Nonprofit governance, writes David Renz, mostly happens outside of the board room at more macro levels but we pay precious little attention to that in our unending conversations about how to improve our boards. Similarly, in the Beyond the Board Statement webinar, the presenters argue that who is not yet in your board room counts enormously. Finally Dr. Nicholas Harvey points to what needs to be done at that higher macro level of governance if we would elevate ourselves to live in it with purpose right now!
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The persistent whiteness of nonprofit boards clearly makes many in the sector complicit in perpetuating institutionalized racism, so how do nonprofits break through and begin to make meaningful change in this area? It takes a change of culture—a change in the ways that nonprofits think about their work and who is the “we,” and building a team that champions the change. But all of that is within reach.
In this second part of a two-part series, nationally renowned board and equity consultants Vernetta Walker and Robin Stacia answer participants’ questions about how to transform a board so it embraces a racial equity agenda.
The article “Reframing Governance” was initially published in the Nonprofit Quarterly in 2006 to identify and discuss the implications of what I then perceived as a new form of nonprofit governance emerging in our communities—a form of governance that operated beyond the level of individual boards in individual nonprofit organizations and was reshaping many dimensions of nonprofit governance. I was intrigued with the growth of multiorganizational nonprofit initiatives emerging to address complex community issues and needs that outstripped the scale and significance of the usual forms of partnerships and collaborative initiatives, and, in particular, highlighted the emergence of a new level of governance integral to them.
This phenomenon has continued to grow and elaborate exponentially as increasingly larger networks of public-serving organizations (nonprofit and governmental)—often labeled cross-sector collaborations1 or collective impact initiatives2—emerge to address in new and more powerful ways the most complex and wicked of our communities’ compelling needs and problems. Further, fueled by the rapid expansion of a myriad of increasingly sophisticated digital technologies and applications, these initiatives have become nearly ubiquitous across all continents. But what does that mean for today’s nonprofits and boards and governance?
Racial injustice rears its ugly head in a profound and undeniable way, and we react, expressing our collective outrage with protests and calls for justice. But then, all too often, after a time, the public writ large goes back to the same apathetic hegemony that created the problem.
With nothing substantively changed, the cycle repeats: more outrages, more protests, and little enduring change in our racial body politic. Why does it appear that opportunities to bring about enduring societal transformation seem to elude our grasp? How many more people need to die needlessly? When will enough be enough? My aim is to provide insights as to how we can accomplish sustainable policy change for justice and freedom by acknowledging and working with the rhythms of the struggle.
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