Making the Most of Summer: Strengthening the Board Chair/ED Bond

Mid-summer. The time of transition. While we enjoy the ease of summer days, Labor Day looms on the horizon, with all the busy-ness that autumn brings.

Many nonprofit organizations take the summer off. Or rather, the Board does. If you generally meet monthly, you skip a meeting in the summer. Or you anticipate that people will be on vacation, so you don’t schedule important votes for the summer meetings. Understandable.

But that doesn’t mean that the work stops.

If your organization is anything like most of the ones I’ve worked with, the Executive Director is busy gearing up for the fall. Behind the scenes, planning meetings are being held. The staff you need to fulfill the newly funded program has to be hired and go through orientation. The new software system has to be run through its paces and tutorials given to staff. That foundation with a September deadline wants a lot of information that won’t write itself.

The Board chair is also busy. That board retreat you’re anticipating in September isn’t going to magically appear. The new board members need to be oriented. The dashboard you want to see each month has to be crafted. That same foundation wants to meet the chair and hear her passion for the work.

What could be possible if the Board Chair and the Executive Director were to make a point to meet this summer and see what’s on each other’s plates? What would it make possible if the Chair and the ED were to talk about how they can support each other in their respective roles, particularly as the busy season starts? What would it make possible if you then continued those meetings – not just about immediate concerns, but to maintain and deepen the working relationship, talk about broad issues that may be on the horizon, consider how to shape the board and administration to enhance mission delivery, reinforce the focus on ultimate goals?

What would that make possible for the organization as a whole, and for the people you serve?

Working together, the Board Chair and Executive Director have enormous influence on the personality and aspirations of an organization. As the Chair orchestrates and influences the board, the ED orchestrates and supervises the staff. When they are in concert with each other, the entire organization is building toward the same goals.

Yet in many organizations, a new Chair steps into the role with little understanding of the pressures on the Executive Director. In return, the ED often has little understanding of the particular strengths and passions of the Chair. Mistakes and missteps happen because they haven’t taken the time to build the rapport that allows them to call on each other as needed.

It’s hard to schedule around many people, and summer is especially hard. But the relative quiet of summer gives the Chair and ED many opportunities to meet. Iced tea? Lemonade?

The Board Chair <-> CEO relationship is so crucial, that the strength of the organization can fluctuate depending on the strength of the relationship. In Delaware, the Delaware Alliance for Nonprofit Advancement has a Fellowship for strengthening just that relationship. How might YOU strengthen that bond? Let’s talk.