Food as Glue

Well, no, I’m not actually suggesting that we eat glue – or that we serve it to our board members, no matter how many occasions arise in which we wish they’d just glue their mouths shut.

Because those times – when board members go on and on asking minutia-oriented questions in lands they have no business being (“Why are we paying 10 cents a copy when the place down the road from my office charges 7 cents a sheet?”)…or when they pipe in helpfully with the wrong piece of information to a local reporter (“We’ve had a really hard year – we almost closed our doors!”)…or when they feel compelled to clarify something to a potential donor (“No, all board members don’t give, because some of us are on other boards”) – those are fixable with enough attention on our part to educating board members as to our priorities and how the facts – and the total picture – fits in to those priorities.

But I am positing the power of breaking bread together. The social glue that binds when times get tough and the work gets really hard.

One of our client’s boards does a summer board meeting over dinner and drinks at a local restaurant. I’m sure the annual budget review goes down a little easier after a couple of bottles of wine…. No of course I’m not proposing a drunken “what the heck” attitude toward nonprofit finances – but I am suggesting that if board members are given a chance to enjoy each others’ company, that puts a little “social lubricant” in the bank for the hard issue-wrestling that surely lies ahead.

And don’t forget the power of spouse-wooing. Again, not literally, but hosting a picnic where spouses have a chance to get involved and reinforce their sense being “in the family” will surely come in handy when you’re asking your board members to give up yet another evening to make phone calls or plan the annual soiree, a few months down the road.

Push and pull. Modern life is like that – so let’s use the informality of the summer to build in the conviviality factor in our organizations.