Are you encouraging board members to come prepared to debate, discuss, and vote on important issues facing your organization? Or are your committee and Executive Committee reports nothing more than actions for board members to approve?

The problem isn’t the board packet. It is the amount of information delivered in a way they can’t absorb in a time frame they can’t handle (during the board meeting).

Ian Joyce showed up at Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation after a robust and distinguished career in corporate marketing and communications. He brought that mindset to his new work in social good. But he found there was a missing piece—a pipeline.  

Who should pay for a board member’s expenses in serving? Tricky question.

Board Management is a big part of a CEO’s job. Sometimes the details can get in the way of a great relationship. For example, managing the expenses around board members attending board meetings can be tricky. Here is how multiple organizations manage this conversation with sometimes policy, sometimes art, sometimes psychology.

When it’s not working, it can sound like this:

“I don’t know how to prioritize my time.”

“INSERTNAME is not a team player.”

“It doesn’t feel like we are moving the needle.”

Building a culture of teams within your organization who are strong decision-makers takes work. And it all starts, you guessed it, with a solid strategic plan.

I use an analogy that no one gets. It is this, said in conversation when I am trying to make sure someone is telling me exactly what they want, “Ok, I have moved the couch a couple of times, and the couch is heavy. Can we agree where the couch should go before I move it again?”

Let me describe the largest couch I have been asked to move: when a board hires a new CEO.

What a whirlwind 2022 has been! Our team at Turnkey has helped a virtual cornucopia of clients with various challenges this year, so we want to reflect on some of our projects and share a peek behind the curtain.

History is unfolding before us; it’s on C-SPAN and most cable news outlets. How can we use what we’re witnessing to help us in social good? Repeat to yourself... people respond to situations. Great marketing and program design create situations that trigger the types of attitudes and behaviors that we’re seeing as a result of the January 6th hearings.

In philanthropy, why do women dominate in number, but not in pay or filling significant roles? This surely devalues philanthropy as an industry, like every other industry where women are present in large numbers, yet are relegated to subordinate status.