One of the most important aspects of succeeding as a volunteer and making a meaningful contribution to an organization is understanding your own motivation for volunteering. Many well-intentioned people carry with them unconscious expectations of what a particular volunteer experience should provide for them. Leaving these expectations uncovered, unexamined and unchallenged is one of the surest ways of winding up frustrated and burnt out. It’s also one of the surest ways of hurting the very organization or cause that you're trying to help. 

If you’ve ever volunteered on a non-profit board, you’ve likely seen the destructive results of directors’ unconscious and unchallenged expectations. They’re often what prompt board members to behave in irrational ways. They may dismiss opposing viewpoints or new ideas out-of-hand, resist efforts to gather quantitative data about an organization’s activities or target market, or reject policies or procedures that might clarify board and staff roles. They may even sabotage the efforts of staff, suppliers or other volunteers in service of their unspoken expectations. In most cases, they won't even realize that they're doing this and that their behavior is doing both the organization and the people it serves a grave disservice.

When the role for which you’re volunteering is to provide leadership, you owe it to yourself and others to do this in a conscious way. This is essential if your goal is to act in the best interests of the organization as a whole and the population it serves, even if these interests don’t in any way dovetail with your own. Self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management and a willingness to engage in honest and ongoing self-reflection are traits that characterize virtually all board members who make meaningful contributions to the advancement of their organizations. They don't expect a pay-off for the time and energy they spend volunteering. They understand that they're there to give, not to get.  They have the courage to be honest with themsleves when they aren't operating from this higher plane. In short, they're willing to let the challenge of giving transform them in ways that transcend money and power.

Destructive motivators for serving on a volunteer board
Generally speaking, if you’re serving on a volunteer board for any of the following reasons, you are likely to be dissatisfied with your volunteer experience:
-Advance your career
-Gain resume experience
-Expand your circle of acquaintances to include more individuals in positions of power
-Leave your mark on an organization, industry or sector
-Get credit for your ideas
-Exercise leadership in ways you can’t in your professional career or personal life
-Increase your influence in the community
-Influence the direction of an organization or industry
-Influence the direction of public policy concerning an industry or sector
-Influence public perceptions of an industry, sector or organization

But aren’t these the main reasons why most people volunteer? Yes, unfortunately it is, but the real question is why so many people have made the assumption that it is acceptable to expect precious donor and member dollars to be used to facilitate the personal or professional agendas of individual volunteers. If any of the above factors are driving your decision to serve on a board or your actions as a board member—either consciously or unconsciously—you will be diminishing the organization from your first day at the boardroom table. Please, do the organization and the people it serves a favor and stay home.

Constructive motivators for serving on a volunteer board
If you come to serve on a volunteer board as a result of the following motivators, congratulations, you are exactly the kind of person the non-profit, association and community sectors need more of:
-You have been deeply moved by a societal challenge that has not yet been fully addressed and you’re willing to learn all that you can about it, so that you can be of use in finding solutions.
-You have nothing left to prove personally or professionally, only a heartfelt desire to give so that you leave the world a better place.
-You have resources that you wish to commit to improving society or helping people, even if it’s only in one small way.
-You delight in learning from and collaborating with those whose strengths, skills and life experiences differ significantly from your own.
-It gives you pleasure to see others succeed in ways you couldn’t ever have done yourself.
 
The bottome line? The best directors aren’t always the best educated, most experienced or most results-driven. In fact, great boards need process-oriented individuals as much as they do results-driven ones. Sincerity, humility, integrity and faith in people are often better predictors of effectiveness, longevity and satisfaction in board volunteers. A commitment to organizational sustainability and long-term growth is essential, as are patience, perseverance and the ability to cope with and to accept complexity.  Most of all, volunteer board members need to have the willingness and self-awareness  to move beyond traditional power-based and transactional ways of interacting with others as that is what true philanthropy is all about.

For workshops on this subject and self-development exercises you can share with your team, please contact The Association Expert at 1-877-685-4288.

Ensuring that your association has a compelling vision, not  just for itself as an organization, but for the industry or sector it
represents is one of the most important things you’ll do as a volunteer board member. Do it well and your contribution to the advancement of industry will  be felt for decades to come, inspiring and empowering future generations of entrepreneurs. Do it poorly and your industry can quickly become less relevant to consumers and less appealing to investors. Declining levels of association  membership are usually a strong indicator that the board either hasn’t developed or hasn’t communicated a vision for the future that resonates with the members. The strategies listed below are just a few of the options available to an association board that isn’t living up to its full leadership potential. It will usually take a combination of approaches to overcome the vision-impairment challenge.
 
1)  Make sure all directors understand the role of an industry association  board
Just because someone heads up a successful enterprise doesn’t mean they automatically know what their role as an industry association director is. Ensure that each director understands what the organization’s mission is, has a good sense of the organization's history and of his or her obligation to create new opportunities for all of the association’s members, not just those of a certain size or in a certain location or following a specific business model.

2)  Encourage directors to continually evaluate their own expectations
Associations of all kinds suffer when board volunteers look to their involvement in the organization to meet personal needs such as gaining resume experience, enhancing their own profile or advancing a certain agenda with respect to regulatory changes. The interests of the  membership as a whole, both now and in the future, always have to be each director’s primary focus. When individual agendas or a desire for recognition are allowed to prevail, the range of possibilities the board will consider becomes too narrow to be effective.
 
3)  Do less and think more
Vision, leadership and groundbreaking ideas will always be in short supply at the board level if board members are spending time and energy on the wrong things. If the bulk of their time is spent on "administrivia" or short-term "projects," insufficient time and attention will be allocated to expanding the organization’s knowledge of the factors affecting its members. A first step to tackling this problem is for the board chairs to start monitoring how the board as a whole and individual board volunteers spend their time. You can inexpensively outsource most any task involving handling money, data or member communications, but there is no subsistute for volunteers who are focused on representing members' interests at the board table. 

4) Foster a learning culture at all levels of the organization 
Knowledge inspires imagination and ultimately, vision. Many small and fledgling associations use a working board structure. Each board member takes on a different task or role and engages his or her contacts both within and outside of the organization to make their project a success. Larger associations tend to focus on governance and making sure the organization’s policies are sufficient to ensure sound staff performance relative to predetermined goals. Both models leave volunteers at risk of becoming so consumed by specifics that they do not keep enhancing their knowledge of the industry, beyond their immediate sphere of experience. A learning board commits to both continuous learning and to continuous sharing what it learns with the membership at large. The learning board understands that members with a broader vision will result in a better future for the industry as a whole. 
 
5)  Acknowledge the underlying cause of past mistakes
There is perhaps nothing so toxic to the vision of an industry association board than reluctance to admit and truly understand past mistakes. Volunteer board members have a tendency to assume that because the faces around the board room table or in the office have changed, the organization’s output will as well. However, if an organization’s vision or values have been unclear in the past, this is most likely reflected in the organization’s policies (or lack thereof) and the association’s performance will be less than optimal, even if the current board, staff and suppliers are great. Never settle for serving on a board that goes from crisis to crisis, simply because everyone is too polite to confront past mistakes. What isn't acknowledged can't ever be fixed.

6)  Focus on the mission
Mission statements and organizational efforts to develop mission statements are often the butt of jokes; however, crafting a concise statement of the organization’s mission can be a good way of focusing the board’s attention on what’s really important. At minimum, an association should have in writing and periodically revisit and reaffirm the following:
-Its vision for the industry or sector
-Mission of the organization
-Values or principles that guide the organization’s decisions and actions
More than just PR tools, these items are vital guidelines for organizational performance. In most cases, the best way to develop or revise them is to engage an outside professional with strong facilitation skills and experience working with organizations of your association’s own size and scope.

Please contact The Association Expert if you need customized board member orientation manuals, training or other resources to help your board of directors overcome leadership challenges.