If you’re a nonprofit leader, managing your board is likely a challenge. Although most nonprofit boards technically manage the ED/CEO, there’s a lot of opportunity and rationale for managing up.
If you don’t work to manage your board, your board members may become unruly and make your organization more difficult to lead. It’s important to be intentional and strategic about “leading up” for a more successful organization, board, and leadership experience.
4 Strategies to “Manage Up” Your Nonprofit Board
Here are four key strategies for successfully managing up the board at your nonprofit.
1. Set the agenda.
Don’t wait for your board members to set the agenda for board and other committee meetings. Set the agenda for them and ask for suggestions. Most board members will be grateful for your help and will be happy with whatever you suggest.
Additionally, don’t leave fundraising for the end. Show everyone that fundraising is a priority by listing fundraising toward the beginning of your agenda.
2. Ensure key decisions go your way.
If the agenda includes any decisions or votes, don’t leave them up to chance:
- Contact key leaders in advance of the meeting and review your position with them.
- Ask key leaders for objections and concerns prior to the meeting and work to allay any fears in advance.
- Encourage respected board members to speak up and support your position during the meeting.
In other words, stack the deck in your favor. Do everything you can to ensure critical decisions go your way.
3. Control the vote.
If you need board approval, make sure you’re voting only on what you need.
For example, if the board needs to vote to approve budgeting funds for hiring a campaign consultant, vote on the funds needed to hire the consultant you’d like to use. Don’t discuss all three consultant possibilities that you interviewed at the board meeting. If you do, it’s more likely the discussion will go awry — you’ll end up discussing the pros and cons of each one rather than simply approving the funding for hiring a consultant.
If appropriate and necessary, discuss the top candidates with a smaller committee in advance of the board meeting. Have them recommend (and support) hiring the one you’d like to hire.
4. Limit board member choices.
Similar to #3 above, do not bring board members every choice available. Bring them the choice you want and ask them to vote it up or down, as opposed to one of many choices. Keep it as simple as possible.
What’s the number one rule of good lawyers? Don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to! This could also be a cardinal rule of executive directors when interacting with their boards.
Plan for success by drumming up support from key volunteers in advance of the meeting. Answer concerns and questions long before the vote takes place. If you do, you’ll get better outcomes and have more successful meetings.
Control Your Board — Don’t Let Them Control You
As you can see, there’s a lot you can do to influence and control the board at your nonprofit and prevent them from controlling you! Try some of these strategies in 2024 and beyond. You’ll discover how much more of an effective nonprofit leader you can be.
What do you do to manage your board? Let me know in the comments below.
Great article! Reaffirms our ED’s approach and effective partnership with our Board.