Nonprofit Community Winter Event Summary – Nonprofit Board Development and Recruiting Best Practices

​In January we hosted our Nonprofit Community Winter Event on Mercer Island in Washington. The event was a chance for nonprofit board members as well as senior nonprofit leadership to come together to talk about how to create their ultimate nonprofit board. The goal was to share strategies and best practices for assembling a dream team of skilled superheroes and super advocates to equip organizations to better achieve their missions.
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If you want to know how it went, it was a huge success!

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What We Did
The event included facilitated panel discussions that explored real-world board development practices, as well as a hands-on exercise to give attendees a chance to put those practices into action in a simulated scenario.

In the interactive exercise small groups were given a mock scenario in which they had suddenly lost a key member of the board and were asked to develop criteria for an ideal candidate that balanced inclusivity and skill requirements, a recruitment timeline for hiring, and key strategies for ensuring a smooth transition. Some of the topics that were covered in the process included diversifying your board, navigating term limits, and establishing stronger governance practices.

Who Was There

​Our speakers included Stephen Tan (Senior Associate at Valtas at Board Member at KNKX), Bindiya Patel (ED at Leadership Tomorrow), Joanna Arreaza-Taylor (Board President at WestSide Baby), Ed Rogan (Partner at Valtas), and featured speaker Kumar Mehta (President of the Board of Directors at Committee for Children). Each shared their unique insights, and Kumar Mehta spoke about his experience overcoming board governance challenges to grow a 40-year-old, $40M organization into a successful nonprofit that is helping children learn, grow, and thrive.

And soaking up everything they shared was an engaged audience of nonprofit Board Chairs, Board Officers, Board Members, Executive Directors, CEOs, Development Directors, Finance Directors, and Senior Leaders that came ready to learn, participate, and grow.

Key Takeaways
It’s hard to boil down such a vibrant discussion into a few key points, but these are some of the main takeaways that we heard attendees discussing afterwards:

• There are four types of nonprofit boards – Absent (A), Broken (B), Cheering (C), Doing (D). To go from an A, B, or C board to a D board, you must have set expectations and ensure that your board adheres to them. Tolerating nonperformance among members will infect the board as a whole and can spread to the organization as well.
• Doing (D) boards need to be careful not to do too much. Getting caught down in the weeds of the organization can be just as ineffective as not doing anything.
• Board division and disruptions must be purposefully handled to avoid rippling through the rest of the organization.
• When it comes to recruiting, intentionally identify what is working and what is not. Identify the gaps and recruit specifically to fill them.
• As a board member your resources and connections can be your superpower.
• Don’t approach potential policy changes with fear. Calmly evaluate what’s going on and plan for how your organization will respond.

We sincerely hope you can join us for our next Nonprofit Community Event and be a part of the dynamic conversation! To stay informed about what’s coming next, please sign up for future communications from Valtas. We’d love to see you next time!