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Cough up! Should there be a required contribution for boards?

How do you make sure that all board members of a board know what to give? A few years ago a new practice was very much in vogue for board giving: there should be a minimum amount required of all board members for annual donations. Great solution? The suggested donation strategy seems like a safe one, and so simple, too: every board member would know what was expected of them, financially, and the organization could plan in advance for what was coming. People who were thinking of joining the board could be told right off what the standards for giving were. It sounded good. It sounded simple. But it hasn't really worked.

Leaders emerge constantly in flocks of birds moving together, taking the flock in different directions all the time. How do they do that? Biomimicry studies are studying the same effect with leadership in human groups.

Requiring a specific donation, no matter the amount, makes a statement about how the board is valued. A flat requirement can have the effect of making the board feel demeaned, as if they are only there to give money, rather than to govern. It can contribute towards a slow erosion of the board towards passivity, as they become accustomed to being managed and manipulated. It can make it seem that joining the board is more about status and less about commitment. "It's too much like joining a club," one member said to me. "Like I have to pay dues to join."

For some board members it can sometimes seem that their role is to write large checks and get out of the way. "I hated the just-give-and-shut-up attitude," one former board member said. "There was so much for that board to do, but weren't taken seriously as leaders." Another former board member, who was being pressed to rejoin a board after he rotated off, said, "Now they have a new $10,000 required commitment. They keep telling me how much they need me, and I would love to get back to work, but they've set up a psychological barrier for me. I can be trusted to be generous. But that's not the way it works on this board any more."

People don't join boards just to give money - they can do that without being on the board. They join the board, ideally, because they are committed to the work of the organization, want to be part of the leadership team, and want to effect positive change. Boards are part-time volunteers entrusted with the oversight of an organization, and allowing, encouraging and supporting their leadership is critical to the functioning of mission-based organizations. Without salaries and often without an obvious daily impact, many boards are unsure of their own worth. The conundrum is that highly effective boards feel empowered, and they don't need to be told what to give. It is the boards who are struggling to be useful, to understand what is expected of them, who don't know. But telling them what they should give often has the wrong effect.

On one board, the development committee wrote a letter to the members of the board, giving everyone a suggested annual amount. This figure had been discussed at two different meetings, but when the letter was received, several members were outraged to see it written down. "This isn't the culture of our organization," one said, in an email to the rest of the board. "I didn't join the board to be commanded to give." The letter had been a little stiff in its wording, but for this board probably no letter would have been right. "If they're telling us that only big donors are welcome," another member said, "I'm out of here." Interestingly, that person was a large donor already. The board chair sat down with her later and pointed out to her that she already gave much more than the suggested amount. She said, "That's not the point. I don't want to be wanted just for my money. This just proves that money is all that's wanted from the board." This board decided that a "suggestion" was the wrong message.

The "suggested donation" runs the opposite risk, sometimes, of lowering the bar. On most boards there is a range of donation levels. Set a level that is too low, and you could signal people who give very generously that it isn't necessary. What level should be the right one?

"There is no right level," a long term Treasurer told me. "Don't do it. Not unless you want a board where everyone is from exactly the same socioeconomic level."

Some boards are emphatically clear that this is exactly what they want. The boards of large institutions with enormous budgets are often known for their huge financial expectations of board members. You won't necessarily find these numbers written down, but everyone understands. You don't get invited onto these boards unless you have already made a substantial financial commitment and are capable of giving more. These donor boards inevitably represent a narrow socioeconomic group, and that's okay with them. And once having set the bar so high, they often struggle to find new board members when seats are available.

Of the 180,000 operating nonprofits in the US today, very few have boards who can give on that level. Many boards today operate on a different principle, relying on the idea that boards that govern are boards that give. Excitement is high when the board is doing the big jobs that boards are supposed to be doing: visioning, strategizing, implementing, assessing.

"Our board is a governing board," the Chair of a drug rehabilitation program told me proudly. "We care. We are all very involved so we all give a lot. We're committed to having this organization survive." Committed board members are usually quite aware of what the general donation levels are. They know the needs and want to be part of their organization's success. This board had many active volunteers, and worked closely with the staff. "We want a whole variety of people on our board," the Chair said. "Including our own constituents, and people of different ages. How can we ask them to give at a specific level? We know they can't."

"Not my board," one development officer emailed me. "I can't get them involved, so for us it makes sense to make clear to them what they should do. We carefully suggest an appropriate amount." But this email incensed several board members when I quoted it (anonymously, of course.) "You can't make people give money just because you want them to give," one person said. "We're not recalcitrant children."

But shouldn't all board members give? Yes, of course. And they will, when they are involved. An idealist board and an active board are most likely to give. It is well documented that there is a direct link between volunteering and generosity, and the board are your most prominent volunteers. Strategies like the suggested donation work against the board being empowered.

Most boards today just encourage their members to give as generously as they can, and to make the organization their biggest priority. "I often wish I could give a specific number to someone when I'm asking them to join the board," a Board Chair said, "But that has its own awkwardness too. What we want on this board are doers, and they seem to turn out to be the givers anyway."