Board Members Are Volunteers

Accountability, transparency, standards of performance…

I’ve had the same exact conversation with two different executive directors this past fall.  And as I started onto a third reiteration of this theme just last week, I wondered if the grim landscape for nonprofits nowadays wasn’t somehow a contributing factor.



It goes like this:

Board members are volunteers.  As such, you can’t hold them to the same tight performance standards as employees whose primary job it is to keep the ship going forward.

Okay, hang in there.

Because while this doesn’t give board members the license to be ne’er do wells, it does mean that if you hold a punitive attitude toward them, with “consequences” for missing deadlines, becoming distracted by family problems, or, heaven forbid, getting caught up in their day jobs, you’ll lose them.

Even if the consequences are simply showing them up in front of their fellow board members.  Or in front of your staff.

But even more importantly – it’s just not right.  We live in the voluntary sector with the understanding that we each bring to it what we can.

It might not be what you’d like someone to bring – but it is, given who they are and the pressures on them, what they can live up to.

Now this also might mean that it’s not the right time for someone to be on your board – or that you need to cut them a break for a certain amount of time.  I read somewhere once that the main source of discipline frustration in child-rearing is expecting behavior that’s not age-appropriate. (Always a good thing to remember as you’re trying in vain to keep your 4-year-old quiet in a public arena.)

So it is with board members.  When we expect, hope for, pray for behavior that they just can’t come forward with, that’s the perfect setup for frustration, anger, resentment. (And just the opposite of what I just wrote about in last week’s blog – gratitude for how we support each other in our life-changing work.)

The first ED I had this conversation with had an epiphany:

“Oh, they’re volunteers so I have to have different expectations of them”  he said, with dawning comprehension.

The second bowed her head dejectedly – and I don’t think she was convinced.  She could just see the promised land, of board members rustling up resources…single-handedly running events…strong-arming their contacts into making big gifts – and she wasn’t going to give up that alluring vision.

It’s a tricky conversation, for sure. Because yes, we need to be able to expect adult behavior (“Do what you say you’ll do or don’t say it!”) from each other.

But we also need to be humane and to understand that board members have lives, and pressures, apart from their voluntary duties.  And that their will to, which we love them for, may not equal their can do.