are serving the community
that are living sorry are living in the community that you're serving
if it is a national organization it would be a good idea to
make sure that your board candidates represent
the diversity of the locations that you are planning to serve
board members can be more effective as board members if they're familiar
with the needs of the communities that they're serving if they're part of those
communities so that's why geography plays an important role here
depending on your specific mission you also might want to ask for the age of a
board candidate making sure that you have a diversity
and life experiences and perspectives in some cases if your mission is very
specific or focuses on a target population of
let's say mothers with kids ages three to five
that's extremely specific but to um to my point you want to make sure
your board reflects the community you serve so
if you are a board and you serve mothers with kids three to five and you have no
mothers with kids ages three to five on your board you
have a problem because you are not going to get the
perspectives of the very people that you're serving
in your organization and i always like to ask what
sector of uh work that they have the most experience in like if
they've been working in government other non-profits or the corporate
sector that will help me understand you know
what sorts of networks they might have and what types of skills they might be
bringing to the table another thing that's important to ask in
a board application is if they have any past non-profit
board experience and the reason for that is you may find
that those with no non-profit board experience or
less non-profit board experience might have some
misconceptions about what it means to be on a non-profit board you are fiscally
and legally responsible for the organization in some cases you can be
held liable for things that happen in the organization so you want to make
sure that board candidates really understand what it means to be a
part of a board of directors and there's some
great resources online about that i'll be sure to drop a few links in my
description so check those out which isn't to say that you should not
have people with no board experience on your board
it is simply that you you're going to need to put in place
some additional training some additional documentation to make sure
that they understand what the expectations are
and it might also help to have some people on your board who have had
non-profit board experience so that they can be good guides and partners to those
with less experience next you want to make sure you ask if
the candidate has any uh past experience with the issue or
cause that your nonprofit is going to focus on or at the very least get a
sense of what level of knowledge they have about that
issue it is very very important that all board members
understand the problem that your organization is trying to solve and can
be effective spokespeople and fundraisers
and advocates for that cause okay now we're getting into the good stuff
on your board applications you want to make sure that you are asking
extensively about their skills and experiences now we talked about this a
little earlier in the video there are different ways to
know what skill sets someone has collecting resumes linkedin profiles etc
but one strategy my organization recently
used that i thought was very helpful was we used a ranking
system where the candidates would read
the name of a skill like um accounting or whatever it was
and then they would rank themselves on what level of skill they had in it
from no experience to beginner to intermediate to
expert level and what we found was that people were going to be generally honest
about what their rankings were and the
different skills um of course if you are not truthful about
this and someone calls you on it that sucks so
i think people have an incentive to be honest about
what skills they have and where their strengths really lie
so i'm showing here uh you know an example a screenshot of part of my
organization's board application where you can see some of these skills
written out and you can tweak your board application to fit
uh like i said the circumstances of your nonprofit at that time
let's say the thing your board members need to focus most on for the next three
years is marketing then you want to ask
perhaps about various marketing related skills more
prominently if you just want a very diverse set of
skills you might ask about a lot of different skills at one time
so for example on our application we talk about
marketing fundraising accounting technology you know we've got some
coding involving my organization lots of different skill sets so they
rank where they believe they fall on the spectrum of skills and we trust
that they're being honest about that and then we're able to see
where not only a single candidate's strengths lie
but when you're putting together a team of multiple candidates
this is a great way of kind of analyzing where they can
complement each other and fill each other's gaps
you can use the same strategy for ranking some of those soft skills like
communication networking with others leadership etc
and finally you always want to make sure that you have a section
of your board application where the candidates can provide their own
free-flowing answers that are text-based so they're not answering multiple choice
they're not ranking themselves they're just putting
an answer in their own words because when they do that you will learn
a lot about them the types of questions you want to put
in your like open answer section are things that will
help you understand how aligned the candidates are with your
cause the type of passion they might have for
your cause whether they align with your values all
these sorts of things will help you understand if they can
make the time commitment and just get to know them as people you know board
members are humans too and they have other interests outside of
your organization and it's good to know those things you can
bond with them and have building great relationships
through those things so an example of an open-ended question
you might ask is quite simply why are you interested in
being on our board of directors or why are you interested in this cause
specifically or how do you believe that you uniquely
can drive our mission forward okay so those are
some of the types of questions that i would recommend asking on
a non-profit board application you also want to make sure that you
give candidates a deadline so you know answer all these questions by this date
and submit with your resume or whatever you want the deadline to be but that
will make sure that you have all the candidates who you're expecting in at a
certain time and you can go on to the next stage which is
an interview process an interview is i think an important
part of the vetting process you know you get all their answers in writing and
that gives you some insights about them but nothing beats interacting with a
person in person or through zoom at the very
least during the pandemic there are lots of different ways to do
an interview process in my organization we've been through
multiple different ways and we have some ways that we
prefer to do it uh over others for example we are currently
or in our most recent board recruitment cycle
we had um more like a networking event as opposed to
a one-on-one or one and a group of board members
interviewing candidates at one time we thought it'd be a little bit less
intimidating so in that style you would have multiple
candidates there at once you'd have all your board members if you already have a
board assuming there at once and then everyone's
mingling and getting to know each other and then reflecting on
what they learned about each other at the very end whatever
strategy you want to do if you're just starting out you might not have any
other board members to help you be making these decisions on
new board candidates if it's just you then interview them
vet them make sure that you're talking through all of the expectations
what it means to be on the board the board term the
commitment that they're going to be making monthly if there's a fundraising
commitment all of these things make sure that they
know that up front after they submit their application
during the interview process once you've had a good conversation and you kind of
get a sense of who they are it's always a good idea to do a
background check of board members i haven't had any board members who have
failed a background check but it's just a good idea just just to be
safe and make sure that you're covering all your
bases this is even more true if it's a board member who's going to be
dealing with any of the finances of your organization
and or working with vulnerable populations
served by your organization finally you've gone through all the screening
and vetting you've reviewed their applications you've met with them
and you've got a handful of candidates that you just really love
and you want to bring on board what do you do next
so what we do in our organization is we send them an email saying you know
congratulations we would love to bring you
on board please let us know by x date if you
accept that gives them one final chance to back out if they think that they're
not going to be the best fit for your organization after
going through that whole interview process and learning more about what you
are planning to do as a non-profit organization
the other thing you might want to consider is giving them what's called a
board agreement it is a list of things you
might put it in checklist format that board members are expected to be
doing as board members throughout the year so
i agree to the following i will raise x dollars i will attend
at least 75 percent of board meetings i will
um speak to 10 of my friends or you know whatever
whatever expectations you want to put putting it in a board agreement
having them review that and then sign off on it
keep in mind this is not a legally binding document
but it's one of those final things you can put in place to make sure that it's
super super clear what the expectations are
of being on your board okay so that is the board application process
in a nutshell i hope that that has helped you out
don't forget once again to like this video share with your friends
who are in the change maker and non-profit space and
subscribe to my channel and ring the bell to get alerts when my next
video is posted also share in the comments where you are
in your board recruitment process or if you are on a board and you had a great
experience being interviewed or applying for a board sure that
you know other nonprofit folks want to know what was it like for you
so definitely share in the comments one final thing
if you are on facebook don't forget to check out my group
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having conversations about our non-profit our social impact
journeys everything having to do with the state
of the world and what we can do to make a dent in some of the problems that
we're facing so hope to see you next time thanks so
much for stopping by
you