"Should Your Church Start a Nonprofit?" by Joy Skjegstad
Enrollment in a 20-year-old church preschool program grows, but tuition no longer covers expenses. An afterschool program that once served 20 children now serves 200. A congregation wants to do development work in Haiti but needs support from other churches.
It may be time to start a nonprofit if church programs such as these have become like caged birds -- the policies, structure and limited resources of the church prevent the programs from growing and thriving. The congregation just can't provide the funding, volunteers, management expertise or even a facility that will sustain the program and move it forward.
To really "fly," the church may need to set up the program as its own nonprofit organization. In my work as a speaker, teacher and consultant in the nonprofit management and ministry development field, I've found that many churches with schools or preschools consider this model, and it is also commonly used for community development activities such as affordable housing, youth development, job training and health clinics.
This path does involve some risks, of course, but for many congregations the advantages of the nonprofit outweigh the disadvantages. Using examples -- some real, some hypothetical -- I will explore some of the issues involved, which are explained in more depth in my book, Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church.
Let's say First Church of Everytown, USA, has been running a preschool out of its basement for 20 years. As the preschool grows in popularity, the number of students increases. While in previous years, the preschool has been fully funded by tuition and gifts from church members, that's no longer the case.
A nonprofit entity could be very useful in this situation, for several reasons: Because the preschool is growing, it needs outside resources (like grant funds) to sustain it. Tuition revenue has actually declined (even though the number of students has grown) because many new families need scholarships. The church is committed to providing care to whoever needs it, regardless of income. Because outside funders are generally more receptive to supporting a separate nonprofit than a church, a nonprofit may allow the preschool to get the money it needs to grow.
As a nonprofit, the preschool also can set up its own board of directors instead of being governed by the church board. The nonprofit board can focus on preschool business (rather than church business), and the preschool can recruit board members with expertise in early education or nonprofit management in addition to representation from the church. Similarly, a housing program may need "governors" with expertise in real estate acquisition and property management.
Often, congregations know it is time to consider this model when a church-based program has become bigger and more complex than when it was founded. Just imagine that an afterschool program that started 10 years ago as a gathering of 20 kids twice a week has grown into a full-fledged youth development program that operates 15 hours a week, providing academic support, sports and arts programs to 200 youth in grades K through 12. Such a large program may have outgrown the small or medium-sized congregation with which it originated.
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CONGREGATIONS, INNOVATION, CONGREGATIONAL INNOVATION
"Should your church start a nonprofit?"
A successful church program can become a “caged bird” -- constrained by the structure of a single congregation. By starting a separate nonprofit, a congregation can let its programs fly, writes Joy Skjegstad.
Enrollment in a 20-year-old church preschool program grows, but tuition no longer covers expenses. An afterschool program that once served 20 children now serves 200. A congregation wants to do development work in Haiti but needs support from other churches.
It may be time to start a nonprofit if church programs such as these have become like caged birds -- the policies, structure and limited resources of the church prevent the programs from growing and thriving. The congregation just can’t provide the funding, volunteers, management expertise or even a facility that will sustain the program and move it forward.
To really “fly,” the church may need to set up the program as its own nonprofit organization. In my work as a speaker, teacher and consultant in the nonprofit management and ministry development field, I’ve found that many churches with schools or preschools consider this model, and it is also commonly used for community development activities such as affordable housing, youth development, job training and health clinics.
This path does involve some risks, of course, but for many congregations the advantages of the nonprofit outweigh the disadvantages. Using examples -- some real, some hypothetical -- I will explore some of the issues involved, which are explained in more depth in my book “Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church(link is external).”
Let’s say First Church of Everytown, USA, has been running a preschool out of its basement for 20 years. As the preschool grows in popularity, the number of students increases. While in previous years, the preschool has been fully funded by tuition and gifts from church members, that’s no longer the case.
A nonprofit entity could be very useful in this situation, for several reasons: Because the preschool is growing, it needs outside resources (like grant funds) to sustain it. Tuition revenue has actually declined (even though the number of students has grown) because many new families need scholarships. The church is committed to providing care to whoever needs it, regardless of income. Because outside funders are generally more receptive to supporting a separate nonprofit than a church, a nonprofit may allow the preschool to get the money it needs to grow.
As a nonprofit, the preschool also can set up its own board of directors instead of being governed by the church board. The nonprofit board can focus on preschool business (rather than church business), and the preschool can recruit board members with expertise in early education or nonprofit management in addition to representation from the church. Similarly, a housing program may need “governors” with expertise in real estate acquisition and property management.
Often, congregations know it is time to consider this model when a church-based program has become bigger and more complex than when it was founded. Just imagine that an afterschool program that started 10 years ago as a gathering of 20 kids twice a week has grown into a full-fledged youth development program that operates 15 hours a week, providing academic support, sports and arts programs to 200 youth in grades K through 12. Such a large program may have outgrown the small or medium-sized congregation with which it originated.
I recently met with a congregation that is establishing a nonprofit to do community development work in Haiti. One of its goals is to attract funding and volunteers from other congregations, which was proving difficult when the project was organized under their church alone. By establishing a nonprofit, the congregation is helping persuade those other churches that the vision for the project extends far beyond the work of one church -- it requires a large group of Christians to do the work.
Having outlined some advantages of church-based nonprofits, I must note that this model is not for every congregation, and there are some disadvantages.
Some congregations find the additional reporting and administration required distracts from their ministry. One of my students once said: “All I really want to do is work with the families in our neighborhood. I don’t want to spend my time working with a board and fundraising. It’s not what I’m good at.”
Separate nonprofits also can create a distance between the program and the church. Sometimes the nonprofit drifts away from the faith focus of the church. (One way to avoid “faith drift” is to structure the nonprofit to stay connected to the church by requiring at least some board members to be from the church.)
Another concern is that church members may feel less ownership for programs under a separate nonprofit. They may assume that outside funders, volunteers and nonprofit staff can provide everything the programs need. As a result, donations of time and money from church members may decline if the work of the church nonprofit isn’t kept in front of the congregation.
The church-nonprofit model has great potential for helping congregations extend their programming and outreach by taking advantage of money, volunteers and expertise outside the congregation. That said, it’s important that each congregation undertakes an intentional process of weighing this model's benefits and risks.
Monday, October 5, 2015
In Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church, Joy Skjegstad outlines the step-by-step procedures for setting up a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization connected to a congregation using simple, easy-to-understand terminology and plenty of examples from churches that have already taken on this task. Whether a congregation is setting up new program or has an established nonprofit that needs to be restructured or redefined, congregations will find helpful guidance in this practical, experience-based book.
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Ideas that Impact: Learning from Nonprofits"Learning from Nonprofits: How Church Boards Can Benefit from Secular Practices" by Dan Hotchkiss
What is the best use of the board's time? All nonprofit boards struggle with this problem. The literature on nonprofit management abounds with good advice, but good advice and good intentions are not enough. To police themselves, boards need clear boundaries, definitions, and instructions.Read more »
The board meeting has already been underway for two and a half hours when the chairperson stifles a yawn and glances at her watch: 9:30 p.m. “Does anyone have any new business?” she asks.
“I have something,” says one board member. “Several church school teachers have complained to me about the back door. Without a key, you can’t set it so it opens from the outside. We ought to fix that, and while we’re at it we should consider a glass door to reduce the risk of hitting a child when we open it.”
“Is this really a board issue?” asks another board member. “Shouldn’t we leave it to the building committee, or the church school staff, or the custodian?”
“I think it is the board’s responsibility for several reasons: First, a glass door can easily cost $2,000. Second, this year’s building budget is already spent or committed. Third, as board members we’re all personally responsible for children’s safety. And fourth, the Building Committee reports to us, the church school is under the authority of the Religious Education Department, and the custodian reports to the administrator. Only the board is over them all, so only we can choose to delegate this to one of them.”
And they’re off. Someone knows a contractor. Someone has a funny story about doors. Someone read somewhere that glass doors are vulnerable to burglaries. At 10:15, a member moves to refer the question to the Building Committee with instructions to come back if the cost would add more than $2,000 to the building budget. After much debate and one amendment the board approves the motion, 8 to 2.
What is wrong here? From the point of view of bylaws and legality, probably nothing. The law gives governing boards total power over business matters large and small, which gives them the right to “micromanage” to their heart’s content.
Effects of Micromanagement
Most board members know micromanaging is bad. Boards criticize themselves all the time for long meetings, trivial agenda items, and an inability to delegate: “We should be making policy, not managing the operation.” Staff and volunteers chafe at the need to bring projects back to the board at each point along the way. A seemingly innocuous report can be a red flag in the board’s face, provoking it to meddle.
Board members don’t like it, either: A year or two of late-night meetings about door latches, complaints from members, reports from staff and committees, and “policy” decisions that address one-time events will drain most board members of the passion that caused them to say yes in the first place.
Board-member burnout is one effect of board micromanagement. Even worse is that boards mired in micromanagement miss the chance to do really important work. Most people who join a congregation’s board hope to contribute to the spiritual lives of others, to help discern God’s will for the congregation, and to make a lasting difference in the congregation’s life. In frustration at the triviality of their agendas, boards adjust budget items, second-guess staff decisions, and receive an endless stream of supplicants. But the sense of power this activity creates is mostly illusory.
Why do boards slip into micromanaging even when they know they shouldn’t? One reason, of course, is that they can. A second is that the line between “micro” and “macro” is subjective. Too few boards have clear, shared criteria for choosing which issues to spend valuable board time on. Many simply deal with every issue anybody brings to them, but even those that try to discriminate have difficulty drawing a clear line.
A Bold Proposal
What is the best use of the board’s time? All nonprofit boards struggle with this problem. The literature on nonprofit management abounds with good advice, but good advice and good intentions are not enough. To police themselves, boards need clear boundaries, definitions, and instructions.
Enter John Carver, governance guru of the nonprofit world and author of Boards that Make a Difference. Carver is not content to help boards improve; he challenges them to quit most of their current work and start “making a difference.” The key difference boards can make is not to direct or help the staff but to represent and connect the institution to its “owners,” articulate its basic rationale for being, and set limits for its staff and volunteers. A Carver board spends most of its time thinking not about what the organization is doing but about why it should exist at all.
Carver’s “Policy Governance” model is widely read and debated, and sometimes even adopted by leaders in secular nonprofits, school boards, and city councils throughout the English-speaking world. Among leaders of most congregations, Carver’s model is still little known. A dozen or so Unitarian Universalist congregations have adopted Policy Governance over the last decade, and this article is based in part on their experiences.
Means and Ends
At the heart of Carver’s model is the distinction between means and ends. Ends, as Carver uses the word, are the basic purposes for which the congregation (or other organization) exists. In one congregation, an ends policy might be “that the hungry will be fed.” Another congregation might embrace the end that the children of members will “understand and identify with Jewish tradition and pass it on to their own children.”
Unlike many congregational mission statements, ends policies do not say what the congregation plans to do. They do not talk about Sunday school, buildings, or even worship. Ends say how lives will be changed as a result of congregational activity. If ends policies refer to members of the congregation, it is to discuss their roles as customers, clients, or beneficiaries—not as volunteers, decision-makers, or voters.
In Carver’s words, ends policies specify “what benefit to which people at what cost.”
Means include all organizational choices that are not ends. Hiring, supervising, and dismissing staff are means decisions. Budgeting, investing, raising and spending money are means activities. Decisions about programs, building maintenance, baptisms, weddings, worship style, and how to vote on national church resolutions are all means issues—not because they are unimportant, but because they talk about what we are going to do, not about how people’s lives will change.
A means issue does not become an ends issue because it is expensive or important. (Choosing a minister, for example, is a means issue.) Means issues are still means issues even if they require a long sequence of steps to accomplish, such as the construction of a building. An ends issue is about those who benefit from the congregation’s work, not those who do it.
What Policy Boards Do and Don’t Do
At this point, many people expect to hear that the board deals with ends policies and the staff with means issues. The Carver model is not quite so simple. Defining and prescribing ends is the board’s main preoccupation (Carver calls it the board’s “obsession”). The staff—a term that includes volunteers who act as staff—spend most of their time selecting and applying means. But means and ends are not so neatly separable. Within the large ends set by the board, staff members make ends choices every day. Which hungry shall we feed? Which Jewish traditions shall we emphasize with nine-year-olds? The board, in turn, sets limits on the means that are permitted.
In every area, the board enacts the largest policies and leaves the smaller ones to others. Carver compares this to a set of nested mixing bowls. You can control the whole set if you grab hold of the outmost bowl; the others can still slosh back and forth, but only within fixed boundaries. If the board wants to control events more closely, it adopts policies at the next-smaller level, and so on. Using this discipline, boards often are surprised by how much latitude they are willing to leave to staff.
Several rules govern how a Carver board makes policy:
- Policies are always made from the outside in. The largest policies must be complete before moving in to the next level.
- Policies never are adopted to control specific events. A board would never vote to change the locks on the church’s doors; it would vote only to define the level of risk it forbids staff to accept. Events may, at most, raise the question, “Do we need a policy on this?” Until we do, the staff are free—and required—to deal with all events within existing policies.
- Policies are all addressed to the chief executive officer (CEO), not to individual staff members. It is not fair for a board to hold the CEO accountable for staff performance when it directs, rewards, or punishes staff members directly at all levels. Who plays the role of chief executive in a church setting is an interesting question. Most, but not all, of the Unitarian Universalist churches that have adopted Carver have assigned the CEO role to a team (e.g., the minister, the administrator, and one lay leader). A CEO team requires more complicated policies to deal with intra-team conflicts and succession planning, but reportedly has worked quite well in many cases.
- When defining ends policies, the board speaks positively, prescribing what good the congregation will do for what people at what cost: The city will become more just, the poor will live in better houses, and so on.
- The board also speaks positively when it writes its own means policies: We will meet monthly, keep minutes, and speak with one voice.
- Means policies for staff are worded negatively, prohibiting those means the board will not accept. “The staff may not steal money, engage in race discrimination, abuse church members, or buy real estate without a vote of the congregation” are examples of means policies for staff.
- The last rule is the oddest. Negatively worded staff means policies often resort to convoluted double negatives like “…shall not operate without a policy prohibiting discrimination…” Such words can be confusing, and the proscriptive “thou shalt not” form puts some people off.
Where the negative becomes a positive is in the lives of those who lead and manage programs. Having been told clearly what the boundaries are, leaders know that they are free to innovate and respond flexibly to changing opportunities.
The board, meanwhile, while it has relinquished its old habit of controlling every item that captures its attention, gains a more important power. Many boards try to feel powerful by adjusting a budget item or saying yes or no to a proposal, but such actions usually make little difference in the long run. A board that articulates in written policies the ends to be achieved and the means to be avoided controls many decisions at once. By articulating principles, a board guides many independent choices that together move the congregation closer to its ends.
Congregations are Different
By now it may be obvious that congregations find the Carver model (and perhaps good governance in general) harder to implement successfully than other nonprofits do. Clear role definitions are hard to achieve when everyone plays multiple roles. In a mental health clinic, staff and trustees are rarely also clients. But in churches and synagogues, role confusion is the rule, not the exception. Most board members who sing in the choir know better than to pull rank on the choir director, but not all remember to set aside personal preferences in board meetings. Most board members are active volunteers and program leaders. When confronted with a problem, they naturally offer ways to solve it rather than composing words to guide the people who will solve such problems over time.
Another difficulty congregations have in accepting Carver is that his Policy Governance model runs against so much tradition and, in some denominations, law. Carver assumes that all staff report to a CEO who is hired and fired by the board. Many larger synagogues have an executive director who functions this way—but who does not supervise the rabbi or cantor. In many congregations, the most obvious candidate for the Carver CEO role is the senior clergyperson, who may be selected by the congregation, bishop, presbytery, or some combination rather than the board alone.
Some congregations have a long list of committees that are in charge of program areas. The ambiguous relation between such committees and the staff members they relate to is a source of ineffectiveness and conflict. In place of a boss, staff members have a political constituency. The committees sometimes are there to help the staff person, but at other times must “represent the board.” Who is in charge? Such ambiguity discourages creativity and favors rigid adherence to familiar ways—as too many congregations demonstrate.
In Carver’s model the board appoints only a few committees to help it to do the board’s job. A “committee” whose job is to lead, design, or provide input to a program is part of the staff structure—and might better be called a team, ministry, or task force. The staff, and ultimately the CEO, are judged by how well programs fulfill the ends and adhere to the means set by the board. For this accountability to be both real and fair, the staff must be at liberty to accept or decline advice from committees.
Evaluation
The Carver model requires that the board evaluate the performance of the CEO only on the basis of how well the congregation achieves its ends and adheres to its means limitations. But in congregations, all leaders (and especially clergy) are evaluated based on a bewildering jumble of factors: personal attractiveness, performance skills, political finesse, theological compatibility, and on and on. It is one thing to say that evaluation will be based only on stated goals and institutional performance, but another to make it so.
Carver suggests boards considering his model first decide definitely that they will adopt it fully. This is a challenge because Policy Governance requires a great deal of study to understand. It conflicts with so much formal and informal teaching about how boards ought to operate that, in my experience, many months of reading and discussion are required to fully understand it. It is only after many repetitions of the basic concepts that the whole board begins to grasp them reliably. It is also helpful to review completed policies from similar organizations.
The board needs several copies of Carver’s book, Reinventing Your Board, which contains a basic set of policies. If possible, it is a good idea for the board to work with a consultant who is familiar with the model. Carver trains and certifies consultants, some of whom have church experience, and many other consultants work with boards using the model with varying levels of purity.
After learning the model, the first step toward adopting it is to craft means policies—the “thou shalt nots” that limit staff. Starting from the largest policies—the outer mixing bowls—the board moves inward until it is ready to say, “The CEO and staff can make all the smaller decisions that do not violate these limits.”
When the staff limitations policies are complete, the board moves on to create policies for itself, both for the conduct of its business and for its relationship to the CEO. The same mixing-bowl principle applies here, except that the smaller governance decisions are made by the board chair rather than the CEO. When the board is ready to leave all such decisions to the board chair, it is ready to start operating under the model.
What? We have no ends policies! Given the importance Carver gives to ends, it may seem odd to begin operating without them. But remember that creating and refining ends policies is the board’s main work from this point on forever. Some boards adopt the existing mission or vision statement to stand in for ends policies until they can be adopted, perhaps in a year-long rotation that will bring the board’s attention to each major ends area annually.
Board meetings now are quite different from the one we eavesdropped on at the beginning of this article. The CEO would be empowered to take action on the door lock issue on his or her own, without coming to the board at all. The building committee might well be involved, but as a work group rather than a board committee; it would work under the supervision of the CEO.
The board might, if it felt there was a need, consider adopting a new policy limiting the risks the staff may expose children to. Or it might note a concern about the staff’s protection of church property—not for immediate action, but as a flag for the annual evaluation of the CEO. The custodian’s evaluation would be handled by his or her immediate supervisor, with whatever participation the staff thinks will help it to measure the achievement of the ends and compliance with the means.
But the main part of the board’s work would not be about doors at all. It might spend most of its meeting adjusting the statement of how the congregation hopes to transform lives. In the best case, this is not an academic exercise but an effort to discern what God is calling this congregation to do and to be today and in the years to come.
Six Core Principles of Good Governance
Not every board will want to adopt Carver’s Policy Governance model. But under any system of governance, certain core principles should apply:
Don’t invite people to participate on a work crew and trap them into a deliberate body, or vice versa. Democracy is fine, but it defeats itself if every group that gathers reconsiders what has already been voted. Policy bodies should include a variety of members; task groups should include only those who are in favor of the task. Once the direction has been set through proper process, someone should be charged with getting the job done.
When delegating responsibility, clearly state the goals to be achieved and the scope of the authority granted. This principle applies to staff and volunteers as well as boards. Too often, congregations plug people into generic positions or point them in vague directions, then expect them to come back repeatedly to lead the board rehash every decision and vote every dollar. No wonder it is sometimes hard to find volunteers! It is not fair to hold someone accountable for results when the results have not bee specified, or to blame someone for violating an unstated rule. Minutes spent clarifying expectations can save hours of hesitation, duplication, and conflict in the long run.
Boards speak as a body, not as individuals. Carver rightly emphasizes that individual board members have no special authority outside board meetings. Board members often play program leadership roles as well, but need to always remember which hat they are wearing.
Boards speak through written policies. Like any human gathering, a board meeting is a cauldron of informal, nonverbal, and emotional communication. People come away from meetings with a “sense of the board” on any number of topics. Good boards make it clear that staff and others will not be expected to read the board’s mind, but must reach actions in the minutes as the final word.
Staff and volunteers need clear direction, clear limits, and maximum flexibility in choosing means. Whether or not a board decides to adopt Carver’s precise system for board policy-making, his idea of the mixing bowls is useful. The concept is similar to Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers author William Easum’s “permission-giving” style of congregational life. If the board articulates a clear ministry vision and sets limits, it will feel safe allowing staff to make the smaller choices.
The staff and volunteers should be responsible for managing their own work. The larger the congregation, the more important it is that the staff be unified and that boards and committees avoid triangulating themselves into staff work. This does not mean that the staff needs to be strongly hierarchical, or that others cannot be included in goal-setting, evaluation, conflict resolution, and decision-making, but these things should be done under the direction of the staff member who will be held responsible for the results.
Questions for Reflection:
- How does your congregation’s governing board spend its time? Take three months’ worth of minutes from a year ago or earlier (long ago enough that most of the issues discussed will have become moot). Divide your board into three teams. For each set of minutes, identify the major issues discussed, the approximate time spent, and the action or other outcome produced. When the teams re-gather, list all of the agenda items on whiteboard or newsprint. Then answer the following questions:
- How much of the board’s time was spent helping the staff (paid and volunteer) to select means? (Include all discussions of individual budget items, approvals of proposed programs, and decisions about particular events.)
- How much of the board’s time was spent limits for the staff ahead of time? How much was spent criticizing staff for violating limits the board had not articulated in advance?
- How much of the board’s time was spent refining and improving its own process, including the process for communicating and evaluating the head of staff?
- How much time did the board spend stating whose lives it intended to change and in what way? (Too many boards will find that they spent little or no time on this.)
Recommended Resources
- John Carver, Boards that Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit and Public Organizations (Jossey-Bass, 1990). Carver’s original book sets forth the theory and practice of Policy Governance.*
- John Carver and Miriam Mayhew Carver, Reinventing Your Board, A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Policy Governance (Jossey-Bass, 1997). This practical guide provides a roadmap for boards that are exploring or adopting Policy Governance. It includes a complete set of sample policies on staff limitation, governance, and board-CEO linkage, and several examples of ends policies.
- John Carver, Empowering Boards for Leadership: Redefining Excellence in Governance (Jossey-Bass, 19992). On this two-hour audiotape, John Carver makes a persuasive case for Policy Governance. The tape is an excellent resource for orienting new board members to the practice.
* Policy Governance is a registered service mark of John Carver.
*This article was published in the Spring 2005 issue of CONGREGATIONS as “Borrowing from Business”.
"Leadership Transitions: What the Nonprofit World Can Teach Us" by Donna Schaper The not-for-profit world is quite different than the world of church when it comes to leadership transitions, but congregations can learn a great deal from these organizations that is useful for navigating these times of change.
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Leadership transition is not a concern for congregations alone. The nonprofit world is also mightily interested in the subject. I had the privilege of joining a dozen nonprofit executives at the New School for Management and Urban Policy for a full semester in spring of 2008. The seminar was titled “Leading after the Founder.” It was really about being a leader who follows a leader, not just a founding leader. The subject was transition.
I call myself a nonprofit executive in a secondary sense. I am a parish pastor, but I also manage a nonprofit. Although I was the only member of the clergy in this mixed group of arts directors, and heads of social services organizations and advocacy organizations, most of whom had budgets closer to eight million than eight hundred thousand (my own operating number), a great deal of what was taught applied directly to me and the kinds of institutions I have served. The issue that bore particular resonance was how we, as leaders, create teams over generations. Are we condemned to be solo acts or are there practices that would help us create partnerships across leadership generations?
Similarities and Differences
There are many differences as well as similarities between parishes and not-for-profits. In common, they all exist for something larger than a profit, thus the apt if clumsy way of defining organizations by what they don’t do as “nonprofits.” The similarities include a lower-paid work force—often less trained for the specific tasks at hand, technologically two or three generations behind those in other organizations, and more relationally employed so that firing people is harder. They also include a certain disdain for administration, as though the how of what we do is less important than what we do. Nevertheless, there is a bricks-without-straw issue at the heart of much work that is more missional than profit-making. We don’t want “high” administrative costs, whatever they are. Parishes and not-for-profit organizations also have a common suffering: we are always behind. Who can claim to have saved the world or ended poverty? Our goals are lofty, our means of achieving them less so.
Where parishes and not-for-profits differ is mostly historical. The role of parish pastor and priest is simply longer and better known than that of the executive director. George Bernanos did not write a best-selling book called “The Diary of a Country Executive Director.” Role expectations for clergy are multifarious; for not-for-profit executive directors they are as well, but with fewer projections. Executive directors are not to represent God, keep secrets, hatch, match, or dispatch—much less attend to the mystery of everyday human existence. Executive directors do public speaking every now and then, maybe once a month. Parish pastors do it every week. Finally, the differences involve transcendent realities and our commitments to them. Executive directors are in certain ways the secular version of parish ministers.
Here I offer some reflection, gleaned from the luxurious experience of reflection on administrative leadership in a borrowed context for a term.
Generational shift is a theme in both denominational and congregational life as well as the political and not-for-profit world. In the not-for-profit world, 57 percent of executive directors are leaving by 2010, the remainder by 2020. The majority of executive directors are over fifty. A third of them are either founders or have been in the organization for more than ten years. Not-for-profit boards are composed largely of boomers as well.
Similar demographics pertain denomination by denomination. They are joined by nearly constant generational anxiety, evidenced by only the rare parish meeting where someone doesn’t bring up the “young people” and their absence in our congregations.
The length of stay in a pastorate is decreasing, too, as is the length of stay for an executive director. This pattern alone creates even more transition.
Turnover protocols, customs, and rules become very important in this context. We have only to note the tremendous successes of interim ministry and the Interim Ministry Network to underscore transition as a theme in ministry.
Approaches to Transition
The not-for-profit world is quite different than the world of church when it comes to leadership transitions. In the nonprofit world, “retiring” executives often stay on as codirectors with the new director. They also often choose their own successors. They rarely leave in full and sometimes remain on the board of directors. Thus the protocols in this world are teamwork across generations, on-the-job training of new leaders, and promoting from within. The advantages nonprofits see in these practices include retention of organizational memory, the use of trial periods to test out new leaders, and the opportunity to have former leaders share their knowledge with new ones.
In the church, we often prohibit associate or assistant pastors from moving up. Hiring from within may have advantages in not-for-profits, but it does not necessarily have them in congregations. Pastors need social capital. On the first day of any ministry, we may have the most social capital we are ever going to have. It often decreases over time as projected hopes are not realized: the church may not grow; the problem in the family may not be solved. An assistant who moves up will have no honeymoon. These realities underscore the need for pastors to name their own criteria for success and to resist projections. We are not magicians; we are pastors. Some of us have the good fortune and the skills to increase our social capital over time. Sometimes this increase comes from institutional memory and on-the-job training. In other words, moving people up from within can be a very good thing for a healthy congregation but a less good thing for a not-so-healthy one. Any move, internal or external, should be carefully negotiated with all parties, especially the congregation as a whole. Changing a person’s role in an organization can be very difficult without careful negotiation, introduction of the change to all parties, and changed behavior in the person who is changing his or her role. But negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, communicate, communicate, communicate, and it can be done.
Still, moving up from within is all but prohibited in many denominations. It is the rare exception when it is encouraged or permitted. In my denomination, the United Church of Christ, as well as many others, “boundary theory” has been the key norm developed for transitions. It means—in my vernacular—that the former pastor is to leave the current pastor alone. He or she is to move on, or out, or both. The departing pastor is not to meddle. In other words, we ask people for whom congregational relationships are central to their lives and identities to get lost when they move on or retire. The contrast with the nonprofit world is keen; there the “elder” has respect. In our system, the “elder” is pastured.
There are obvious losses and gains in both approaches. In the practice of getting the former pastor out of the way as much as possible, we lose team ministry over the generations. We lose institutional memory. For example, one particularly difficult parishioner was bugging me constantly for my first two years in one parish. When I happened upon the “disappeared” former minister, I asked him if he had ever had any difficulty with this person. “Oh, all the time” was his way-too-late response. In the practice of nonpartnership, the former minister’s wisdom is assumed to be insufficient for the current moment. This disrespect for the aged and the saged is a problem.
On the other hand, having the former pastor around is also a burden. In particular, it makes relationships with the congregation hard to form. The competition can be intense. When it comes to trust, our relationships are never the same at years one, two, or three as they are at years ten, eleven, and twelve, so a new pastor’s relationships will not be as deep as those of a former, long-tenured pastor. If the previous pastor stays around, the parishioner has little chance for closure on the old relationship, thus all but prohibiting an in-depth relationship with the new pastor.
Former pastors who return to do funerals, weddings, or baptisms—or who maintain social relationships, even at a distance, much less offering counseling by phone to their former parishioners—can do tremendous harm to a start-up ministry. They can keep trust at bay. Often the only reasons a pastor would continue pastoral relationships with a former congregation is his or her own ego and unmanaged grief. I run into many pastors who tell me they are in a grieving stage over their last appointment. I personally took nearly three years to get over one much beloved congregation.
In the middle of this tension, nonprofits are a helpful model. Sometimes they give the retiring director power in the secession process. This appointment model gives the “newbie” some borrowed trust and legitimacy. Sometimes former directors stay on as codirectors or board members. The other participants in my class had all experienced some version of this and had not liked it. It seems that all the issues pastors face in making new relationships or putting their stamp on their own organization are present for executive directors as well. However, they did say it was often useful for the organization because of the value of institutional memory.
A Frame of Reference
A lot depends on the particulars of any given situation. All are different! Thus reaching for norms and protocols is somewhat dangerous. I am going to try to do so—but first let me describe several situations that inform me.
In my current circumstance, the former pastor was here for ten years, the previous pastor for thirty-five. The younger person was able to build new relationships elsewhere. He was not totally dependent on the community here for his life network. In the previous pastor’s case, that was not possible. He was too richly connected to this community—despite his second home on the other side of the country—to leave. Thus I have “violated” boundary theory and invited my colleague to, in his retirement, be a part of the community he founded. He is emeritus pastor. He also preaches, lectures, and involves himself in the life of the congregation. I get several advantages from this arrangement. So does he.
I get my elder close by. It doesn’t hurt that I admire and respect him—and that he is very careful not to get in the way. I do lose the ability to make some pastoral relationships, but I also get a great wind at my back. The retired pastor alerts me to problem people or to passages that other pastoral ships have found it difficult to traverse. More than any of these individuated things, I get a sense of team. I like the idea that we are ministering to the same legacy and the same future together. We do not represent generational divide; we represent generational teamwork.
Having reported this somewhat rosy picture of teamwork, let me present a contrasting one. In another parish I led, one night at a particularly gruesome trustees meeting during which one trustee mentioned the previous pastor just one too many times, I blurted out, “I think I am tired of hearing how much better in bed your former wife was.” What then happened was very interesting. First of all, I never heard about the former pastor again. People just stopped referring to him. They got the message. Secondly, I had a bevy of institutional problems related to his forced disappearance. Some money disappeared. A lot of commitment disappeared. There was rupture with a history that people had treasured. Particularly for me as a woman, this rupture with a popular man only highlighted my gender for people who were trying very hard to forget that I was a woman. I would not say my outburst was a successful intervention, all things considered.
One more context matters. A successful long-term pastor in my denomination invited me to “succeed” him. He had the power to make the appointment, according to him and the chair of the board, who met with me together. I would come on as designated “heir” to the senior minister role and he would stay on for two years, training me. We would work together, me preaching three times a month, him once a month. At the end of two years, he would leave, for good. This kind of secession is more typical of a nonprofit than a church. I said no, based on something in my gut that said it wasn’t going to work. I really didn’t think he would “let go” and I really didn’t think I would be his match. In other words, I wanted my own stage, on which both to succeed and fail, not a shared one.
Developing Norms
My current circumstance is a good one; two others were not. What does that mean in the development of norms? It means that norm one is to assess the individual situation, the individuals themselves, and determine what capacities we have to maximize. Norm two is to employ intergenerational teamwork, norm three to honor institutional memory, and norm four to self-differentiate from each other and the parish. Let me spell these four principles out in normative or norm-making language.
- Individual differences. Only you and your church’s former pastor know who you are, what you want, and whether you are mature enough to get it. Negotiate, negotiate, and negotiate. Be sure members of the parish are listening in and hearing your mutual self-definition. Mutual self-definition may sound like a contradiction. It is not. We get to know ourselves by other people’s responses to us and vice versa. Self-definition is not an individual matter but a group process. You may or may not need police in the form of denominational executives or a pastor/parish relations committee that helps you monitor the situation. You do need partners, even if they are only your clergy support group or a few friends who know what you are trying to do.
- Intergenerational teamwork. When I left a former parish, at my farewell ceremony a rabbi friend gave the following advice to the congregation and to me: “We won’t know what Donna accomplished here until much later in your life. We’ll know what she built after she is gone. The evidence will be you and who you become as a congregation.” This is wisdom. I stand on the shoulders of what my predecessors did and did not build. Those who follow me will stand on what I did or did not build. We share our successes—and our failures. They are not ours alone. One value that I want in my ministry is elder respect. I want it because it is Godly, it is right, it is fair—and nothing undercuts unbridled capitalism so much as caring for those who are perceived as no longer useful. Elders are useful. That is one point we make in intergenerational teamwork over time. One of the Benedictine rules for monasteries sums this point up: “The juniors, therefore, should honor their seniors, and the seniors love their juniors.”1
- Institutional memory. Parishes are intergenerational, long-term organizations. No one knows a parish that knows only its present moment. What has already happened matters. Much that has already happened lives in the land of the secret or the confidential, which is rarely as confidential as people might imagine it to be. Being able to tell stories across generational lines can be extraordinarily helpful to a parish, a pastor, and a retired pastor. Telling our history is healing. Hearing our history is healing. It creates a narrative line where some might only see a chaotic bunch of blips on a screen.
- Self-differentiation or boundary theory. There are many difficulties in having the former pastor around or even nearby. There are also many advantages. A negotiated relationship is the best we may hope for. Many pastors love to blame the “past” or the “culture” or the “system”—by which they mean the former pastor—for their failure in the present. Sometimes our predecessor becomes our excuse. Other times the former pastor is so immature and needy that he/she can’t go away. In such situations outside help is essential. I believe that negotiating this circumstance is one of the great missions of denominations. Our denominations need to minister to the retiring or transitioning pastor.
How these four principles matter to what any given congregation should do is up to that congregation and its denominational associates and their norms. Nevertheless, they deserve mention and reflection at the time of transition from leader to leader, whether that transition is hiring an assistant or associate, from within or from outside, or hiring a senior after a long- or short-term pastorate. What matters is the reflection as much as the action. Too often we rush into doing things the way we think they should be done—like hiring an interim or refusing to hire an interim, or just grabbing onto the closest leader and making sure we don’t have to go through any “empty” time. What should be done is a matter of reflection and careful, negotiated choices. One size does not fit all. There are great values in the “fertile void” of leadership as well. Taking time to grieve matters, as does taking time to welcome and train.
By the way, after long reflection, the congregation that wanted to let the former minister choose and train his successor got an interim. Then they got another interim. Many people will be glad to tell you they have been “unintentional” interims. When a congregation refuses reflection on transition, many unintentional things happen.
While nonprofits may do things differently, they still do them. We can learn a lot from many worlds.
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NOTE1. St. Benedict’s Rules for Monasteries (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN), 89.
"Nonprofits Credit Social Media for Their Success" by Edie Gross
Nonprofits MomsRising and charity:water have accomplished much in a short time. Here are some tips on how they did it, with the effective use of social media.
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TECHNOLOGY, SOCIAL MEDIA, INNOVATION, SOCIAL INNOVATION
Nonprofits credit social media for success
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MomsRising and charity: water have accomplished much in a short time. Here are some tips on how they did it, with the effective use of social media.
Want to know what difference social media can make for a nonprofit organization? Look no further than charity: water(link is external) and MomsRising(link is external). The two are often cited as among the most creative and effective users of social media in the nonprofit world.
Created just five years ago, both have accomplished much in a short time. Powered by 500 bloggers and 1.1 million members, MomsRising has racked up a string of policy and legislative victories for families and children. And charity: water, with more than 200,000 Facebook fans and 1.4 million Twitter followers, has raised $40 million to support 4,282 water projects in 19 countries.
Both credit social media for a large part of their success. Here are tips from each:
MomsRising
- Listen to constituents. MomsRising looks to constituents for guidance on which issues to address. It pays close attention to its social media channels and periodically surveys members to find out what issues are priorities for them.
- Use multiple social media channels. Give people a variety of ways to keep track of your organization’s activities, and make sure communications go two ways. MomsRising’s 17,000 Facebook fans, 14,000 Twitter followers and 3.5 million blog readers all have the ability to weigh in and affect the organization’s direction.
- Offer multiple ways to participate. Give people the ability to act and make a difference. MomsRising offers many ways to participate, including online petitions, meetings with legislators, testimony before Congress, videos and more.
- Establish measurable goals. MomsRising monitors a variety of indicators, including membership, government policies enacted, media coverage and partnerships, and holds a weekly staff meeting to analyze how it’s doing.
- Pursue partnerships. MomsRising doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. The group partners with about 150 other advocacy groups to push for policies.
- Be willing to experiment … and to fail. Very few things soar. Most move forward incrementally. And some fail miserably. That’s OK. If you have no failures, you’re probably not doing a good job, because you’re not testing and exploring.
- Keep the message simple. charity: water has a very simple message: 1 billion people don’t have clean drinking water, and $20 can change that for one person. It takes a complex problem and makes it something anyone can help solve.
- Share stories to inspire. charity: water uses social media to tell about people who benefit from the clean-water projects and people who raise money for those projects. Inspiration is the most important part of a digital charity; stories inspire and connect.
- Be transparent. Anyone can track the money raised and spent by charity: water. Annual reports and other financial information are posted on the website. Donors can also see the project they funded, with photos and GPS coordinates on Google Maps.
- Keep it personal. mycharitywater.org(link is external) enables fans to launch and publicize their own fundraising efforts, and the nonprofit also recognizes and thanks donors.
- Network. charity: water partners with 25 local organizations that know how to build and sustain water projects in the communities they serve. The partnerships allow charity: water to focus on bringing clean water to developing countries without having to become a large bureaucracy.
STAY CONNECTED
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