Supercharge Your Nominations Committee
The typical nonprofit organization nominations committee is active for only a short period of time with a single objective: to assemble a list of recommendations for nominees to replace open and expiring officer and director positions. We need to break out of this mode and supercharge our nominations committees by having them meet throughout the fiscal year and broaden and reprioritize their service objectives.
Nominations committees that are stuck in a legacy mindset with respect to their role will hinder an organization’s growth and innovation by failing to serve the needs of governing in a changing world. Nominations committees need to refocus efforts by expanding their purposes and reordering their priorities.
Consider these two straight-forward strategies that will enhance output from your nominations committee and strengthen your organization’s future governing bodies.
First, expand the nominations committee operating cycle to be active for the full fiscal year and avoid breaks in service that might arise when a new Board is seated only once every two or three years.
Nominations committees are often filled with amazing talent, with a mix of past Board chairs and future potential leaders that will intermingle their knowledge and skills to help assemble future leadership teams for the organization. Once seated, the nominations committee will benefit from having a longer operating cycle in which to do their expanded thinking and creative planning, make recommendations, and offer solutions. Short operating cycles by default will limit the service capacity of a nominations committee.
Second, switch the primary objective of the nominations committee to prioritize the long-term search for future new talent with skills that match the organization’s needs and culture. Make assembling the next slate of officers and directors (which too often is a nominations committee’s only focus) a secondary short-term objective. A by-product of these reprioritized efforts will be offering a stronger and more diverse slate of officers and directors from an expanded talent pool that are better suited to serve the needs of the organization in the future.
A nominations committee by itself cannot be relied upon to find new future volunteer Board and committee members. The emphasis for the nominations committee should be on facilitating an expansive search process that is as diverse and far-reaching as possible. The nominations committee should become the repository of those efforts rather than the only group engaged in the recruitment process.
An active nominations committee that is in communication with the current Board, other committees and task forces, and senior management and staff will be well informed of gaps and deficiencies in volunteer talent resources that currently exist in the organization. This information can then be used to focus searches to find new volunteer leadership talent best matched to the organization’s needs.
Like a successful professional baseball team, a nonprofit’s future success will be directly impacted by maintaining a strong pool of potential future Board members, committee members, and other volunteer leaders. The stronger and larger the farm team (talent pool), the more options and opportunities there will be to fill leadership roles with the best candidates possible.
Planning Tip – Provide regular pathways of communications between the nominations committee and the volunteer governance structure (Board, committees, task forces, etc.). Assign nominations committee members to periodically attend board and other governance meetings so they can experience real-time the governance processes and to request assistance with searches for future volunteer leadership. Consider using anonymous simple surveys to be completed by current volunteer leadership on what skillsets and experiences are needed to be an effective future volunteer leader for the organization.
Finally, it is important to provide pathways for the nominations committee to communicate with donors, members, sponsors, grant funders, affiliates and other similar third parties that interact with your organization. These supporters all have an established interest in the wellbeing of your nonprofit. They will have abundant networking connections that can be leveraged to encourage individuals to get involved as volunteers. An active nominations committee should not be a stranger to your organization’s supporters. Be proud of encouraging new, diverse future leaders to get involved and join the team.
