4 Steps for Board Member Recruitment

 

Issue No. 260 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Oct. 30, 2012) features a new governance toolkit for your next board meeting. The resource from ECFA includes a short DVD and viewing guides for each board member. Plus check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Board Recruitment: Don't Propose Marriage on Your First Date! A Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.” That’s also relevant counsel for your board member recruitment process.  The best time to discern board member criteria and qualifications is before you invite inappropriate people onto your board. But moving from “slot-filling” to a thoughtful discernment process is not easy.   There’s help!  The new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series has launched and the first title in the series is “Recruiting Board Members: Leveraging the 4 Phases of Board Recruitment—Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation and Engagement.”   This “View-Inspire-Engage” toolbox includes a 13-minute DVD, 12 Board Member Read-and-Engage Viewing Guides, and a Facilitator Guide with just-in-time help to engage your board on this fork-in-the-road core competency.  The Facilitator Guide provides three discussion options:     Option 1: 15-30 minute board discussion    Option 2: 30-60 minute discussion    Option 3: Board Retreat (or a 2-hour session)   The fast-moving DVD features a short In-the-Trenches Board Story on recruitment: “The Shortest Board Term in the History of the World.”  It’s humorous, but poignant. Perhaps your board members will see themselves in the “got-the-binder-joined-the-board” video clip.   When viewing the video, each board member will follow along with the colorful 20-page Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide—and will then interact with the 27 self-assessment questions from the four phases of board recruitment.  Example:   SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS: How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statements?   CULTIVATION: “We follow the best practice of ‘dating’ a board prospect—over an appropriate period of time—before ‘proposing marriage.’”   CULTIVATION: “We ensure that a board prospect’s spouse, family (and sometimes employer) is aware of the ‘time, talent and treasure’ requirements of board service.”   RECRUITMENT: “Compared to the due diligence our senior leaders exercise when hiring staff, our board exercises a high level of due diligence when discerning a board prospect’s suitability for board service.”   RECRUITMENT: “We go slow and rely on the 18- to 36-month cultivation process by encouraging potential prospects to serve in key volunteer roles to assess their diligence and faithfulness.”   ORIENTATION: “Our orientation process includes required reading of at least one governance book, such as The Imperfect Board Member, by Jim Brown, or Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan.” (Read the blog series: 14 posts.)   ORIENTATION: “Our orientation process involves at least 5 to 10 hours of orientation, over a period of several months, and concludes with a written or online feedback survey.”   ENGAGEMENT: “We know and leverage ‘The 3 Powerful S’s’ (Spiritual Gifts, Strengths and Styles) of our board members. We are also students of our CEO’s unique strengths and giftedness—and his/her preferred working style.”   ENGAGEMENT: “We can point, with delight, to numerous examples of how God-honoring board members—fully engaged—have leveraged their giftedness to help us make strategic, fork-in-the-road, spiritually discerning decisions to the glory of God!”   These are just 8 of the 27 questions listed in the toolbox. In addition, there is a starter page on board qualifications, “Board Nominees Must Meet Our 6 Ds Criteria.” They include: 1) Discerning Decision-Maker, 2) Demonstrated Passion, 3) Documented Team Player, 4) Diligent and Faithful Participant, 5) Doer (he or she “walks the talk” and reference checks affirm a God-honoring lifestyle and character), and 6) Donor.   The Facilitator Guide provides a link to a hidden webpage with bonus resources and templates, such as a sample table of contents (31 tabs) for a Board Nominee Orientation Binder, plus “The Board Bucket” chapter from my book, Mastering the Management Buckets.  I’ve worked with ECFA on the concept and writing of the first two toolkits—so I recommend them highly!  More titles are coming.   To order from ECFA, click on this link: ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1:  Recruiting Board Members.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) The DVD in the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series quotes Elton Trueblood, “Pious shoddy is still shoddy.” How would you describe your board’s competencies in each of the four phases of: Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation, and Engagement? Shoddy? Pious Shoddy? Excellent?  2) In the Recruitment phase, the toolkit suggests that a prospect, prior to serving on the board, should already be a generous giver per Matthew 6:21, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The viewing guide notes, “Many organizations define ‘generous’ as prioritizing your organization in the Top-3 of a person’s annual giving. Board members at all income levels can be generous.” What is our board’s expectation (or policy) on board member generosity?   Honing the Smithereens Out of a Perfectly Adequate System Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in Chapter 18, The Systems Bucket, in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is to resist the urge to tinker endlessly to perfect the flawless system. Perfection is not the goal.   It’s not always prudent to wait until all your ducks are in a row.  Sometimes even systems people must agree that “good is good enough” and it’s time to launch the project. Too much tinkering to get it “right” may create an unintended consequence—overhead overload.   Some of your team members are systems zealots and have overused skills. Some may hone the smithereens out of a perfectly adequate system. Others, addicted to perfection, rarely finish a project.  You may have a team member—a genius—who is unable to tolerate non-geniuses. “Why don’t they get it?” So, what should you do?   Read Chapter 18 and check out the resources on the Systems Bucket webpage, including a unique add-water-and-stir book that is amazingly simple, yet profound. FYI: For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching, from two feedback experts.        MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog ECFA Blog on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”   Read John's blog post, "More Huckster Than Holy?" and check out the new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1: Recruiting Board Members (DVD and Viewing Guides).

3 Board Hats

 

Issue No. 276 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 8, 2013) says there is a 30-minute fix for solving the confusion over the three board hats: Governance, Volunteer and Participant. Plus, check out my  Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Board Dysfunction X 11.3 Million! Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, famously said: “There is one thing all boards have in common. They do not function.” Google “board dysfunction” and you’ll hit the jackpot with 11.3 million results! So why is dysfunction so rampant on church boards, nonprofit boards and company boards? One reason: confusion over the three board hats: Governance, Volunteer and Participant.   In the hot-off-the-press ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 2: Balancing Board Roles, the short DVD and the Board Member Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide makes this obvious, but seldom practiced point: “If you need a board member—recruit a board member. If you need a volunteer—recruit a volunteer.”   The 20-page viewing guide (12 per toolbox) includes a board self-assessment tool for each hat—a perfect resource for your next board meeting.    Agree or Disagree? The Governance Hat: • “We invite spiritually discerning and governance-savvy people to consider board service—but we don’t propose marriage on the first date!”  • “In our organizational annual planning process, we seek to hear God’s voice and spiritually discern His direction. We also ‘own the strategy.’”   The Volunteer Hat: • “We are crystal clear—when recruiting new board members—that the Volunteer Hat is optional for board members and volunteer service must be passion-based, and aligned with a volunteer’s spiritual gifts, strengths and ‘social style.’” • "We have written board policies and/or protocols that carefully define the reporting relationship for board members when they volunteer in the organization." (Read: The Imperfect Board Member, by Jim Brown) • "During a board meeting, when a zealous board member inappropriately brings a Volunteer Hat situation or problem to the table, our board chair graciously moves the discussion back to the agenda and true Governance Hat topics."   The Participant Hat: “Board members should be informed, up front, of the organization’s realistic expectations regarding attendance at ministry events (graduations, walk-a-thons, annual celebrations, etc.). Effective boards leverage a Board Member Annual Affirmation Statement, a document signed annually by both new and current members that spells out the specifics for all three hats. This annual affirmation also adds rich meaning to the spiritual calling of board service and inspires high commitment.”   This second-in-a-series toolbox from ECFA includes online access to helpful templates, including the annual affirmation statement, plus other resources.     The “View-Inspire-Engage” toolbox includes the 11-minute DVD, 12 Board Member Read-and-Engage Viewing Guides, and a Facilitator Guide with just-in-time help to engage your board on this fork-in-the-road core competency.  The Facilitator Guide provides three discussion options:     Option 1: 15-30 minute board discussion    Option 2: 30-60 minute discussion    Option 3: Board Retreat (or a 2-hour session)   Referencing the ten basic responsibilities of nonprofit boards from BoardSource, this ECFA resource will enrich a board member’s understanding of the additional stewardship requirements of Christ-centered boards, especially noting the difference between decision-making and spiritual discernment (how do boards hear from God?).   In the book, Stewards of a Sacred Trust: CEO Selection, Transition and Development for Boards of Christ-centered Organizations, David L. McKenna writes,  “When asked what they would do differently, retired CEOs most often say, ‘I would give more time to developing the board.’” So how much time does your organization invest in developing and enriching the work of your board?   I had the privilege of writing the video script and viewing guide content for Series No. 1 and No. 2 in the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series. So I know you’ll appreciate the brevity and real life chuckles for the “In the Trenches Board Stories” vignettes. Series No. 2 includes the humorous episode, “The Day We Pushed Frank Out the Door…and Off the Board,” which spotlights the solution when a board member has high passion for the Volunteer Hat and zero passion for the Governance Hat.   If your board tends to have fuzzy distinctions between the three hats, then this could be the most cost-effective investment for your board this year. This resource will help your board members focus their limited time on their highest priority: Governance.  As Peter Drucker reminds us: “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.”   To order this toolbox from ECFA, click on the title: ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 2: Balancing Board Roles – Understanding the 3 Board Hats: Governance, Volunteer, Participant. Click here to read more about Series No. 1: Recruiting Board Members – Leveraging the 4 Phases of Board Recruitment: Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation, Engagement. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) In the Governance Hat discussion, the toolbox quotes Jim Brown, author of The Imperfect Board Member, who writes, “Boards don’t need to hear how busy the CEO is—they need to hear about results.” What does our board measure? Are we activity-driven or results-driven? Do we measure spiritual impact? 2) The toolbox quotes Ram Charan, “With the right composition, a board can create value; with the wrong or inappropriate composition, it can easily destroy value.” Really? How could our board destroy value here? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sustaining Motivation: A By-Product Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit This issue’s big idea from Mastering the Management Buckets, (Chapter 12, The Volunteer Bucket) is to think differently about what motivates a volunteer.   Al Newell, co-founder of High Impact Volunteer Ministry Development, says if you pursue discipleship, then motivation will follow. He writes:   “Sustaining motivation is better understood as a by-product as opposed to a goal of itself. It is my experience that if you pursue discipleship with volunteers, motivation will follow. If volunteers see the fulfillment of their role as ‘obeying and serving God’ rather than serving you or your organization it will cause motivation to swell.”   Before you copy, steal or misappropriate all the secular tips, tricks and manipulations for motivating volunteers, just take a breath, read your Bible, and then discern what is really at the heart of volunteer service. It could be a fork-in-the-road paradigm shift for your organization! Visit the Volunteer Bucket webpage for free downloads and recommended books.        MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog . ECFA Blog on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”   Add your thoughts to John's latest blog post for boards, "The Participant Hat: Hinting, Whining or Affirming?" and check out the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series: No. 1:Recruiting Board Members and No. 2: Balancing Board Roles(DVD and Viewing Guides).

The Invisible Gorilla

 

Issue No. 325 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 13, 2015) recommends the latest resource from ECFA on conflicts of interest. It’s all about elephants and gorillas!   16 Minutes With the Elephant in the Room  Would your nonprofit board, church board—and their leaders—invest 16 minutes to address the elephant in the room—or the 800-pound gorilla?   I’m talking conflicts of interest today and, literally in 16 minutes, a new video from ECFA sheds immeasurable light on a ticklish subject most often addressed in the dark, or at least the boardroom hallway. “Addressing Board and Organizational Conflicts of Interest: Avoiding Trouble, Trouble, Trouble With Related-Party Transactions” is the hot topic in the new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 3.   Here’s the definition—and a quick gut-check tool:  “A conflict of interest occurs when a person who is responsible for promoting the interest of the ministry, is involved, at the same time, in a competing personal interest.” One way to discern conflicts of interest is to use what Michael Batts calls the “front-page test.” He cautions: “I advise clients to use the ‘front-page test’ as a filter for deciding whether to enter into any transaction that could have a ‘negative spin’ possibility [the appearance of a conflict of interest]. That is, the board should ask the question, ‘Could this transaction or decision be reported by the media in a way that could cause embarrassment or damage to the organization or its leaders?’ If the answer is ‘yes,’ it may be best to avoid the proposed action.” Really? Average-thinking adults (staff or board) can’t sniff out a garden-variety conflict of interest? ECFA President Dan Busby says no! In his new book, Trust, he writes: “A blind man on a galloping horse at midnight could see a related-party transaction problem. But we often can’t see the problem ourselves.  The intensely focused task of leading ministries can make us blind to the obvious and blind to our blindness.” And speaking of gorillas, Busby notes the research by Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel Simons in their fascinating book, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. (Spoiler alert! If you have not yet viewed the “basketball passing” video, click here now—before you read further.) ECFA’s Conflicts of Interest Toolbox includes:    --one 16-minute video    --20-page Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide     --Facilitator Guide (with supplementary online resources)—and three facilitation options (30-45 minutes, 1 hour, or a board retreat guide) The DVD (video) and viewing guide address three critical questions: 1. What is a conflict of interest? 2. What are the options when boards are faced with potential conflicts of interest and related-party transactions? 3. Is it ever appropriate to enter into a business transaction with an insider—and, if so, what policies should guide that action? (Note: An “insider” is a board member, key staff, or someone else with substantial influence over the organization.) Before you ignore the elephant in the room (or the invisible gorilla), order these materials today and learn about:    • The 3 Paths for Related-Party Tests    • The 4 Steps for “Insider” Related Party Transactions    • The 7 Questions to Ask Before You Approve a Related-Party Transaction (share the Discernment Worksheet with your board and staff) ECFA reminds leaders that 2 Corinthians 8:20-21 sets the standard for reputational risk—and the two audiences you serve: “We don’t want anyone suspecting us of taking one penny of this money for ourselves. We’re being as careful in our reputation with the public as in our reputation with God.” (MSG) You’ll appreciate the “In-the-Trenches Board Interviews” video segment, “There’s an Elephant in the Room—But Let’s Just Keep the Peace!” Four fictitious board members share their humorous responses to conflicts of interest issues. (For the four viewpoints, read this ECFA governance blog.) Trust me—the video and resources will provide a very appropriate poke-in-the-ribs to keep your conflicts of interest radar tuned in.  Busby notes, “Trusted ministries do not borrow trouble with related-party transactions. These transactions are minimized to avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety.”   The toolbox highlights four related-party scenarios. Board members and senior staff are asked to respond to each issue: “Is the ministry borrowing trouble?” The scenarios: when an organization purchases insurance from a board member; board approval of a lower-than-market interest rate loan for the top leader; and a policy that authorizes selected staff to use organizational time and resources to author books and media. How would you respond—is your ministry borrowing trouble?  “The only bad question is the one you had, but didn’t ask,” warns John Pellowe. His governance book is highlighted in the Toolbox. “You must be diligent as a director. Make sure that you ask any questions that are on your mind. As the saying goes, the only bad question is the one you had, but didn’t ask. You may think that since you have a banker on your board, you do not need to ask any financial questions because someone else is looking after that. It is your duty to ask these questions anyway. Do not rely on someone else to do your thinking.” To order from ECFA click on this title: ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 3: Addressing Board and Organizational Conflicts of Interest—Avoiding Trouble, Trouble, Trouble With Related–Party Transactions. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) The viewing guide quotes Best Practices for Effective Boards: “In the long run, only integrity matters. In fact without integrity, there will be no long run.” Could an inadequate response to conflicts of interest in your organization be the sad obstacle to a long run? 2) Has your team viewed the "invisible gorilla" video mentioned above? (There is a short scene in the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 3 DVD/video that will also surprise you!) Do you agree now that “we are blind to the obvious and blind to our blindness?” Note: I had the privilege of writing the script and materials for this ECFA Toolbox. Having worked with over 100 nonprofit and church boards, I’ve observed that it’s a huge blind spot for many. I urge you to use these materials ASAP—and avoid trouble, trouble, trouble! And…check out Toolbox Series No. 1: Recruiting Board Members, and Toolbox Series No. 2: Balancing Board Roles (The 3 Hats). Click here.   Zealots for Research    As we cycle through the 20 buckets, here is an insight from the Customer Bucket, Chapter 2, in Mastering the Management Buckets. Right at the top—in the Customer Bucket core competency—is this: “We are zealots for researching and understanding our markets.” So if your customer research is more anecdote than actuality, take a fascinating side trip through The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel Simons.  The book addresses six everyday illusions:    • The illusion of attention    • The illusion of memory    • The illusion of confidence    • The illusion of knowledge    • The illusion of cause    • The illusion of potential Warning! This hard-to-put-down book will be hard on you—if you’ve based your customer research on the wrong hypotheses, incorrect associations (versus cause), and “change blindness blindness.” I’ll read this book again—maybe three times! For more resources on customers (and governance) visit the Customer Bucket and the Board Bucket webpages.

MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S REVIEWS ON: Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCAST: John Pearson's Buckets Podcast   ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s latest blog, "A Board Prayer: The Least Words, The Least Intensity, The Least Volume." (2026 update: Read the book!) NOTICE! As of Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to this blogsite.