Afterwards, we noticed the people we were talking to had begun to ask deeper questions like, “How do you know if a nonprofit board is doing a good job?” It seems that article helped nonprofit leaders, board members, and major donors to start thinking more critically about what they should look for in determining if the board they are connected to is being run effectively and accomplishing the organization’s mission. They wanted more information about what they should be on the lookout for – what kinds of red flags might signal an underlying culture problem or what kinds of signs indicate that the board is going off track. 

In the room were 13 nonprofit Executive Directors, Board Members, and Board Presidents ready to give their biggest takeaways from their most recent roles and engagements. We let each nonprofit leader offer their observations and have compiled those to share with you. Afterwards, we’ll offer actionable next steps that your organization can take to bridge generational gaps.

This should be a collaborative discussion that starts from a place of mutual respect and concern.  It should also not come as a surprise.  Board members should be sharing concerns in an annual review process with the leader, informed by the organizations and the leaders performance. Board leadership should create an open dialogue over a series of conversations, asking the Executive Director questions like “How are you feeling about the organization, where it is heading, and how you are doing as Executive Director?” 

While every organization is different, nonprofit marketing materials typically include things like print/digital brochures, blog articles, email marketing, newsletters, videos, social media posts, and publicly published reports. Ideally, these would be well-aligned with the organization’s mission, core beliefs, culture, and programs. But what happens when the marketing material is wrong? What should a nonprofit board member do when the marketing material is a mismatch?

And while nonprofit staff and leadership greatly appreciated the advice on how to avoid mission creep, board members asked a key question that we did not get to cover in that initial article: “What if we’re already dealing with mission creep – how do we respond?”
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So, in this article we are going to address mission creep from that perspective. What do you do when mission creep is already happening? How can you recognize it? And what do you do to stop it?