Getting Young Leaders on Nonprofit Boards with Power and Influence
It is “Unofficial Month of the Young Nonprofit Leader” on my blog as a lead-up to the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network Leaders Conference in Denver on April 23 and 24. This is the second post in my series on issues related to young nonprofit professionals and our influence on the nonprofit sector. Want to read about a specific topic? Tell me here.
One of my frustrations with research and commentary on the “nonprofit sector” is that authors make conclusions about the sector as a whole when finer slicing and dicing of data and information could result in a more accurate picture of the different experiences within different types of organizations. I think this is the case with some recent internet conversations about the lack of younger people on nonprofit boards. Based on my experience, the issue is not so much the lack of opportunity to serve on a “nonprofit board” but rather the near complete lack of age diversity on boards with substantial influence and power.
As cited by Rosetta Thurman on her Chronicle of Philanthropy blog and Emily Heard of BoardSource in their respective posts on the topic, the 2007 BoardSource Nonprofit Governance Index reports that only 2 percent of nonprofit board members are under the age of 30. I think this could be an example of where some cross-tabulation of the data could help in identifying important underlying trends. With some additional analysis, I am pretty confident the data would tell the story that smaller organizations have more diverse boards, especially age-wise, compared to larger nonprofits and foundations (the nonprofits that, at least traditionally, have held the most power and influence in the sector).
I work extensively with small and mid-sized nonprofits and come in contact with hundreds of nonprofit board members and dozens of boards each year in my role as a nonprofit consultant and workshop facilitator. In thinking about my recent clients, nearly all of them have younger people on their boards. In many cases, these younger people are serving in positions of leadership. In randomly sampling my client files from the last few months, I see a group of nonprofit organizations that all have at least one or two younger board members (under 35) and some that have people under the age of 30 in formal leadership roles (a board president and an executive committee member of well-respected, locally prominent organizations, for example).
It is also my observation that most of the younger board members I meet were deliberately recruited for their enthusiasm and new ideas, not to serve as the token “young person.” Thus, my direct experience suggests that there is opportunity for younger people to serve on certain types of nonprofit boards and serve in leadership positions on those boards. I also agree with Rosetta, Emily, and Peter Brinckerhoff that there is definitely room to grow in terms of helping boards and younger people find each other and then build a successful relationship. BoardSource in particular should be applauded for making this a deliberate priority in their programming.
These examples, however, represent one type of board service – the type that revolves around community service and commitment to helping advance a particular mission. Another type of board service is the type that revolves around power and influence, in addition to advancing a specific mission. The decisions in these board rooms shape the sector for the good and the bad. While all types of board service are important and there is obviously overlap between the two, the commentary and programming around having younger people serve on boards seems to focus only on the numbers, not on the types of board service involved.
Those of us involved in promoting age diversity on boards need to address both sides of this coin by also promoting programming that focuses on getting younger voices on the boards with substantial power and influence in the sector, like prominent nonprofit associations, capacity builders, influential nonprofits, and foundations. The board service as community service angle is much easier to address with things like matching services and trainings. The board service as influencer is much harder to advance, but is equally important. And, we shouldn’t just measure success in this area in terms of the percentage of younger board members, but also in terms of the pervasiveness of younger board members of all types of boards, including those that are shaping the nonprofit sector.
I’ll follow-up with some of my ideas about how to accomplish this in a future post. In the meantime, do you have ideas about how younger people could be engaged in both types of board service? If so, please comment below.
