Glassmen

[Slingerland]

And this is, IMO, a critical point of failure. It is an insult to ask a successful businessman who wants to donate a significant part of his very expensive time to then also open his checkbook to support a "charity". Most good BOD don't think this way because it's just another method of begging that the ED's staff fails at so is shifted to the BOD. It doesn't solve the problem AT ALL, IMO.

That's simply not how it works in the larger most successful non-profit world. While their boards strive to make the charity successful (in cases where the charity charges for the services), at any symphony, theatre, or youth non-profit, "give, get, or get off" is part of the mantra. This is driven home by the corporate and foundation granting world, who will ask you point blank how much money you raise from your Board members' personal and business connections, since Foundation X is less likely to support an organization whose own Board isn't driven to support them. I'm in a big city with some heavy hitter organizations, and at most of them, if a Board member fails to provide $40-50k a year in personal and/or company support, they're invited off the Board.

A good drum corps board is going to be made up of people with good business and marketing sense, but unless the Board has created a mechanism for totally self-funding the organization through profit-making activities, they should be expected to be personal participants in the funding of said org.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Slingerland

[N.E. Brigand]

That's simply not how it works in the larger most successful non-profit world. While their boards strive to make the charity successful (in cases where the charity charges for the services), at any symphony, theatre, or youth non-profit, "give, get, or get off" is part of the mantra. This is driven home by the corporate and foundation granting world, who will ask you point blank how much money you raise from your Board members' personal and business connections, since Foundation X is less likely to support an organization whose own Board isn't driven to support them. I'm in a big city with some heavy hitter organizations, and at most of them, if a Board member fails to provide $40-50k a year in personal and/or company support, they're invited off the Board.

A good drum corps board is going to be made up of people with good business and marketing sense, but unless the Board has created a mechanism for totally self-funding the organization through profit-making activities, they should be expected to be personal participants in the funding of said org.

That's an excellent point that I failed to mention.