Assuming that your board has no clear sense of why they’re representing their nonprofit arts organization’s work, there’s a handbook for that.
The first essay of the school year is usually some throwaway set of paragraphs entitled, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” This is kinda that. I’ve been exceptionally busy over the last month doing podcasts, interviews, and signings for my book, SCENE CHANGE, and, as you’ll see here, embarking on a new book launch just in time for the holiday season.
Last year, I embarked on a study of nonprofit arts board members to judge whether they really knew why they were on the board. I’d asked for short (one-word, if possible) answers to three questions. I asked them what their single most important personal responsibility was to the company, their board’s most important collective responsibility, and in what important responsibility they found their board to be lacking. Boom, boom, boom.
After receiving 600 responses, I stopped counting. Almost half of the respondents wrote that their most important responsibility was some form of the word “fundraising” and most of the rest responded with “governance.” Sadly, given the other answers on the survey, “fundraising” appeared to mean “writing a check,” not zealously seeking support. And “governance” is a nonsense-word that board members use because that’s what they’re told. It has no real meaning, except to say they approve by-laws and vote on various subjects. Unanimously, in most cases.
Given the information and some of the follow-up, it became clear to me that despite Richard T. Ingram’s great book on board responsibilities in general, the board of directors/trustees for arts organizations really had no idea why they were there, except perhaps as a human ATM. They’re not to blame for that, of course. It’s often how they’re treated by board leadership and executive leadership. And some money-grubbing development officers, who see each one with dollar signs in their eyes.
So, as a follow-up and companion to the book SCENE CHANGE: WHY TODAY’S NONPROFIT ARTS ORGANIZATIONS HAVE TO STOP PRODUCING ART AND START PRODUCING IMPACT, I have just completed SCENE CHANGE 2: THE FIVE REAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF NONPROFIT ARTS BOARDS.
SCENE CHANGE 2 is part down-to-earth board member handbook, part pot-stirring conversation starter, and strong arts organization conscience-setter. It’s spicy and filled with even more bricks to tear down the toxic and unjust walls surrounding most failing and flailing nonprofit arts organizations. Using the tools found within the pages, members of boards will begin to feel empowered to serve communities first (after all, the community owns your company, not the board) using art as an effective tool and not as an empty, pretty product.
It’s filled with questions you can ask at board and staff meetings and a series of exercises that can help guide your board push your company to greatness (instead of non-charitable activities and the diabolical lie of art-for-art’s-sake, which is neither a mission nor a vision for a community organization such as yours).
If your company has a terrible mission not unlike this atrocity:
or this…
…then buy both books (not expensive), teach them in your arts management classes, and find ways to stop arguing about the best ways to survive on your terms and instead put your energies in fulfilling the needs of your community on their terms.
Bring copies to your next retreat, but more than that, distribute them to all your staff and board. Your stakeholders are guaranteed not to agree with every last word in the book, but each item will help set you up for success.
The book is available for pre-order right now at pretty much any bookstore. Just visit scenechangebook.com or go to your favorite independent bookstore (or Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop) and order it. Right now, for example, Amazon is selling the first book for $16.20 and the second one for $11.95, so there are some good deals going on.
And, of course, if you really want to save money, buy SCENE CHANGE at BulkBookstore for as little as $13.65 a copy. (SCENE CHANGE 2 is not yet on sale with them.)
If you’d like me to come speak to your board and lead them through some of these discussions, just shoot me an email. I’d love to help and while there are still some philistines out there who believe I’m just some “bomb-throwing provocateur,” I’m really just in the business of making our industry the best it can possibly be for everyone. That’s it for now. Next week, I’ll be returning to the world where toxic donors continue to hold sway at large institutions despite the fact that the product they make has killed over a half million people. Oh Harvard, are you listening?…
I recall an article in the NY Times a number of years ago (which I can’t locate at the moment) that was a review of the boards of major cultural (not necessarily performing arts) organizations in New York City. Though the reporter didn’t use the words, it was totally obvious that being on a board of one of these organizations was about one’s social connections among the upper crust of society. It’s a vestige of the 19th century where you saw the same names on multiple organizations. Sure it’s philanthropy, but it was and still is a form of networking and affirmation among a self-selecting group of people. (It’s hard to believe that the Metropolitan Opera began as an “upstart” because the founders couldn’t get what they wanted from the existing opera companies. So they created they own opera company and their own social group of board members.)
I think the bottom line is that while your prescriptions in Scene Change (which I’ve read) are good for low to middle budget companies, I think they’re somewhat impractical when the company depends on tens of millions of dollars (how much more so if your company has a budget of $100 million or more). But maybe your ideas apply to only those on the lowest rung of budgets who have barely anything to lose and can experiment with a new structure.