Why Would Board Members Resist Standards of Performance?

Why is it that we are reluctant to provide our nonprofit governance boards with standards of performance and regular performance review? During more than a quarter century in the fundraising profession, with 10 of those years in my own practice, I have come across maybe two or three nonprofits that have devised performance standards for their boards of Directors. Why do you think that is? For one thing, it flies in the face of all we know about human nature, and best practices in board governance.

For instance, one of the things we know about human beings, and board members especially, is that they really enjoy the feeling of success. They like to do the job that is required of them and know they've been successful at it.

The sway people achieve a feeling of success to have their work measured as they go along. It makes life simpler and easier. It tends to discourage deviation from the norm and saves time and aggravation. If you've been assigned the task of governance of a nonprofit, that's an awesome responsibility that has several rather complex sublevels within it.

For example, there's the strategic planning task, the job of managing the organization's executive, the task of financial oversight, and the job of overseeing program goals and objectives and keeping those in line with the strategic plan. That's a lot to keep track of on a week-in-week-out basis through many board meetings. It's easy to get bogged down and lose sight of where we are in the process.

Consequently, any board member could be expected to welcome specific standards of performance as the easiest way to stay on track in terms of fulfilling the assignment for which he/she was selected. The job performance standards are going to point out the limits of board deviance from a certain norm of tasks and how they should be performed. And these, in turn, are ultimately going to be set by their peers – their fellow board members – as a way to express the greatest success as the board has defined that term for itself and its work.

Of course this is all within the context of the full realization that the board of directors of a nonprofit (which is, after all, a public trust) are responsible to the public for providing a well-managed, efficient, cost-effective social good or service to the community at large. Standards of performance, for the board as a group and for individuals within the board, are, therefore, something most people are going to welcome as a way to help them see, through the complexity of doing their jobs, that they are doing that job well. And that leads to a sense of being successful.

Another thing we know about human nature is that most of us can tend to slack off and take the easiest way out of particularly sticky situations if someone isn't keeping our feet to the fire. Board members are no different. If you don't point out to them that they need to stay with the more difficult tasks of strategic planning and measuring progress programmatically and financially toward the strategic goals, it won't be too long before they've lapsed back into micro-managing the organization and tinkering with day-to-day operations.

Consequently, a set of well-written performance standards, keyed to the four main jobs of a nonprofit board, can be expected to be a welcome reminder of what the board is NOT supposed to do, and of how easy it is to slip into the mire of micro-management.

Since this kind of deviation detracts from the management of a nonprofit, and since such activity robs the nonprofit of the kind of strategic planning that allows it to fulfill its commitment to the public, board members could be expected to welcome such yardsticks as will keep them from diverting time and attention away from their governance tasks.

More on this tomorrow.