I've had more conversations lately questioning the value of non-profit boards in a networked world.
When boards were invented, we weren’t connected by 8 or 9 degrees to 7 billion of our potential Facebook and Twitter friends. People weren’t as financially literate as they are today. And executive directors weren’t as professionally developed as they are today. Boards made sense when Eisenhower was President.
These days many boards are social clubs for people with a passion to generate more unrealistic ideas than the organization has the capacity or stakeholder relevance for.
We can have the conversation more often about why non-profits should be expected or mandated to have boards. Why couldn’t they just have thriving resource networks that provide real strengths and capacity to do real work for the growth of the organization. People who offer ideas they are willing to share responsibility for. People more interested in the organization’s stakeholder dreams than in the opinions of board committees.
