Appendix T --Board Governance

Board Governance
Kendra Rhodes
I visited a board meeting for Hanna’s House. This is a faith-based home for pregnant young women to live and gain knowledge about themselves, their faith, their pregnancy, their pro-life choices, and learn skills that will help them be effective in their own lives. This board was very informal. It seemed like a group of friends gathering. Actually, I think it was. Most of the people on the board seemed to know one another from outside of the agency. Many of them carpooled to the meeting. The meeting was very informal. It met during a lunch hour time. Even with all of this familiarity, they had set officers and did a pretty good job of being professional during the meeting. Actually, I believe that the warmness and familiarity they all let out together is very helpful and appropriate for keeping the mission of the organization. They are providing a home environment for these women and that carries over into the board energy.
In addition to the comfortable environment and seemingly appropriate level of professionalism, there were a number of other strengths I noticed. It came across to me that most of the board members were active members of the community who all had their own network of people. I heard a number of comments about suggesting they could contact someone they knew for this or that. This board is very involved in all of the events and outreach efforts of the organization. They had familiar conversations about previous experiences helping at events. I did notice at least two of the board members who spoke in a very articulate way with a great ability to communicate clearly. From my standpoint this is a very hugely important ability for a board.
Conversely, I did notice some possible concerns for this board. They had a fairly low level of diversity. They all seemed to be of a similar age, sex, religious and economic status. This is a faith-based organization and a faith-based board. They opened and closed their meeting in prayer. For them, it seemed to be where they all were of the same faith and were comfortable with this structure. At first glance, it seemed like a strength to me but maybe it could be both good and not so good for the board. Maybe a potentially incredible board member would feel uncomfortable with this, and also maybe it is something vital to have a faith based board to work behind a faith based organization, I don’t know. I wonder how this state of shortcoming diversity effects their outreach and empathy abilities for clients, board members and staff? They also did not seem to have as much of an invested interest in the financial state of the organization that I would have expected. They asked the formulated questions for the financial “update and paperwork” but had very little discussion about it. They talked about the continual need for money but nothing specific, and in this meeting, did not really discuss any plan for bringing in more money. The staff attendees of the organization did a huge majority of the input about plans to bring in money.
As far as governance versus management, it seemed a bit one sided, but neither from the board or the management. From what I gathered, the founder of the organization who neither seemed to be on the board or on the staff did the majority of the planning, talking, and facilitating. She had prepared the meeting plan and saw to it that it was followed. It seemed like she had compiled all of the updates that had come from everyone else and presented it to everyone at one time, rather than maybe having each responsible party present their respective parts for the meeting. This means that the presentation of all of this information has been filtered at least once through her and presented essentially second hand. Not to mention there was no break in the inevitable monotony of such a meeting with her talking so much. The board seemed to act as if they were more observers who provide some support of the workings of the organization. I saw very little evidence that they felt they really had a say in what happened. By this I mean most of their questions were clarifying questions about specific things they didn’t understand or hear correctly. They did not speak as if they were going to really affect anything that was happening. They seemed like they were in an “update meeting” rather than an interactive meeting.
By looking at the Organizational Culture Evolution stages in the context of this organization, it enlightens me a bit as to what was happening in this meeting. I believe they are very much in the Family System stage. The founder of the organization had most of the ideas and was leading a bunch of very supportive, low level of experience, and ambitious people ready to help any way they can. As a default, they would turn to the founder to find direction and approval. They also did share a bunch of details of what was going on in all areas of the organization, everyone was very equally interested in all the inner workings. Both the staff and the board members seemed to be very familiar with one another. For the most part the staff seems to be driving the vision of the organization, and the board is there for support and involvement whenever possible.
If I could take a magic wand and give them anything, from my narrow view I would bestow upon the board a larger responsibility to bring in monies. It seemed like the board was there for moral support and volunteer level involvement when needed. This is great, but during the conversations of needed funds, I did not hear any board member speak of their invested responsibility to be helping in this area. Maybe if each of the board members were more enthusiastically and personally motivated to bring in money all the extra effort would literally pay off for them and they could breathe easier.
In reflection, it seems like some of the traits I originally saw as downfalls of this board and organization are really only traits of the normal progression of an organization and where they fall in that path. For example: low diversity, uneven workload onto the founder, and low financial responsibility of the board. I feel like the traits I observed are a somewhat reliable indication, although I was only there for a while. I could have been seeing something entirely different that my personal filters have made it seem this way.