Board Term Limits

An interesting posting on The Chronicle of Philanthropy blog site lists Five Reasons Board Leaders Should Have Term Limits. The author's reasons include:  recruitment, new leadership development, fundraising, healthier boards, and best of all, a way to phase out underperforming or difficult board members.

In addition to the above benefits, I would add that setting term limits avoids founder's syndrome - particularly when implemented at the time of agency formation. However, this is likely a primary reason why a surprising number of nonprofit boards do not establish term limits on board member years of service.* From a BoardSource posting on a nonprofit accounting site:

Term limits may seem threatening to founders. A founder often has limitless devotion and attachment to the organization and easily becomes fearful of losing control.

Board Training Motivation

Depending on board culture, a proposal that the board take advantage of more training development opportunities might be met with groans, grimaces, cheers, unblinking stares, or even a suggestion that it might be a nice day for you to go take a hike.

That doesn't erase the fact that board training is important to organizational health. Board training covers a broad scope of topics, from basic govenance functions such as writing policies and bylaws, to skills and knowledge such as budgeting and finances, or to workshops and conferences related to the agency's mission and services. Boards may also benefit from training on more generative, resource-based functions, such as grant writing, fundraising, and resource acquisition.

It is up to the the CEO and/or the board to seek out opportunities that best fit the board's development needs. Considering the aforementioned common reactions to training in any sector, our class brainstormed a list of ideas for motivating board members to participate in training:

Board Grant Governance

When considering positive and negative consequences for nonprofits due to expanded government reliance on nonprofit organizations, the effects are usually double-edged. Depending on the context, the consequences seem like benefits for nonprofits, but over time may hurt the organization. Despite whether the benefits outweigh the problems, most nonprofits would still choose government funding over raising all of their own funds. And whether for the effects are positive or negative, government funding brings change.

The primary positive consequence for nonprofits relying on government funding is a decreased reliance on fundraising. It is this benefit that motivates nonprofit leaders to keep filling out grant applications for public funds, despite the potential drawbacks. Unfortunately, decreased reliance on fundraising means the nonprofit agency may not be able to sustain their currently level of programs and services if the grant runs out and is not renewed. This is true with any major source of funding. As the government contracts with more nonprofit agencies, it creates situations where that many more agencies are operating based on a major source of funding. And if the nonprofit agency has been focused on meeting grant requirements as opposed to fundraising, there could be major fallout when all of a sudden they have to seek donors again. As Morduant and Cornforth write in The Role of Boards in the Failure and Turnaround of Non-Profit Organizations, “both the withdrawal of funding, and paradoxically, suddenly receiving large grants are often both triggers for crises in non-profit organizations."

It is in managing the “crisis,” or at the very least the necessary adaptation to relying on government funding, that boards of directors start to change how they govern.