Before Recruiting Diverse Board Members, Examine Who Holds Power

Nonprofit leaders keep asking me where they will find the next generation of diverse board talent. My question is what those leaders will be allowed to change once they arrive. In this piece, I outline concrete steps boards can take to ensure diverse members have real opportunities to shape organizational decision-making and to translate good intentions into meaningful progress.

In my board service and consulting work, I hear the concern from executives and grassroots activists alike. They worry about recruiting successors, sustaining funding, and governing organizations whose work increasingly depends on partnerships beyond their own walls. I share those concerns. I also wonder whether another recruitment initiative will solve what troubles them.

I’ve witness organizations respond to tense board dynamics with renewed recruitment while leaving contested policies and decision-making practices unchanged. New members enter the same arrangements that frustrated their predecessors. Before declaring a leadership shortage, boards owe themselves an honest examination of what happens after someone accepts the invitation. This reflection should focus on specific areas such as who sets the agenda, how committee assignments are made, whose voices shape discussions, who is encouraged to lead or chair committees, and how input from new members is incorporated into decision-making. By reviewing these elements, boards can translate their commitment to diversity into meaningful change.

I bring to this question my experience as a former chief program officer at Bridge Alliance, a minister, and a writer on racial justice and community responsibility. Much of that work concerns how people act together when their experiences and access to power differ. A boardroom is one place those differences acquire consequences: Someone’s judgment shapes a budget; someone else’s concern never reaches the agenda.

My mentor and friend, Dr. Lilya Wagner, offers a useful starting point. Her book, Diversity and Philanthropy: Expanding the Circle of Giving, examines how culture, religion, family, and tradition shape generosity. Her scholarship challenges fundraising approaches that fail to account for how different communities give.

That insight has implications for whom boards recognize as a leader. If boards define generosity chiefly by check size, the search for talent will repeatedly return to people with money and access to familiar networks.

In Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community, I use the framework acknowledge, affirm, and act to help communities address racial injustice. It can also help boards examine the distance between their stated commitments and their practices.

Start by acknowledging what recruitment requirements exclude. Financial expertise, professional contacts, and personal giving can all serve an organization well. But a substantial giving minimum also measures access to money. A nomination process limited to referrals favors people board members already know. Meetings held during working hours can keep otherwise willing candidates from serving. Less obvious forms of exclusion matter just as much: heavy reliance on organizational jargon in meetings and materials can discourage candidates who bring invaluable lived experience but lack prior boardroom exposure. Likewise, expecting new members to already have board experience may shut out promising leaders from communities who have not previously been invited into these roles.

An organization I advised initiated an “open” application process for prospective board members and scheduled meetings at non-conventional times and means. Such changes enabled participation by more people with diverse schedules and backgrounds. Thus, addressing a barrier to organizational leadership. A simple adaption executed without waiting for a new pool of candidates to appear.

Boards should also examine departures. When a member resigns, ask what assignments that person received, whether colleagues took their concerns seriously, and whether disagreement carried a personal cost. An exit can tell a board something its recruitment materials will never reveal.

Affirming people’s contributions requires taking their knowledge seriously in decisions. A parent who has navigated public services may recognize a problem in a proposed program that other members miss. An organizer’s community relationships may help explain why an apparently sound initiative has little support. Seek those abilities deliberately and assess them with the care given to financial or legal expertise.

Fundraising expectations deserve the same attention. Wagner addressed board participation in her article, “The Road Least Traveled: Board Roles in Fundraising.” Boards should prepare members for that work through training and specific assignments. Some can contribute substantial gifts. Others can introduce supporters, cultivate relationships, thank donors, or explain the organization’s work to audiences it has struggled to reach. Expectations should reflect individual capacity while making everyone responsible for helping sustain the mission.

Action becomes harder when it requires changing who decides. My work at Bridge Alliance and my writing about cooperation across differences inform my conviction that shared purpose must withstand disagreement. Board members cannot reasonably invite a broader range of perspectives and expect every established practice to survive unchallenged.

Recruiting community members for voting board positions and committee leadership gives them a chance to shape decisions. An organization might also authorize a community committee to allocate a defined program budget. Such arrangements need clear limits, reporting expectations, and a dispute-resolution process. For example, boards can outline roles, decision-making authority, and boundaries in a written charter or committee description, revisit expectations during regular check-ins, and establish reporting procedures to provide updates to the full board. Shared authority requires preparation and oversight; ambiguity leaves everyone guessing about who is accountable. Funding decisions offer an immediate test.

When a prospective grant promises expansion, whose assessment of the workload counts? Do people familiar with delivering or receiving services help evaluate the proposal? Boards need to know the administrative demands, uncovered expenses, and obligations that remain after funding ends. Their willingness to hear an inconvenient answer may prevent an expensive mistake.

Funders can support this work by paying for leadership development, sound financial systems, and community participation. Flexible funding gives organizations room to act on what they learn, including when they learn that an attractive grant would pull them away from their purpose.

At the next board meeting, put a recruitment requirement or a reserved decision on the agenda. Examine whom the current practice excludes, why it exists, and whether it still serves the mission. Agree on a change and make a plan to revisit its impact at a future meeting by adding a follow-up review to the agenda. This encourages accountability and continuous improvement. That is work a board can begin before filling another vacancy. Wagner’s scholarship asks us to recognize generosity we have overlooked. Boards should be equally willing to recognize leadership outside their customary circles.

The next generation is already organizing, giving, caring, and solving problems in our communities. The invitation to board service becomes credible when those leaders can help determine what happens next.

Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, and scholar-practitioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.