Where to Find a New Board of
Directors: Gavin Give-A-Hoot Wants to Change the System
Gavin’s decision to find new
people for the board of directors was faster made than done. He started reading
the bylaws sentence by sentence to discover that the board of directors has to
be elected every two years. He was happy to see this because it had already
been two years since the last election of the board.
He started trying to find
candidates, but where should Gavin start to look? It is hard to find people to
volunteer anyway.
While he was sitting at his
desk in his home office trying to figure out how he could find suitable
candidates, his wife came in to ask if he already wrote the yearly donation
check to the afterschool program.
Gavin got an idea. He went down
the list of loyal donors and found a few names that would fit as members of the
Board of Directors.
He made himself a check
list:
- Sharing a passion for the mission of the
organization
- Strong ties to the community
- Willingness to help hands-on
- Supporting efforts to raise money
- Commitment to participate in all meetings
“Great!” he thought, “but are there more ways to find good
candidates?” He asked himself. “Let me see if there is anyone I know who serves
at other boards.” He started researching other organization’s websites and
discovered that a few of the members of the Tinyville Arts Council were serving
on Boards of other local organizations.
While
Gavin was planning to get a new Board of Directors together, the phone rang. It
was Jane Know-it-all (President) and Brian No-decision (Vice President).
They were on the line to complain that Gavin’s move would destroy the Arts
Council.
See
how Gavin Give-A-Hoot will handle this conflict.
Ways
to find active members for your Board:
- Regular donors and patrons
- Active board members of other
organizations
- Well-known members of the
community
- Local business owners
Many
people would jump in and help by serving on the board of an organization, but
they never were asked to step up.
