What's at Stake?
The nonprofit community's potential and capacity to envision the future and attain improved outcomes in a vastly transformed world requires new thinking by governance.
Dig Deeper
Our new century is pressuring the association community to rethink almost everything about its operations, structure, and existence. The mission is lost in a more complex world if the Association governance doesn't adapt to this new environment.
Here are several necessary factors for the nonprofit community to realize its potential and enhance its capability to envision the future and achieve better outcomes in a significantly transformed world.
1. Strategic Board Composition: Nonprofits should strive to have diverse and forward-thinking boards that reflect their communities' changing needs and demographics. Accomplishing this change entails recruiting board members with varied expertise, backgrounds, and perspectives to bring fresh insights and strategic thinking to the organization. The usual board make-up of members or member industry-only boards has outlived its value. Strange as it sounds, elections alone will not resolve the issue.
2. Long-Term Vision, Foresight, and Planning: Nonprofit boards should adopt a long-term foresight-oriented vision and engage in strategic facilitation exercises considering emerging trends and potential future scenarios. Traditional strategic planning often fails in the new environment of rapid technology change, stakeholder rethinking, and dramatic demographic changes. Clear actual strategic goals, not a new group of operational tactics disguised as strategic, require regular review, adapting the organization's mission and vision and aligning strategies with anticipated changes in the operating environment.
3. Agile Decision-Making Processes: Nonprofit governance structures should support agile decision-making processes that enable timely responses to evolving challenges and opportunities, empowering board members and staff to make informed decisions swiftly, delegating authority where appropriate, and minimizing bureaucratic hurdles that could hinder innovation and adaptability. Rework the board's standard agenda in favor of foresight-oriented discussions. Executive and committee reports should not take up most of the board's time.
4. Risk Management: Nonprofit boards must prioritize risk management, building efforts to navigate the uncertainties of a transformed world. The board and executive must identify potential risks, develop mitigation strategies, and establish contingency plans to ensure organizational sustainability and continuity in the face of disruptive events. Boards should not expect results for initiatives they have failed to appropriately resource.
5. Technology and Data Governance: Nonprofits should pay attention to technology and data governance to harness the benefits of digital transformation. The board should establish robust cybersecurity measures, ensure responsible data collection and handling practices, and leverage technology to improve operational efficiency, communication, and service delivery. Stay out of day-to-day operations, and focus on future thinking exercises and identification. Every issue does not require a new committee. More task forces with stricter timelines is a better idea. Technology cannot solve every problem, and qualitative inquiry should not be abandoned.
6. Performance Evaluation and Accountability: Nonprofit boards should establish practical performance evaluation and accountability mechanisms by regularly assessing the organization's progress toward strategic goals, monitoring outcomes and impact, and holding their only employee, the Executive or CEO, accountable for results. They must also evaluate themselves on remaining strategic and thinking about the future. Transparent reporting and stakeholder communication are also essential for building trust and credibility.
7. Collaboration and Partnerships: Nonprofits should actively seek opportunities for cooperation and partnerships with other organizations within and outside the nonprofit sector. This collaboration and partnership will facilitate knowledge sharing, resource pooling, and collective problem-solving, enabling nonprofits to address complex challenges better and leverage shared expertise.
By implementing these governance changes, the nonprofit community can strengthen its potential and capability to envision the future, adapt to a transformed world, and achieve improved outcomes that positively impact society.
Let me know what you think. mcihaelb@assocaitionactivision.com