Purpose Driven Board Leadership
Photo by Natalie Pedigo on Unsplash
It’s not everyday that you stumble across an article where you shout “yes!” multiple times while reading it. Anne did that for us in her recent four principles of purpose-driven board leadership article. Here’s some of the ideas we love and how it relates to collectivity’s approach to board development:
Purpose Before Organization
A nonprofit’s board role is to advance the purpose of the organization, which at some points, may not be what’s best for the organization itself. One could imagine a purpose-driven board of an economic development organization transferring a program to another organization led-by and serving the Black community members that share lived experience with program participants. At Collectivity, our driving purpose is that all families have stability in Minnesota, this purpose drives who we seek to work with and support. We believe that healthy communities where families thrive require purposeful action, even if it’s not in the self-interest of a particular person or organization. When we do consulting, your organization is always our priority, second only to what is in the best interest of the community at large. Luckily, all of our clients feel the same about community as priority!
Respect for Ecosystem
Great boards conceptualize their organization’s role in the ecosystem of the community, recognizing the other players, interdependencies, and what our organization brings to the larger ecosystem. Purpose-driven boards avoid self-serving choices that extract from the ecosystem, but also, on a more positive note, boards can use this ecosystem lens to answer the question: “What are the unique resources and energy we’re generating and investing in our ecosystem?” One example of this is the TeachMN 2020 initiative headed up by our client MNEEP. Collectivity has conducted strategy sessions with nearly 40 nonprofits to help each organization understand how their unique assets are contributing to the shared purpose of ensuring that the composition of teachers reflect the diversity of the students in MN. Helping individual nonprofits that are working anywhere from teacher recruitment, leadership development to support see themselves in the larger ecosystem, in partnership with our coalition clients, brings us joy.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Equity Mindset + Authorized Voice and Power
One of our core values at Collectivity is equity, we recognize that we’re on a journey to develop an equity mindset. Part of that mindset is: “Whose voices are we listening to?” and “How do we define power?” One of our clients, the xChange, is a coalition of nonprofits doing economic development on the East Side of St. Paul (the xChange) who have made a commitment to an anti-racist lens to their economic development collaboration work. They also are turning to their job seekers voices to create new forms of power that may not be currently available during economic challenges in the pandemic. Their generative approach to advancing equitable employment on the East Side flips a deficit mindset of racism which “defers dreams” to a generative, asset-based approach to co-creating economic development opportunities with job seekers directly, through their work called “Dreams Pursued”. The partners of xChange are exemplifying attention to the full ecosystem as well as centering the voices and dreams of job seekers to generate power, using an equity mindset.
Co-create with your board
Anne cites “Some believe boards are too flawed to be a part of the solution, but many more are hungry to enable boards to be the leadership bodies they need to be to advance and accelerate the social sector's potential for positive impact.” What’s your board’s appetite? At Collectivity, we also believe that a board can be a part of a positive impact, and there’s so much work to be done. We can’t wait to talk more about it with you!
Please feel free to call us at 651-276-5775 or fill out this form, we’d be delighted to set up a call and discuss your needs.
