The End of Board Committees

Let's face it: board committees are usually bored committees, and rarely get anything done unless it's task and time specific, so why not just abolish them?

At least, that's the question being asked in the premier issue of 'Blue Avocado' - the new online magazine for people working and volunteering in the nonprofit sector. The site, directed and edited by Jan Masaoka (my former boss at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services), is "half magazine, half blog, half website" and its "aim is to engage and support the people of community nonprofits, the ones who do the heavy lifting in building social justice and strong communities, and who create and drive the ideas that change our world for the better."

Of the articles in the premier issue, which came out today, the one abolishing board committees really grabbed me as being provocative and helpful at the same time. Of course, you'll never get rid of all committees - nor should you - but with a handful of exceptions, board committees do not need be permanent standing structures, and their business can be better served with ad-hoc task-specific groups.

I see two main benefits right off: providing focus and eliminating burn-out. A project specific task force knows what it must accomplish, and by when it must accomplish it. And, by providing that direction, there's no drift or inertia from month-to-month as nothing seems to happen, making committee members bored, anxious, and fed up with board work entirely.

Check out Blue Avocado at blueavocado.org and sign up for the e-newsletter, register an account (it's free, and allows you to leave comments), and join in the conversation.

Walking for Early Literacy

On Saturday May 10 I will be taking part in the Human Race, a fundraising event for Silicon Valley nonprofit organizations. The Human Race is an annual event produced by the Volunteer Center of Silicon Valley that brings together hundreds of organizations from Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. Taking part in an event like this provides each organization a "ready-made" fundraising event, without the hassle, effort, or costs of developing one of their own. Volunteer Centers throughout the state and nation hold similar events - Check it out for your own nonprofit.

I will be doing the 5K walk to raise funds for Grail Family Services (GFS), an organization in East San Jose that I have been serving on a consultant basis as Interim Executive Director for a little over a year now. And, of course, I'm asking for your support - Click here if you can pledge any amount of money to help our efforts.

GFS "fosters learning and the empowerment of vulnerable families with young children through the delivery of programs that educate, develop leadership skills, and build a sense of community." All GFS programs target parents and their young children ages 0-9, and are designed with community input to address the issues most important to the neighborhood. This approach enriches the child, as well as the parent, and helps them each on the path to success in school, in work, and in life.

Your sponsorship of my Human Race participation could mean:

• $25 – five new books for the GFS Children's Library.
• $50 – developmentally appropriate toys for GFS' child care program.
• $100 – case management services for one parent.
• $250 – four weeks of subsidized child care services for one low-income toddler.
• $1,000 – eight weeks of literacy services to boost the reading skills of one child.

If you can help out, click here - And thank you for your support!

Introducing IssueLab

Just a quick note today: There's a new link in the "Blogroll" on the left side to IssueLab's newsfeed.

IssueLab "is an online publishing forum for nonprofit research. Each month we do an editorial CloseUp on a different issue that nonprofits are addressing in their own research work. This month we are focusing on research related to the issue of Volunteerism. You can check out the collection, which pulls work from an interesting cross-section of organizations, at www.issuelab.org/closeup."

The newsfeed (to your left) will bring you all sorts of good stuff.

National Volunteer Week is Coming...

National Volunteer Week is coming up this April 27-May 3. It's the biggest volunteering event on the calendar, and it's a great opportunity for you to encourage socially minded folks (like your organization's supporters) to participate in local activities.

Head on over to the VolunteerMatch web site and read the press release to find out more about National Volunteer Week, and how your nonprofit can tie into this promotion.

“National Volunteer Week is a terrific opportunity to harness the growing, nationwide surge in volunteerism,” said Greg Baldwin, president of VolunteerMatch. “It affords a chance for individuals to reach out and discover fun and meaningful volunteer activities in their own neighborhoods.”
...
VolunteerMatch is helping transform the landscape of nonprofit outreach—connecting good people directly with good causes, and providing access to an entirely new generation of volunteers who are eager to contribute. Since 1998, volunteers have generated just over 3.4 million matches to the 56,784 local nonprofits registered with VolunteerMatch.

On a personal note, I generally do not use my blog to simply edit and repost press releases I receive in my email (if I did, I'd be posting three or four blogs a day). When I do pass along information from a press release it is because it is an organization or a cause that I believe in and find value in.

I have used VolunteerMatch to find volunteers for several nonprofit organizations and have found it easy to use and highly effective in recruiting quality volunteers. If you can possibly use the theme of National Volunteer Week in your recruitment efforts, I think you will find it well worth your effort.

Market failure and collusion in the philanthropic marketplace

That's a bit of a heady title, but stick with it and humor me for a minute or two longer. I'm going to use a lesson from basic economics 101 to explain why nonprofits are unnecessarily forced spend too much time and energy chasing dollars instead of achieving their missions.

Cast your mind back to college days. and remember that intro to economics class. Remember how the supply and demand curves are supposed to work? In a functioning market, each are at least somewhat elastic. When demand outpaces supply, shortages occur and prices rise till supply can catch up. When supply outpaces demand, prices begin to drop. In each case, the correction (either dropping prices or increased supply) brings the market back into equilibrium. Ta daa! The invisible hand at work.

When these forces fail to bring the market back to a working situation, for whatever reason, the resulting state is called a market failure. One possible cause of a market failure is collusion; where a number of players one side of the equation agree to withhold either supply or demand in order to manipulate the market for their own ends.

Okay, so now let's look at the market for foundation grants to nonprofits. It is an accepted fact of life that the demand far outpaces the number of grants awarded. We know that the rule of thumb is that only one in twelve proposals will be funded (some of us do somewhat better than that, but it's balanced by those who do worse), and that none of us who have been at it long can boast of a perfect record of every proposal funded.

Because of a low supply of grants from foundations, nonprofits pay a higher than market price for searching out, applying for, and managing what few grants are available to them. Economics 101. That higher price nonprofits pay to receive grants has to come from somewhere, so it comes from programs; from mission.

This would suggest that there's a shortage in the supply chain of charitable dollars. But that's simply not true. Foundations are sitting on massive endowments that could satisfy most any nonprofit's needs. These dollars have already been earmarked for charitable purposes and the donors have already received their tax benefits at the expense of the public treasury. So why are they not being distributed?

And that's where the collusion comes in. While the IRS requires that foundations spend out a minimum of five percent of their endowments each year, the majority of U.S. foundations have taken that five percent to be the industry standard (a few notable exception spend at higher rates, and they are to be commended).

In the face of a contracting economy, with rising demand for the social services provided by the nonprofit community matched with fewer dollars to pay for it, this collusion of foundations has become the single largest impediment to nonprofits succeeding at their missions and a danger to the public safety, health, and societal well-being.

Alright. Maybe I'm going a bit too far here. I like to exaggerate to make a point. But the fact stands: In tough times the community of foundations have the ability - and I would argue social responsibility - to step up to the plate and increase the flow of grants.

And, while we're at it, maybe they can cut some of the administrative burden associated with the process. Oops. I know. This time I've really gone too far.