Purpose Driven Boards

How can we ensure that our nonprofit boards can exercise leadership and influence the organization and community to achieve lasting change? It comes down to having a purpose driven board.

Anne Wallestad’s article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (2021) makes the case that to keep our nonprofit boards and organizations relevant, we need to think of purpose before organization. Her basic argument is that nonprofit organization’s serve a greater purpose. That purpose may come from helping low-income people work by providing childcare or developing a better sense of self in people by organizing a theatre company. What the nonprofit does serves as a means to a greater end.

To serve this greater end, boards must be “purpose driven” and put that purpose ahead of the organization. For example, to play an integral role in changing society’s response to our growing awareness of deep social inequities, nonprofit boards must change the way that they normally think, such as feeling responsible for oversight or fundraising. Instead, they need to look at how they deepen or lessen social inequities through their programs and actions. This does not mean boards abandon governance responsibilities; they just perform them in a different context.

How does this play out?

A nonprofit can become complacent by its mission when not challenged to change. They provide very good programming and, by all accounts, serve their constituents well. We know that recent societal challenges such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion need a response from nonprofit organizations. A board driven by purpose will challenge the organization to respond to this societal inequity. Or consider the widespread increases in rent which results in lack of affordable housing. How does a nonprofit respond to this? Purpose driven boards in the area of housing or economic development will challenge the organization for a response. Does the programming need to change? Do they need to alter their mission? These are the questions that nonprofit boards must confront.

In the end, to exercise leadership and bring about the needed changes in our community, boards must prioritize purpose in their responsibility to the organization and the broader community in which they exist.

For an extended discussion of purpose-driven board leadership join us this Thursday in our first organizational development workshop of the year – Nonprofit Essentials.