Is Your Board Member A Poodle?

Dogs, it is said, have owners.  Cats have staff.  By that reckoning, poodles are cats.  All my other dogs, mostly border collie and retriever mixes, lived to please me.  Willow, my poodle, is absolutely convinced I only exist to please her.  She wants what she wants when she wants it, and is shocked when she doesn’t get it.  If I leave her when I go out, she gets this amazed look and I can almost hear her saying “And what do you think you are doing?”

Many board members (and major donors!) have that poodle attitude.  While most board members serve because they care—usually passionately—about your organization or cause, these outliers think that everything has to fit precisely to their expectations, which are too often orthogonal to the needs of the organization

Too often, staff and even other board members feel that they must bend to these would be nonprofit autocrats will.  But that is precisely the wrong approach.

Board members have three duties they all must adhere to:

The Duty of Care, which means they must handle the business of the organization as a prudent person, taking care of all assets (facility, people, good will

The Duty of Loyalty that ensures that board members put the organization first, always advancing its mission (sometimes in ways that aren’t in their own best interests)

The Duty of Obedience, which doesn’t mean they rubber stamp what the ED says, but rather that they ensure that all applicable laws and regulations are being followed.

Most board members take these duties seriously, but I have seen board members think nothing of using funds that were raised to support clients to throw themselves a party, and I vividly remember the general manager of a bank who told me they would put someone on our board if we moved our money to his bank.  Now, that bank may have been the best bank in the world for us, but he clearly did not understand the duty of doing what is right for the organization rather than oneself.

Beyond these duties, of course, board members have other roles and responsibilities.  I focus a lot on fund development, so thinking about a board member’s role in philanthropy is a natural for me.

Alas, it is not a natural for too many board members.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to the notion that board members should be out there raising funds.  Indeed, when i was an ED, unless it was selling tickets for an event, I would tell my board that they were NOT to be soliciting donors.  That was a team effort, and I needed to be part of (ok, captain) the team.  That said, there were so many ways I wanted my board members to participate, from identifying and introducing me to potential donors to getting them interested in us and more involved.  I especially wanted my board to be active and passionate stewards of our donors.

While Willow, my poodle, would not be a good board member, Tramp, my border collie, just might.  As intelligent as a poodle, he is much more structured, caring about rules and regulations.  And unlike Willow, who though cute, funny, lovable, cares mainly about herself, Tramp is focused on his pack, and cares passionately that they understand that we are all in this together.