3 Essential Governance Qualities that Maximize Impact

I am pleased to join Carter after a long run as an art museum director, a career I never intentionally prepared for. My academic training in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art equipped me quite nicely with the fundamentals I needed to operate a nonprofit cultural organization. Oh wait, no, it didn’t. But I’ve found that, like most things in life, the most valuable lessons in good governance come from lived experience. I enjoyed a decades-long masterclass in governance best practices taught by the exceptional board and staff members I have worked alongside. They are the role models who shaped my career and my beliefs, some of which I will share with you in this blog post.

Winston Churchill might or might not have said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” I believe the same is true for the board governance model that most of us use to lead our nonprofits today. From my experience, as time-consuming and cumbersome as the model can prove to be—we all know it requires A LOT of meetings and talking—it’s still the best model we have for ensuring that our organizations truly serve the greater good.

But this model is not an out-of-the-box solution. It requires constant effort, participation, attention and refinement to make it the best form of leadership for our organizations. In my 40-plus-year career, I have found organizations that commit to and focus their efforts on the following three essential qualities of governance practices maximize their leadership function and resulting impact. Here are my thoughts on these critical qualities, as well as some tips you can use to build on them at your organization.

1. Transparency

• Good governance is not just about optimizing board relationships or practices. Good governance relies on a highly communicative, complex, open, honest relationship between the board and staff. All board members and staff members treat each other and all other constituents in the organization—donors, volunteers, etc.—as respected players.
• If everyone is treated as a respected player, then there should be no secrets, except in rare cases. The organization’s default should be transparency. If the organization decides to keep something closed or private for any of the players, there must be very good reasons for doing so. In the cases where I’ve seen a blatant lack of organizational transparency, the source usually stems from insecurity, fear, or a desire to maintain power by one party. It never ends well and needs to be addressed.
• You don’t want to flood your constituents and volunteers with information and overwhelm them, but information should always be available to them should they want to find it. I recommend that all organizations publicly post their tax information, strategic plan, and bylaws (yes, even the boring stuff!) on their website.

2. Integrity

• If an organization is open and transparent, it’s much more difficult for any one individual to engage in malfeasance. And while we don’t expect suspicious activity, it’s important to have a governance structure that encourages good behavior and documents that clearly articulate what that behavior should be. Trust, but verify. Building checks and balances into the governance structure will help encourage individual and organizational integrity and build trust externally.
• Every decision made by an organization’s leadership should be made for the good of the organization, not for the good of an individual. It can help to pause and ask, “Who benefits from this?” The answer must always be the organization and its constituents.

3. Purpose

• Everyone—board members, staff, stakeholders, donors, volunteers—should understand their individual roles within an organization. The best way to do this is to create a written role, a job description, for each staff member, for the board members (both generally and for leadership and committee roles), and for each grouping of your stakeholders. These roles should clearly delineate their purpose within the organization and in furthering its impact, as well as what each is authorized or not authorized to do.
• Everyone within an organization should also know why the organization exists, about the work that it does, and why the work is important. This is perhaps the highest mountain to climb in your effort to strengthen your governance function because it requires a consistent education process and can never be 100% fully achieved. Sometimes, a lack of participation and enthusiasm comes from a lack of information. In that case, we should always ask, “What more could we be giving volunteer leadership to help them achieve their goals and the organization’s goals?” And board members should always feel like they can ask for the information they need.

If you’d like to have a confidential conversation about your organization’s governance practices, I’m a phone call away, and the Carter team is here to help. We will always make ourselves available as a resource to you as you advance your mission and philanthropy.

If you don’t already have a preferred contact at Carter, you can also email labolg.retrac@ofni, and we’ll put you in touch with a senior-level consultant specific to your needs.