Can Boards do Deliberative Thought?

From Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" ca. 1868

ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.

When I say "deliberative thought," I'm talking about substantive decisions that are made about nonprofit policy, procedures or strategic planning, decisions that will affect the life of the nonprofit strategically and will substantively further the organization's ability to accomplish it mission.

Let's take two common examples. These are two very common decisions that Boards are called upon to make.
First, a decision about Board giving levels and making regular and substantive giving a part of the Board's life.
Second, a budget-related decision about whether to invest significant financial and personnel resources in improving fundraising infrastructure for the nonprofit, and starting a major gifts cultivation and solicitation process.

Before we dig in, let's see what "deliberative thought" might entail here. We're talking about the ability to deliberate and make decisions about the complex issues involved in either one of these topics.

The reader will want to keep in mind that we're talking about a four-step process.
1. First comes the process of identifying and prioritizing those issues that are especially relevant to where the organization wants to go strategically. This step will be easy, because it involves brainstorming, something the group can do well.

2. The group then needs to decide on the kind of goals and objectives that will need to be accomplished to make either of the above decisions result in positive increases in the capability of the nonprofit to function and accomplish its fundraising objectives. This step is going to be more difficult for the group to do.

3. Next, the group must be able to delineate a variety of possible strategies, along with sets of tactics to implement each of those strategies. This is also a brainstorming process but is not always an easy task for a group.

4. Then the group needs judiciously to choose which of those possible strategies the organization is best equipped to carry out, in terms of its resources, its context, its methods of operating. This is perhaps the most difficult step for a board to take. It gets tedious and requires concentration away from the "image" scenarios playing themselves out in the board members' heads.

So let's start with example 1: The decision on Board Giving: Here's what needs to be done.

First, we need to brainstorm the issues involved in Board giving. Here are just a few issues that you might find surfacing in a discussion such as this. Most boards are very good at this part of the process.

1. We will find that board members vary in their ability to give
2. Board members also vary as to their motivation to give.
3. Board members also have differences in their understanding of the organization's need for leadership.
4. What is the community's image of this nonprofit and its Board?
5. How can this image be improved?
6. What are the financial needs of the organization?
7. How can the board members collectively address that need from their own personal/corporate financial resources?
8. What are the consequences of the board's refusal to take a leadership role in giving?
9. What does the organization's strategic plan call for in terms of revenues?
10. What does the strategic fundraising plan call for in terms of board giving?
11. What needs to be accomplished, and how will it be accomplished and by when?

The next step is that the board will need to prioritize these issues relative to their importance in this particular situation. Some may be more relevant and pressing than others. This is typically where boards start to have a hard time, because prioritizing issues calls for more deliberative thought; people need to match up issues with context, mission, capability, etc.

Next, we need to provide detailed answers to the questions posed. When the questions are answered, the answers need to be sorted out in a way that provides a series of alternative strategies from which the Board members will need to choose. Boards are notoriously incapable of doing this step with any kind of consistency. Even though this is mostly a "brainstorming" task, it nevertheless involves linking pieces together to form action strategies.

The next step is a complicated process: creative thought. It's similar to the scientific method – yes, that "scientific method," the one we learned in school, in chemistry or physics class.

You may remember the steps:
1. Form the hypothesis,
2. Test the hypothesis,
3. Evaluate the results,
4. Come to some tentative conclusions with a new hypothesis,
5. Test that new hypothesis.

It's clearly beyond the ability of most groups of people, including nonprofit boards, to do this by working together. But we frequently demand that they do this even though most board members are not equipped to carry this out, and are not psychologically prepared or capable of doing it. They can work individually; they can work with one other person. But the psycho-dynamics are too overwhelming to allow these steps to be done by the group.

But there's more to this process, and we'll see what that is tomorrow.