•   Board size does not matter, but investing time on a regular basis to reconsider what they do and how they do it does. Retreats are more effective than regular meetings.

•   Almost all boards report trouble recruiting well qualified members. Interestingly, the research found that recruiting among board members’ friends and acquaintances - the most common recruiting approach - is counter productive. Boards that rely on friends recruiting friends show lower levels of effectiveness on all aspects of board work other than fundraising. One other troubling statistic is that only 7 percent of all charity board members in America are younger than thirty-six.

•   Boards that allow their CEO to vote generally perform less well in the areas of financial oversight, policy setting, community relations, and influencing public policy.

•   While only about 40 percent of chief executives think their board members understand their role, they believe their board’s effectiveness makes a difference in the effectiveness of their organization.

Most importantly, the research shows that boards can be developed to perform more effectively, but just changing models won’t do the trick. It’s not that easy. Although there are better ways than others to organize, there is no single best model or form. Structure does not and cannot guarantee good performance. Because congregations have habits of governing and leading that transfer from one governing structure to another, thinking has to change before structure changes. That’s an underlying assumption of the Governing with Soul workshop series.

One more thing. While not specifically stated in the research I reviewed, it is fair to assume that congregations are some what different from other organizations, both in the for profit and not for profit world. Congregations may look like a typical bureaucracy - they have organizational charts, job descriptions, bylaws, and standardized processes for accounting and the like - but they don’t always act like one. 

For example, the rational bureaucratic structures we build seldom take into account how members form their views, the “political” dynamics at play, or the complexity of human relations and social interactions common in congregations. Congregations may have all the marks of a rational system yet still make decisions based on an informal pecking order of seniority. Who is on the board, how the board is structured, or even who happens to be the pastor may be of little consequence.  In addition, each board member comes to each situation wearing the hat of both a board member and a consumer. (This is a unlikely situation in most nonprofits.)  And, as consumers, each board represents multiple opinions. The overlap between a board member, staff, family and friends is complicated and difficult to nuance when that member is called to make a consequential decision that effects them all, but with different implications.

* The legal origin of the term nonprofit is simple enough. Most corporations are expected to provide profit to their owners and shareholders, but since nonprofit corporations do not have owners they cannot provide profit to the members, thus the term nonprofit. This is the reason that when a congregation closes its assets cannot be distributed among the remaining members. A more accurate term for nonprofit might have been, not a profit-distributing corporation. By the way, it does not mean that the organization is forbidden by law to make a profit, or use its profits to fund its growth.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

When God gave Man dominion over the earth, he gave Them three specific directions. They were to fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. All three of these jobs required special attributes. They had to procreate to fill the earth. They had to figure out how to subdue a creation of plants and animals, that had gone rogue after the Fall. Once subdued, they had to think of a way to keep it that way. To accomplish these tasks, Man had to be able to reason, communicate, create ideas and tools, problem solve, innovate, collaborate, and learn from His experience and accumulated knowledge. This is why we still have schools today. Man has always needed to learn and grow.