Impacting the community- Non-profit leadership having an effective board

Returning from Lake Clifton campus the artery home is through the heart and soul of east Baltimore down Patterson ave. The challenges we face as a community are tremendous often seemingly unsurmountable. Toiling with how we, together, organizations, business, community leaders, individuals, politicians work as one to create a new thriving ecosystem for a health and bright future in America's cities.

The sun waned amidst theoretical and conceptual conversation about the challenges we face and how we over come them. The intellectual sounding board, a friend and neighbor, who is the founder CPIE (http://www.cpiedu.org/) of a non-profit organization with the goal of educating our youth about the atrocities committed against peoples because of social, cultural ethnic or religious differences. Through education the goal is to eliminate these atrocities in the future. Currently, Helene works for a non-profit call CLIA (http://www.communitylawinaction.org/ ). CLIA's mission is to inspire and engage young people to be effective problem solvers, critical thinkers and advocates for positive change.

A identified deficiency in the effectiveness of NPOs is the lack of quality strategic leadership. With a meeting scheduled with Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) (http://nfte.com/default.asp) and being a member of the larval entrepreneurship council we are struggling with how to leverage the talented executive team that are members of the board while minimizing their time since they are volunteer yet maximizing their effectiveness and value add to NFTE.

Our discussion was fresh and poignant. The council needs a clear direction and has a few clear next steps to become more effective and harness the excitement and enthusiasm of the board. The three things discussed:

1. Clear Objectives for the board. Based on NFTE Baltimore's goals for this year the board should be expected to achieve some basic objectives in order to have clear and attainable measures and make efforts more focused. These should initially be suggested by NFTE but eventually as NFTE sets goals for 2011 the rotating chair and the eCouncil will set objectives based on the strategic goals.
2. Communicate Appreciation for Board members time. Most board members of the eCouncil are involved because they believe in the organization, its mission and the impact it is having on the youth in Baltimore. It is still a commitment and both the individual and the organization that they are representing would like to know their investment is being appreciated. In the end it is an investment by the organization and many times the only thing they could ask in return is building brand awareness through their involvement. The solution some directed communication to the NFTE business and community network highlight the commitment and appreciation NFTE has for the individuals and organization who are part of the NFTE eCouncil.
3. This last point came from a discussion the pioneers of the Accenture Baltimore community and the Executive Director Jackie Trunce of Back On My Feet (www.backonmyfeet.org) had about other tangible ways people and organizations can get involved in the NPO without directly supporting the cause. The challenge is to come up with a list of tangible ways people can get involved, with less commitment, broader opportunities to use different skill sets in diverse areas of interest. This expands the quantify of individuals who can get involved thus expanding and deepening the relationship with organizations through engagement with their people.

The question is left what else is missing in NPO leadership both at a board level as well as at an executive level?