Will I Be Noticed?

Remembering back to my college days, I was thinking about one semester when I made the mistake of signing up for an art history class at 8 am. Dark room, big lecture hall, slides, early morning…you get the picture. I just couldn’t stay awake.

I’m sure I was not alone.

And I’m equally sure that no one noticed.

At the last possible moment I had a fit of conscience and dropped the class. Nowadays I might have kept going and learned the material from the Web.

But the question at hand is: who paid attention? Who knew I was there in body but (truly) not in mind?

I’ve come across a few boards lately with that anonymity issue – or perceived anonymity. One board is pretty large, and another is actually quite small – but I can sense in all of them a feeling, on board members’ parts, that nobody will really notice if they’re not coming up to the plate.

So they come to meetings late because they don’t feel essential to the first half (or any) of the meeting. They don’t respond to group emails because they’re just one of the names on the distribution list. They don’t read the materials and they don’t ask the questions, because they know you (or someone, at any rate), has it in hand.

Anything familiar about this?

We’ve all been in situations where we’re happy to have someone else carry the ball. It’s rational – who wouldn’t be?

So what makes people step up to the plate?

In a nutshell – the attention (and praise) of their peers.

Does that happen on autopilot?

No.

It needs to be built, brick-by-brick. In day-by-day groundwork that gets volunteers, especially, to know in their gut that they’re a critical link in the chain.

That if they don’t show up, with full presence, that they’re breaking that promise.

That they’re letting other people down.

And that by their actions – or lack thereof – your clients, your organization, your mission, will lose.

Strategizing…Stargazing

Serendipity.

Sometimes that’s all it takes – a misguided spell-correct – to put a different angle on the task at hand.

In the frenzy of post-holiday emails, I dashed off a note asking someone for help strategizing on an upcoming grant deadline.

Well I guess strategizing isn’t a proper English word, though I certainly use it a lot. So in the infinite wisdom of the spell-checking gods, it was changed, I was going too fast, and there it was.

Need some stargazing with you…

Who wouldn’t respond positively to that invitation?

But beyond the chuckle, it brought me to reflection.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with our strategizing – we’re too busy plotting a route between the trees.

Maybe what’s really needed is stargazing – lifting up our sights to imagine what’s not right in front of our eyes.

Maybe that’s what’s meant by leadership, what was so paradigm-busting about Steve Jobs (never mind his parsimoniousness in denying employees matching gifts).

The best ideas don’t come from the trees…we all know that.

But do we need to go on a 10-day vision quest to absorb the stars?

I feel a New Year’s resolution coming on (so what if it’s two days late).

More stars.

The forest day-by-day, for sure, but a little more time for the sky.

Of Cliffs and The Mid-Air Moment

I was quoted this week in a pretty blunt statement: “Board members are realizing they have to walk off the cliff” I tossed off, in an article in this week’s Philanthropy Section of Crain’s New York Business.

Well that’s quite a directive…

But it’s a real acknowledgement of how fundraising is, for many if not most, a stretch far outside their comfort zone. And how it’s taken the past couple of years’ dire economics to push boards into taking responsibility for their organization’s financial survival.

But there’s no turning back now.

As the article makes clear (featuring the gains realized by two Cause Effective clients, St. Nicks Alliance and Hartley House), change-around is possible. After the shock and awe wears off, the strong have come out kicking, cunningly thinking outside the box of their institution’s history – determined to serve their constituency in whatever form it takes.

Cause Effective is in a Capacity-Building Collaborative with the Lawyer’s Alliance and Nonprofit Finance Fund – funded generously by the New York Community Trust – and together with our colleagues we have been reflecting on what is happening in terms of survival strategies in the field.

Here’s what we’ve concluded.

There was a period where many “Too Big To Fail” nonprofits were tottering.

Still happening, for some, for sure.

But there’s another layer of “throw caution to the winds, go for broke and walk off the cliff” folks who choked, and choked again, and then…embraced change.

Those folks are breaking new ground.

We saw this when Hartley House embraced FaceBook-led volunteering to connect with a new generation of donors – and they responded.

Or when St. Nick’s Alliance’s board members challenged themselves to increase their personal “friendraising” as well as fundraising, and became so engaged they ended up increasing their own giving as well – tenfold.

At Cause Effective (and Lawyer’s Alliance and Nonprofit Finance Fund have noticed it too), we have countless other tales from the last several years – of board members (and staff) walking off that cliff. With determination, onto air, without a net.

But with commitment to mission.

So on the eve of the Holiday Season, here’s to them. To the nonprofit leaders, and followers, and admirers, who’re hanging on. Who are making a difference, again, and again, and again.

To Us.

Shoulder To Shoulder

A couple of times a year, I come across the notion that a board of directors is an antiquated fossilized structure designed to mimic a top-down hierarchical corporate culture. Or something like that.

Yet to my way of thinking, the opposite can also be true.

With the right kind of energy spent on their care, boards can be the means to keeping our organizations porous – responsive of and to our publics, constituents, fans/critics, stakeholders. Boards are what keep us beholden to and drawing from our communities – they take us out of our silos and put us in the mix.

Sometimes I have the image of the board and staff standing in a circle holding hands – the organization within and the world without. And the hand-holders constantly shifting perspective from facing in…to facing out…to facing in…to facing out…

So why isn’t board service more like this poetic image?

Let me start by acknowledging how stressful life is. We simply don’t have enough time, those of us who’re trying to manage jobs, families, and volunteer save-the-world interests – to do everything well.

And so we triage. But not with equanimity – with guilt.

And board service is one of the places we can shrink back, thinking “the executive director can/will handle that.” But we know, in our heart of hearts, that that isn’t right. So we snap at someone, or don’t answer emails, or fight over turf, or in some other way let our frustration leak out that we can’t step up to the plate in a way we know we ought to.

Taking the weight off Atlas’ shoulders – and carrying it together.

It’s a radical, collectivist notion, this idea that boards are what position us as shoulder-to-shoulder – and keep us honest.

Try it on for size.