Ask most executive directors whether their board supports them and you'll get a pause. The board shows up. They approve the budget. They're lovely at the gala. But support, the kind where someone has your back on a hard decision or makes the introduction you've been needing for months, is a different thing, and a lot of leaders aren't sure they have it.
That's the question I put to Allison Wyatt in this episode. Allison is the Founder and CEO of Edgility Talent Partners, a human capital consulting firm that works with nonprofits across the country on compensation, performance management, career pathways, and succession planning. She's served on boards, advised boards, and coached the leaders who report to them, which means she's seen this relationship work and seen it fall apart.
What I appreciated most is how practical she got. We cover the three things that are always present when an ED and board are working well together, the minimum committee structure a small nonprofit actually needs, why committees are the best succession pipeline you have, and how to build a personal resource board of your own when leading feels lonely. We also tackle the question I hear from EDs more than almost any other: how do I ask my board for more support without it sounding like I'm complaining?
And then Allison brought up the thing she sees go the worst when it goes badly: succession. Her line has stuck with me. The only thing you can predict with absolute certainty is that someday your leader will leave. The only question is whether you'll be ready.
SHOW NOTES
How can an executive director tell whether her board is actually supporting her, or just showing up for meetings?
Allison Wyatt is the Founder and CEO of Edgility Talent Partners, a human capital consulting firm that works with nonprofits across the country on compensation design, performance management, career pathways, and succession planning. She has sat on boards, advised boards, and coached the executive directors who report to them, so she has seen the relationship from every seat at the table.
When the executive director and the board are working well together, Allison says you can hear it. Talk to each of them separately and you hear the same vision and the same priorities. Communication runs all month, not just in the formal report at the board meeting. And there's trust in both directions: the leader knows the board has her back, and the board has confidence in the leader. When any one of those is missing, things break down fast.
From there, the conversation gets practical. Allison lays out the minimum committee structure a small nonprofit with a volunteer board should have, and why committees double as your board's succession pipeline. Volunteers who serve on a committee get to try before they buy, and you get to see who follows through before you offer anyone a seat. Wendy adds the one she sees go wrong most often: asking the fundraising committee to also plan the events.
In this episode of Nonprofit Nook, Allison joins Wendy to share how to build your own personal resource board when leading feels lonely, how to raise the "I need more support" conversation with your board without it sounding like a complaint, and the one question every board should be asking its executive director at review time.
Then Allison names the topic she sees go the worst when it goes badly: succession. The only thing you can predict with absolute certainty is that someday your leader will leave. The only question is whether you'll be ready. If the answer is three to four years, your succession plan has to start now.
Underneath the committee charts and review questions, this conversation is really about relationships. If there's a reason you'd be afraid to have an honest conversation with your board, that reason is worth looking at, because if communication isn't happening about this, it probably isn't happening about other things either.
If you lead, volunteer with, support, or dream of starting a nonprofit, this conversation is a reminder that a strong board isn't something that happens to you. It's something you and your board build together, on purpose.
In This Episode
You'll hear Wendy and Allison talk about:
The three things that are always present when an executive director and board are working well together, and the first signs when they're not
How to tell an engaged board from one that's just checking the boxes
The minimum committee structure that makes a difference for a small nonprofit with a volunteer board
Why committees are your board's best succession pipeline, and a way to try before you buy
Why the fundraising committee shouldn't also be the event planning committee
What a personal resource board is, who belongs on it, and how to keep growing as a leader with no budget and no time
How to ask your board for more support without it sounding like a complaint, and the one question that belongs in every ED's performance review
Why the question isn't if your leader will leave, but when, and what that means for your succession plan today
Connect with Edgility Talent Partners
Connect with Allison on LinkedIn, and follow Edgility Talent Partners on LinkedIn, Instagram and at edgilitytalent.com.
Building Your Personal Board: Edgility's guide to building the personal resource board Allison describes in this episode.
High Performance, Shared Purpose: a free e-book on building the culture your mission-driven organization needs.
Watch this episode on YouTube.
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TRANSCRIPT
Allison: Nobody thinks about this or talks about it until it's time to go out and hire a search firm and fill the role. And it's like, really, we couldn't have predicted this? The only thing you can predict with absolute certainty is that someday your leader will leave. And the only question is whether or not you'll be ready. It's coming.
Wendy: Yeah, it's like death and taxes. It's gonna happen.
Wendy: Hey everyone, welcome back to Nonprofit Nook. My guest today is Allison Wyatt, founder and CEO of Edgility Talent Partners. Allison and her team help mission-driven organizations build talent strategies that are equitable, sustainable, and competitive so they can attract, keep, and grow the people who power their missions. Her expertise spans compensation, leadership development, performance management, and hiring. Welcome, Allison!
Allison: Hi, thanks for having me.
Wendy: I'm so excited to have you on. I feel like in our first phone call we just clicked and had such a great conversation about boards and committees and all the things. So I appreciate you coming on the show so we could capture that and share it with our listeners.
Allison: Absolutely, it's my pleasure.
Wendy: So when we were talking, I know you've worked on a lot of boards and you've worked with a lot of executive directors. When that relationship between the executive director and the board chair, and the rest of the board, is working well, what does that look like? Because I want to give our listeners a sense of when it isn't, what are the first signs?
Allison: I think first and foremost there's really tight alignment on what the vision is and what we're trying to accomplish. When I talk to each of them individually, I'm hearing the same priorities. I'm hearing the same big-picture strategies and vision.
The second thing is there's really good, transparent communication between the two. It's not just, okay, you get the formal report at the board meeting. There's good ongoing dialogue and a close relationship. I've been on a board where we would text each other, and there were just really good open lines of communication.
And then finally, trust. In particular, the leader has to know that the board has their back, and the board has to have confidence in the leader and trust them. Anytime any of those things don't exist, you start to see things break down pretty quickly.
Wendy: For sure. I completely agree. If you don't have a text thread with your board members, what are you doing? We have way too many text threads going on. A lot of people move to GroupMe or something to organize it, but how do you not have that communication happening?
So how can an executive director tell whether her board is actually supporting her, or just showing up for meetings? Obviously the text thread is one, but what are some other ways?
Allison: There are so many ways. How engaged are they in thought partnership, in coaching and advising, in rolling up their sleeves and actually being true partners in the work, versus just wanting to hear what you're doing? For a leader of an organization, if you have an engaged board, they're pitching in and doing real work, and they're showing up in any way that you need them to, without reservation, to help navigate any challenges that come up. That accessibility, that eagerness to roll up the sleeves and dig in and be available to you as a leader, is a really good indicator.
The other thing is a board that is not just checking off the boxes. There are a lot of technical things a board member needs to do, duties they have as a member. But board members who go beyond the bare minimum and bring real value to the conversation, who make really good introductions and connections, help you get to the place where your board is greater than the sum of its parts. That's where you start to see the magic happen.
Wendy: I completely agree. And it's really crucial for a board chair to pay attention to that too, because they can help that relationship along with the other board members.
I think another thing that really gets the board engaged is having committees and structure around their committees. I feel like that is such a lacking thing in a lot of nonprofits, because they just don't really know how that works. So for a small nonprofit with a volunteer board, what's the minimum structure you recommend that makes a difference?
Allison: Absolutely. And by the way, I can't help but take a quick opportunity to talk about committees as a great succession planning strategy for your board too. You'll have committees that have board members but also volunteers, who can then become board members in the future. So it's a great way to get a lot of people engaged and have a pipeline for your board, so you're not unprepared for the normal turnover that happens with a board.
The key things we see on boards: you're typically going to have a finance committee. You have to do that. They have to oversee the financial policies, look at the 990, monitor performance, review the budget, all of that.
You're also typically going to have a development or fundraising committee that helps think about fundraising strategy. They're probably also helping to open doors and cultivate donors and actively participate in any campaigns or events the organization is doing. Having a really active fundraising component of your board can be a struggle. I think that's the area we often find is the hardest to get engagement around, but it's so critical.
You're typically going to have a governance committee, which helps you think about actually building the board. When new board members join, making sure there's an orientation program for them, making sure the board is getting the appropriate professional development opportunities to really be effective, looking at the bylaws and governance practices. That's an important one that we don't always see.
And then there's often going to be either an HR committee or an executive committee. That's a subset of the board, typically your officers, that would make decisions around executive compensation and officially do the executive performance review. It's kind of the HR management unit for the leader of the organization. If it's an executive committee, they'll often also handle urgent things that come up in between board meetings. You often can't convene your entire board when something unanticipated comes up, so that's your core group that's on call and can get together and address anything emergent.
Wendy: Absolutely. I love committee work. And I love that you mentioned succession planning, because that's something I hadn't thought to bring up today. It's so true that it's such a funnel. If you think about it from the beginning, you can also incorporate your volunteers that may not be ready for a board position yet. A board member is always going to steer those committees, but your volunteers can come in and supplement, and it makes them feel more comfortable taking on responsibility for your organization.
Allison: And it also allows you to vet people before you offer them a board seat. You'll start to see who really follows through, who's the most engaged, who's really committed, what skills people bring. So it can be a way to try before you buy, even though board seats are typically volunteer positions. And by the way, it helps you build engagement, because once people start to get involved in the committee work, they feel more committed to the organization.
It concerns me when organizations are grappling for board members. There's no pipeline for them to recruit from, and they're all just trying to figure out how to put butts in seats, for lack of a better term. If you're thinking about having a really strong board, you need to be very strategic about the diversity and the composition of that board. Do we have the right set of skills? Do we have somebody who has sat in a finance leadership seat before? Somebody who understands our program, whatever it is our organization does, in an intimate way? Somebody with good fundraising experience, or maybe just access to a strong network? Think about all the different skills you need for your organization, and whether you have somebody who checks each of those boxes on your board.
And then also think about the diversity of your board: people at different stages of life, who come from different backgrounds and reflect different identities. All of those things are really important. Otherwise you end up in an echo chamber, and you're just not going to be as effective as a board.
Wendy: Absolutely. One thing I see a lot is people using the fundraising committee to plan events. It becomes a very dysfunctional committee, in my opinion, because you have two very different goals. One is to plan the event, and one is to actually do the fundraising. It falls apart because there are a lot of people who are willing to work on the event, but they're not great at fundraising. So I want to encourage small organizations to divvy that up and maybe have a dedicated event planning committee, so you're not losing capacity by not having the right people in the right spots.
Allison: Yeah, and event planning is a lot of work too. If you're trying to do that and layer on other responsibilities, that's a lot for volunteers to take on.
Wendy: Absolutely. And in my head it's always been a committee, but I love that you called it a resource board the other day. A lot of executive directors build their own resource board separate from the governing board. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that is and who should be on it?
Allison: I always say that being the head of an organization is a very lonely job. So it's really important to build out your own network, and I think about building your network the same way I think about building your organization's board. I like to call it your personal resource board, but you could call it an advisory board. You're trying to make sure you have access to the right bench of skills to make you the best leader you can be.
Ideally you'll have somebody who's been there and done that and can be a great mentor to you. Maybe they sat in a very similar seat in a very similar organization, so they have the benefit of experience and can help you not do so much learning by doing. Maybe you have a coach who you can share some goals with, who can hold you accountable and encourage you and give you guidance. Another one I like to see is what I call the connection person, who's going to make introductions and help you get access to rooms you might not otherwise get into without a warm introduction.
Obviously this is a board that doesn't have actual governance authority over your organization. But who's thinking about your professional growth? Who's thinking about setting you up for success? This is a way to engage your own network in helping you be successful. And of course you can reciprocate too, and offer your own insights and strengths to those individuals.
Wendy: I think this is super important, because so many executive directors got the job because they're great at the mission, not because they were officially trained to lead. How can they keep building their own leadership skills when there's no budget and no time? Obviously you've got your advisory board, but what else can they do?
Allison: Not everyone's going to be able to afford to invest in an executive coach. I think that's a phenomenal investment if your organization can do it, because that's a professional who can really help you define your goals and priorities and work around obstacles. But otherwise you need to be creative and scrappy on how you get it done. Building that board is one way. Joining professional networks is another. Leaders are often all grappling with the same things, so getting everyone in a room together to problem-solve and collaborate helps, and you just don't feel so alone.
We started doing this several years ago. We do a lot of compensation design work with organizations, and we always start with developing the philosophy: what are we trying to recognize and reward here? What are the objectives of what we're designing? Most people go straight to the market data. They've never even thought about a compensation philosophy, and I think it's the most important thing you need to do before you go any further.
We used to do that one organization at a time. A couple of years ago we started a cohort model, where we brought in lots of different organizational leaders, EDs if it was a small organization or heads of HR, to talk about that question together, share ideas, and talk about the cultures they were trying to build and the challenges they were facing. It was a really productive conversation, because it helped them understand not just their own organizational context, but also see all these different models in a way that crystallized the right choice for them. So I do think that network and peer learning can be really powerful if you take advantage of those opportunities.
Wendy: I completely agree. But I can picture our listeners sitting here thinking, that's all great, but I'm not getting the support that I need. When we have an executive director who's thinking, I need my board to support me, but if I go to them, it's going to sound like I'm complaining, how do we prevent that? How do we go to them without it sounding like a complaint?
Allison: This is why I always encourage board members to start that conversation. First of all, we recommend boards do an annual assessment of themselves too, not just of the executive.
Wendy: Yes. Start with yourselves, people. Start with yourselves.
Allison: Because we're a full-service human capital firm, we design performance management programs too, and it's no different with regular performance management. We always encourage organizations to put a question into everybody's performance review: how can I better support you as your manager? So, board members, if you do an annual performance review for your CEO or your ED, do you have that question as part of that process? Sometimes all you need to do is invite the individual to have that conversation.
Now, of course, your question was, what if I'm the ED and my board isn't inviting me to have that conversation?
Wendy: Maybe send them this episode.
Allison: Podcasts are a fantastic way to build your own professional growth, and I encourage people to pass these things along to their board members. There are also consulting firms like ours. We have a board advisory toolkit that will walk the board through all the things they should be doing, and you can send it very simply: I thought this would be helpful for you. I thought this would be a useful tool. It serves as a checklist for them. There are others out there as well.
Most board members are volunteers. They're deeply committed and passionate about the mission, but they may not have had training. Being in a board seat is a little bit unique. You're not running the organization, but you're in a governance position, and they have to be trained on what that role looks like. So offering resources that resonate with you and reflect the type of board you want to build can help nudge them in that direction. And then otherwise, work on the relationship so there's good communication and transparency.
Wendy: I completely agree. Something I've done at an in-person event, and I don't think I've done it on the podcast yet, is talk about what should be included in your board orientation training, because part of it is setting the expectation for them. Otherwise they're going to show up and be that rubber stamp you're not looking for. And if you're not giving them ways to contribute and support you, that's a lack on your part as well. It's a chicken-and-egg thing. Everybody's got to be open, but we all need to be trained so we know we can support each other.
So with everything we've talked about, if there's an executive director listening, is there one thing you think they should do before their next board meeting to get started? Say they've got a board meeting next week and they've listened to this podcast. What are we looking for?
Allison: I do think finding a good tool and sharing it as an educational resource with your board is a great first step. It's a low-stakes way to start the conversation and to educate in a way that's helpful and not threatening.
The other thing in an executive director's power is to model. Often an ED can educate by demonstrating what they want from their board as a leader of the organization for their own people, and you get to control that narrative: here's how I'm approaching this process this year. For example, with compensation, before going to ask your board for an executive compensation study, have you done a study for your own staff? Do you have a clear strategy and philosophy around it? Do you have a structure? Is it being executed fairly and equitably? By raising that to your board and telling them this is a priority and you've done this work, now all of a sudden they're thinking, right, we should be looking at market data. There are things you can do to demonstrate how you're thinking about yourself as a leader and your responsibilities to the organization that will raise ideas, and even help connect leadership pay, performance evaluation, or succession planning to what's happening in the organization.
The other thing you can do is introduce your board members to people who do this well. If you know a board chair at another organization who's really amazing at these things, introduce your board chair or somebody on your board to them. This is a really similar organization, I thought it would make sense for you two to be colleagues and network, the same way you would for an ED at that organization.
So there are things you can do to lay the foundations. And then I always think it comes down to transparent conversations. If there's a reason why you would be afraid to have that conversation with your board, I think that's worth interrogating, and then you need to figure out how you solve that problem. Is it because you don't know your board very well? Well, let's get to know each other. Let's schedule a board retreat. If it's because something happened where there's been a breach of trust, let's make sure we repair that and rebuild it, because it's not going to go away. These are all important questions to be raising, because if really good open communication isn't happening about these things, it's probably not happening about other things. There's actually a lot you can do as a leader to make good strides that are pretty low-stakes and easy.
Wendy: I love that, especially getting to know everyone and having more of a relationship, because it's so much easier to have these conversations. You don't want those parking lot discussions at the end of a board meeting. You want to be able to go to coffee with one of your board members. You've got to have that relationship with your board president. You should be sitting down with your board chair and talking about engaging the board and what we're doing for orientation, sharing what you've seen work well in other organizations and what you'd like to suggest we start implementing.
Allison: That should be a natural conversation that's not scary and is low-stakes.
Wendy: Hopefully you helped pick these people that are on the board.
Allison: Or they picked you. One way or another, there's a relationship there.
Wendy: Is there anything else you feel like we missed that we should be talking about today?
Allison: The only thing I would add, and this tends to be one of the most sensitive things for a leader to bring up, but I can't help it because it's where I see things go the worst when they go badly, is succession planning. There is nothing more disruptive to an organization than a sudden leadership transition the organization is unprepared for. Full stop.
Once you get to the point where you have good trust, transparency, and communication, and your board has a sense of the role they should be playing with you as an ED, it's a really important conversation to have. I always tell board members the question isn't if the leader is going to leave. The question is when. So why not talk about that? Maybe we have five to seven years, but maybe we have three to four. If you have three to four, that is an incredibly important thing to know, because any succession plan you're going to build and enact has to start now. You don't prepare someone to step into that role in under three to four years.
Nobody thinks about this or talks about it until it's time to go out and hire a search firm and fill the role. And it's like, really, we couldn't have predicted this? The only thing you can predict with absolute certainty is that someday your leader will leave. And the only question is whether or not you'll be ready. It's coming.
Wendy: Yeah, it's like death and taxes. It's gonna happen.
Allison: It's gonna happen. So having really good, honest, open conversations about that is important. If you're a board member, I highly encourage you to start those conversations, because they can feel very risky. And by the way, the ED should be having succession plans for their leadership team too. All of this should trickle up and down.
Wendy: Absolutely. I love this. Thank you so much for joining us today, Allison. If anybody wanted to reach out to you and ask for your help, can you tell us a little bit more about what your team does and how they should reach out?
Allison: Love to. We're a human capital consulting firm. We work with nonprofits across the entire country. We do compensation design work. We help organizations build performance management systems. We help them think about how people grow in career pathways and develop succession plans. And then, of course, we help boards think about all of those things for their leaders. The best place to reach me is on LinkedIn, Allison Wyatt. I'm very active there and I will respond. In the meantime, if any of the stuff we talked about today sounded useful and you want more, go to our website under Resources. We have a ton of materials, e-books, podcasts, blogs, toolkits, all the things, and it's all free at edgilitytalent.com.
Wendy: Love that. We'll make sure to include those links in the show notes so everybody can reach out. Thank you again, Allison, for being here. And we will see you next week.
Allison: My pleasure. It was so much fun, Wendy. Thanks for having me.