Brilliant Governance: Insights on Becoming the Board Member that Everyone Wants

By R. Craig Chase

At my company, Chase Advancement, we have a saying that “No one is born a board member”.

Springing out of over 20 years of work with the boards of prolife faith-based organizations comes this collection of articles written on various subjects intended to assist board members to be the guides to their organizations that God has called them to be. Subject matter addressed includes...
The importance of owning your bylaws;
Dealing with the most common spiritual attacks;
Guiding principles of recruiting board members;
Discerning the role of the board and the role of the Executive;
Why boards should be investors and not hoarders;
Basic principles of fundraising every board member should know;
Thoughts on dealing with board members with strong personalities;
The greatest threat to an organization—interpersonal conflict;
Righteously compensating staff;
and much more.

“BEST TRAINING EVER“
“Craig, I cannot tell you how impressed everyone was by your teaching. I saw excitement from the board which I have never seen since I have been associated with the Center. I am so glad we took your training. One board member actually said she was going to share some of your ideas with the members of another board on which she serves. Best Training ever.”
Sally Trent, Executive Director, Hope Pregnancy Care Center, Morehead, KY

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beth Chase
• Release date: Feb 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780999792957

Book preview

Brilliant Governance

Insights on becoming the board member that everyone wants

R Craig Chase

PRO-LIFE WOMEN'S HELP ORGANIZATION EDITION

Copyright © 2019

SmashWords Edition

www.ChaseAdvancement.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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DISCLAIMER

Any anecdotes contained in this book are solely for illustrative purposes and do not portray specific people or situations.

This book contains ideas, opinions, and perceptions of the author. The author disclaims any and all responsibility for loss, risk, liability, personal or otherwise, which may be incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents written in this book. This book covers general information regarding subjects intended to provide helpful information to those who lead faith-based nonprofit corporations. The author, publisher, and/or other persons associated with this book are not licensed attorneys. Nothing contained in this book is, nor should be deemed to be, legal advice. The reader should consult with an attorney prior to implementing any of the concepts or ideas in this book.

Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

For all her help, encouragement, patience and prodding, I want to thank my best friend, hero, co-laborer and wife, Beth.

ALSO

Without the prayers and awesome support of my mother, Vivian Arthur, this book would not have been possible. Thanks, mom.

PREFACE

This book is a collection of articles written by the author over a period of about ten years. These articles were published in various venues and were addressed primarily to leaders of pregnancy help organizations.

While the attempt was made to address the subject matter factually and scripturally, the author never hesitated to offer opinions gleaned from over 20 years of working directly with the very pregnancy help organizations to whom this book was written. Whenever opinions are expressed, the wise leader reading this work will account for them as such—opinions.

Brilliant—Possessing and demonstrating exceptional intelligence, talent, skill, ability. To be brilliant is to be excellent, superb, inspired, exceptional.

Governance—Taking responsibility for and providing oversight of an organization. Possessing authority as well as accountability for a group such as a corporation. The governors or governing body are the final authority.

CONTENTS

DISCLAIMER

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

A Band of Brothers (& Sisters)

Recruiting for the board

CHAPTER TWO

Whose Job Is It?

The board’s role vs. the Executive’s role

CHAPTER THREE

Your Bylaws—Are They YOURS?

Good governance starts with good bylaws.

CHAPTER FOUR

Competing for funds— and WINNING

Basic fundraising concepts

CHAPTER FIVE

Board Bullies

Dealing with controlling board members

CHAPTER SIX

Your Main Threat

The danger of unresolved conflict

CHAPTER SEVEN

Don’t Allow This Evil at Your Center

Righteously compensating staff

CHAPTER EIGHT

Parable Lessons

The investing board

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

My wife, Beth, and I have been involved in the pregnancy center movement for nearly four decades. We have been involved in almost every area from entry-level volunteers to board members to board chairman to President/CEO to where we are today as trainers and consultants. We have served as volunteers, employees of two pregnancy center organizations and now as independent consultants.

Aside from the training that we love to provide for staff, we also have a burden to invest training in the boards of directors of pregnancy help organizations. By and large, these volunteers to their boards have similar desires to serve as the paid and volunteer staff over whom they provide governance. Most are caring, dedicated, sacrificing and sincerely desire to serve with excellence. There is one glaring difference, however, and that difference is in the amount of training the average staff member receives compared to that of the average board member. Staff usually are more extensively trained. But just as staff need adequate training, so do board members.

In our world of providing governance training, we have a simple mantra of, No one is born a board member. Board members need to be taught their craft just like anyone else in the organization. As we have witnessed this need that boards have for training, it has become a growing focus of our work.

One of the challenges that has surfaced over the years as we have delivered one and two-day training sessions for boards is determining what to teach; there is so much. Although it can vary from one board member to another, there is always a limit to how much one can absorb and retain over a short period of time. Thus, there is an ever-present need to focus on only the most important subjects.

Unfortunately, selecting the major topics is only the first hurdle to be vanquished. The next dilemma with which we must continuously wrestle is how much time to devote to each subject. What makes this difficult for me is that there are a number of topics about which I find I am quite passionate and could teach an hour or two when there may only be minutes allotted.

The frustration of needing to shorten my teaching on various subjects because of the constraints of time is one of the motivations that drove me to write and publish the articles that have been compiled in this book. It has been so refreshing and delightful to have the freedom to fully develop my thoughts on the subjects about which I am passionate without feeling so limited by the clock.

Though I wrote these articles strongly believing in the importance of the information shared, this effort was never intended as an exhaustive treatise on everything one needs to know to be a board member. With that said, however, it is my belief, my hope and my prayer that reading these articles will go a long way toward assisting the reader to become a board member that everyone wants.

CHAPTER ONE

A Band of Brothers (& Sisters)

Recruiting for the board

In tackling a subject like Board Recruitment, I think it is essential to start at the beginning. By that I mean we need to lay a critical foundation on which everything else will be built. In simplest terms that foundation would be called salvation, redemption, and the finished work of Christ.

DOCTRINE ANYONE?

Let’s go on a quick doctrinal review. This is as abbreviated as I can make it.

When we were born onto this planet, my reading of the Bible teaches me, we were born onto a battlefield where a life and death spiritual battle constantly rages. This is the nature of the spiritual world—THE REAL WORLD. From here the news gets worse because we are also told that we were born onto the losing side, Satan’s realm, born into his family, part of his cohort, whatever term you want to use, but we were HIS—sold out to Satan by Adam. It was hopeless. We were dead in our sins. Lost.

Then a miracle happened. But God… Eph. 2:4-6. Read it. Jesus came and Paul clearly teaches that He provided the only way out of Satan’s family (Jesus told them, You are of your father, the Devil.) and when He hung on the cross, we were in Him. When He was pulled off the cross and buried, we were in Him. When He was raised from the dead and as He sits at the right hand of the Father, we are in Him.

What a miracle!! We are in God’s family. Children of God, siblings of Jesus, joint heirs. You can’t make this stuff up—it’s too amazing! Jesus provided the only way possible for us to die out of the losing side and be reborn onto the winning side.

AND THE POINT IS…

I am getting to a point, and the point is this. Yes, thank God, we have moved to the winning side in this war. BUT THERE IS STILL A WAR! I often wonder if we Christians think the war is about getting people