eNewsletter: Fall 2006/Winter 2007

   In This Issue:

1. Breaking Roberts Rules
2. New Board Recruitment Resources
3. Program Graduates: Another Non-Profit Leader
4. Classifying Non-Profit Organizations
5. Generative Thinking for Boards

We were intrigued by the title of a new book by Lawrence Susskind and Jeffery Cruikshank called "Breaking Roberts Rules: The New Way to Run Your Meeting, Build Consensus, and Get Results" (Oxford University Press, 2006). Susskind and Cruikshank are part of a group that call themselves the Consensus Building Institute. Susskind is also affiliated with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard University.

The authors are not the first to wade into the area of effective meetings to explore more consensus-based models. We have searched the internet for resources that can help board chairs in particular and were unable to find much we liked. We are pleased to offer our own resource, a modest contribution to the topic of consensus decision-making, a new four page resource entitled Chairing a Board Meeting.

This new resource is a companion piece to others we offer that may be of assistance to board chairs and those about to be asked to take on this important, but often poorly defined role. These include:

• Board Chair's Job Description - [PDF format]
• Ten Proven Ideas For Better Board Meetings - [PDF format]
• How Boards Can Have Better Conversations (New) - [PDF format]
• Board Member's Code of Conduct Policy (Revised) - [PDF format]

Visit our Governance and Board Development section for a full list of available resources. We welcome your feedback.

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We are pleased to be involved in board development coaching with community literacy groups as part of Literacy Nova Scotia's Training for Success Program. One of the frequent requests we have been getting is for help with board recruitment. To many the task of recruiting new board members seems daunting.

This has spurred us to develop two new resources on board recruitment. The first is a Guide to Successful Board Recruitment that outlines ten ideas for successful recruitment and seven easy steps for a recruitment campaign. The second resource, Your Board Recruitment Package gives some tips on what to give to prospective board members to help them decide if they are a good match for your organization.

• A Guide to Successful Board Recruitment - [PDF format]
• Your Board Recruitment Package - [PDF format]

We welcome your feedback on these materials.

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Dalhousie University is pleased to announce that Rodney Chaisson is the newest graduate of the Non-Profit Sector Leadership Program at Dalhousie University.

Rodney Chaisson is Executive Director, Nova Scotia Highland Village Society/An Clachan Gàidhealach. Highland Village is part of the Nova Scotia Museum family and is located in Iona, on Cape Breton Island.

Congratulations to Rodney. He joins an impressive list of over sixty alumni of the Program.

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For those conducting research on the voluntary and non-profit sector the question of how to classify organizations often arises. One way of classifying organizations is by what they do, the kind of activities they undertake.

Any classification system has its pros and cons; there will be organizations that fit more than one category as well as some that do not fit any particularly well. Nonetheless, when studying the voluntary sector across organizational types it is best to use an existing classification system so that one person's study can be more easily compared to another. An existing classification scheme often works well when one expanding upon or combines existing general categories rather than by creating one's own list.

There used to be what was known as the Standard Industrial Classification scheme (SIC). Revamped today as the North American Industry Classifications System (NAICS), it now includes both industrial, manufacturing and non-profit type activities.

Another system is the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE- CC), where "exempt" stands for tax exempt. This system has been developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics, a spin-off of the well regarded Urban Institute in the United States. It has 24 activity categories, A to Z. For example the first is Arts, Culture and Humanities and is broken down into 10 sub-categories such as Visual Arts and Historical Organizations. In this scheme category "S" is "Community Improvement and Capacity Building" which includes neighbourhood associations and service clubs. This system is used primarily in the U.S.

A more recent development is the International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations (ICNPO) developed by Lester Salamon at John Hopkins University. It has12 categories as well as sub-categories. This is fast becoming the preferred system for studying and comparing the voluntary sector internationally. It has been adopted for studies in Canada by Statistics Canada as well as by the National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating.

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Those interested in governance models will find the book, Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards, of great interest. It suggests that there are three modes, not tasks, of governance. They are the fiduciary mode, the strategic mode and the generative mode.

The book, published in 2004, is written by Richard Chait, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, William P. Ryan, a research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, and Barbara E. Taylor, PhD, a researcher and consultant to nonprofit organizations. The three have written together before on the subject of boards. The book is published by Wiley Publishers in collaboration with BoardSource.

The authors do a good job conceptualizing the fiduciary and strategic roles of the board. They use the term fiduciary to cover the things most boards see as their primary job - overseeing the work of the organization. The authors include in this the task of evaluating the executive director.

The fiduciary mode is familiar territory for most boards because board meetings and orderly agendas lend themselves to reporting and approving behaviour. This mode provides comfort too because it fits well with the board's duty to pay attention to the organization's legal and financial responsibilities.

The strategic mode is a very different way of operating for most boards. It calls on them to look at where the organization is going and to make choices. It requires information that comes from outside the organization. Few boards, suggest the authors, are good at thinking and acting strategically. Standard board meetings and agendas do not support this mode. A board is not operating strategically if it is approving a strategic plan that is not a reflection of work they have had a strong hand in bringing about.

The generative mode will be new territory for most nonprofit boards and the authors, to their credit, have avoided trying to describe or prescribe what exactly is involved. This will not satisfy those in search of good governance recipes.

A colleague, Keith Seel, director of the Institute for Nonprofit Studies at Mount Royal College in Calgary, relayed to me a "bus" metaphor, which I find very helpful in understanding the three modes.

If you think your organization as a bus, the fiduciary mode has the board in the back looking at the past and present. The strategic mode brings everyone to the front of the bus to look out the window to see where it is going and perhaps decide to alter the route. The generative mode requires the board to get off the bus, to start walking around and begin talking with people in the community.

Generative thinking requires us to move and think outside the confines of our organizations our organizations. It requires "robust discourse" and the need to begin to understand what is happening in our communities at the boundaries of where things are changing. What it demands of us is not entirely rational and it forces us to see that the key issues we need to confront are complex and multi--dimensional.

Non-profit boards, say the authors, increasingly need to be working in all three modes. For those grappling with how to improve non-profit governance, Governance as Leadership, is a welcome addition to our thinking.

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We would welcome the submission of short articles or information items for this newsletter relevant to voluntary sector learning, research and public policy issues >> Contact us to submit an item