A strong board team that works with each other is essential for nonprofit organizations to fulfill their mission. But for a lot of boards collaboration is a challenge to overcome. This article provides some key strategies to create and sustain a strong collaborative board team.
Communication is essential. Make sure to inform new members of their duties and responsibilities. It is essential to define the roles of each member of the partnership. This will ensure that members actively participate in meetings and are ready for discussions, and support the organization’s vision and goals. It’s also important to explain the financial requirements of new and existing members. This will facilitate a healthy debate and help manage expectations.
Nonprofits have a small resources, staff and skills to accomplish all that they would like to achieve. Collaboration with other nonprofits can allow them to reach more people and have more impact than they could do on their own. However, they should carefully consider the projects they select to collaborate on and ensure that all parties are benefitting. This will lead to positive outcomes and create win-win situations.
In the above example, Family Focus & CYC were able to leverage their resources to offer more services. This enabled both organizations to expand their reach and support more families without increasing their budgets. It also enabled CYC to recommend new clients to Family Focus and vice versa. This partnership resulted an increase in families being served and a bigger social change than either organization could have achieved on their on their own.