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Starting a Nonprofit: Design a Board of Directors application (Step by Step) - YouTube
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I get a ton of questions about how to
recruit a GREAT board of directors,
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especially when you're first
starting a non-profit organization - but
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the fact is you can recruit and vet a
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slew of board candidates the same way
that you would a
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job - with an application and interview
process! So in this video I'm going to
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talk a little bit about how to set up
a board application to recruit great
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candidates, the types of things you want to make
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sure to ask, and what to do
afterward to get some of those great
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board candidates in
to your organization. Welcome back! If
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this is your first time to my channel, my
name is Amber Melanie Smith,
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and I make these videos to help aspiring
changemakers with tips and strategies
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to help you change the world and live a
life of impact
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and purpose. The videos often relate to
starting a nonprofit, creating a social
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impact, and more. If you're not familiar with my
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story, I started a non-profit many years ago
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and it is now my current full-time
job, so I have been able to see from the
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very beginning, starting from scratch,
zero dollars in the bank, what do you do -
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how do you grow a non-profit, recruit a
board, raise money, etc. So I talk a lot
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about a lot about those experiences here on
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this channel and provide tips and strategies - things that
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I've learned, things that I wish I'd done
differently, to help you out if you are
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on a similar social impact journey. So I hope this
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video helps you out! Don't forget to give it a Thumbs Up and
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tell YouTube that you like it, and leave comments and engage with the
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video. And also SUBSCRIBE to my channel and
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ring the bell to get alerts when my next video comes out! Okay,
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so let's get into the topic. So
before i get into what you would want to
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include in a board recruitment application i want to
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talk a little bit about some of the
advantages
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of recruiting board members through an
application
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process as opposed to some other means. The first is that creating a board
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application process
and having candidates go through that
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process really helps you clarify
what you are expecting from board
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members
and as i've talked about in a couple of
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other videos this is really
important because if someone joins a
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board which is a big commitment
thinking that things are going to be one
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way and then those expectations are not
met it can lead to them resigning early
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it can lead to
conflict it can lead to all sorts of
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things that you want to avoid
so that you can focus on pushing your
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mission forward which is
why you're starting a non-profit in the
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first place so doing
this recruitment process through an
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application will
make it clear you'll be able to
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articulate in writing what you're
looking for
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and the candidates will also be able to
articulate and writing who they are and
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what they're all about
the second thing is that it's a fair
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process
when you put an application out there
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and you are willing to accept
candidates from around your community to
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share their skills their time their
talent with you
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it is a more fair process than just
picking out your friends to be on the
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board
and also having all those amazing skill
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sets
on your board will definitely help you
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make progress towards your goals
an application process also helps you
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identify the strengths and skill sets of
your candidates
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and as i've talked about in some past
videos this is
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really really important because you want
to be recruiting
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the board members for that board term
whether it is a year
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two years three years whatever it may be
you want to make sure that the skills
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that they bring to the table align with
what your
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organization needs at that time
in its development for example if you're
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just starting out you want to make sure
you have some strong fundraisers on your
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board
so having people tell you about their
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skills in
sales or raising money or marketing to
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help inspire people to give
money these are all going to be
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important things that you want to know
from your
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board candidates at that time in your
stage of development
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it also helps you identify the values
and the motives of board candidates you
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know whether they're trying to join the
board so they can have something
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prestigious on their resumes or if they
genuinely care about your costs
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a lot of that can come out in an
application process
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and to that end an application process
will help you weed out those who are not
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going to be
the best fit who are not ready to truly
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commit to the cause or give the time and
energy that your cause
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needs if you put those expectations up
front
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whether it's the length of the board
term how many hours per month they're
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going to be expected to contribute to
your cause
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the skills they need to bring to the
table the dollars they need to help you
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raise
all of that stuff it is going to scare
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away
the people that you do not want on your
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board and that is a good thing because
the people who remain
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are going to be a better fit okay so in
this part of the video i'm going to talk
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about
what are some of the things that you
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actually include in the application
itself
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now first you want to make sure that
your application
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the link to do it the document that
you're requiring people to fill out
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whatever it is it is somewhere that you
can um
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share online perhaps on a website
something easy that you can put in an
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email
so that people can find it and access it
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effectively applications should be in
written form you can do
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a document you could do i've used google
forms for board applications whatever
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your tool of choice is
make sure it's in writing because that's
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how you get all this valuable
information about the candidate the
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first thing you want to
get from candidates is of course the
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basics the contact information
who they are i've asked for linkedin
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profiles
in board applications as well
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that is kind of like a way of sharing
your resume they could also
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share their resume kind of gives you
some sense of their job experience what
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talent skills they might bring to the
table that way
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and also can give you some really
interesting insights talks about
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if it's a linkedin profile you can see
like who else they know that you might
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know
or who they might have connections to
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that might be
valuable supporters in the future as
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well along the lines of getting this
basic information you also want to ask
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where they're located this is very
simple but you want to make sure that
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your board members are serving the
community
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that are living sorry are living in the
community that you're serving
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if it is a national organization it
would be a good idea to
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make sure that your board candidates
represent
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the diversity of the locations that you
are planning to serve
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board members can be more effective
as board members if they're familiar
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with the needs of the communities that
they're serving if they're part of those
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communities so that's why geography
plays an important role here
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depending on your specific mission you
also might want to ask for the age of a
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board candidate making sure that you
have a diversity
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and life experiences and perspectives in
some cases if your mission is very
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specific
or focuses on a target population of
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let's say
mothers with kids ages three to five
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that's extremely specific but
to um to my point you want to make sure
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your board reflects the community you
serve so
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if you are a board and you serve mothers
with kids three to five and you have no
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mothers with kids
ages three to five on your board you
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have a problem
because you are not going to get the
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perspectives of the very people that
you're serving
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in your organization and i always like
to ask what
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sector of uh work that they
have the most experience in like if
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they've been working in government
other non-profits or the corporate
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sector
that will help me understand you know
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what sorts of networks they might have
and what types of skills they might be
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bringing to the table
another thing that's important to ask in
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a board application
is if they have any past non-profit
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board experience
and the reason for that is you may find
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that those
with no non-profit board experience or
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less non-profit board experience might
have some
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misconceptions about what it means to be
on a non-profit board you are fiscally
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and legally responsible for the
organization in some cases you can be
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held liable for things that happen in
the organization so you want to make
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sure that board candidates
really understand what it means to be a
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part of
a board of directors and there's some
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great resources online about that i'll
be sure to drop a few links in my
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description so check those out which
isn't to say that you should not
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have people with no board experience on
your board
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it is simply that you you're going to
need to put in place
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some additional training some additional
documentation to make sure
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that they understand what the
expectations are
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and it might also help to have some
people on your board who have had
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non-profit board experience so that they
can be good guides and partners to those
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with less experience
next you want to make sure you ask if
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the candidate has
any uh past experience with the issue or
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cause that your nonprofit is going to
focus on or at the very least get a
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sense of what
level of knowledge they have about that
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issue it is very very important that all
board members
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understand the problem that your
organization is trying to solve and can
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be
effective spokespeople and fundraisers
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and advocates for that cause okay now
we're getting into the good stuff
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on your board applications you want to
make sure that you are asking
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extensively about their skills and
experiences now we talked about this a
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little earlier
in the video there are different ways to
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know what skill sets someone has
collecting resumes linkedin profiles etc
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but
one strategy my organization recently
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used that i thought was
very helpful was we used a ranking
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system
where the candidates would read
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the name of a skill like um accounting
or whatever it was
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and then they would rank themselves on
what level of skill they had in it
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from no experience to beginner to
intermediate to
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expert level and what we found was that
people were going to be generally honest
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about
what their rankings were and the
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different skills um
of course if you are not truthful about
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this and someone calls you on it that
sucks so
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i think people have an incentive to be
honest about
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what skills they have and where their
strengths really lie
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so i'm showing here uh you know an
example a screenshot of part of my
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organization's board application where
you can see some of these skills
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written out and you can tweak your board
application to fit
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uh like i said the circumstances of your
nonprofit at that time
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let's say the thing your board members
need to focus most on for the next three
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years
is marketing then you want to ask
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perhaps about
various marketing related skills more
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prominently
if you just want a very diverse set of
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skills you might ask about a lot of
different skills at one time
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so for example on our application we
talk about
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marketing fundraising accounting
technology you know we've got some
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coding involving my organization
lots of different skill sets so they
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rank where they believe they fall
on the spectrum of skills and we trust
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that they're being honest about that and
then we're able to see
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where not only a single candidate's
strengths lie
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but when you're putting together a team
of multiple candidates
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this is a great way of kind of analyzing
where they can
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complement each other and fill each
other's gaps
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you can use the same strategy for
ranking some of those soft skills like
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communication networking with others
leadership etc
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and finally you always want to make sure
that you have a section
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of your board application where the
candidates can provide their own
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free-flowing answers that are text-based
so they're not answering multiple choice
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they're not ranking themselves they're
just putting
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an answer in their own words because
when they do that you will learn
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a lot about them the types of questions
you want to put
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in your like
open answer section are things that will
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help you understand
how aligned the candidates are with your
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cause
the type of passion they might have for
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your cause
whether they align with your values all
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these sorts of things
will help you understand if they can
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make the time commitment and just get to
know them as people you know board
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members are humans too
and they have other interests outside of
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your organization and
it's good to know those things you can
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bond with them
and have building great relationships
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through those things
so an example of an open-ended question
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you might ask is
quite simply why are you interested in
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being on our board of directors or
why are you interested in this cause
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specifically
or how do you believe that you uniquely
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can drive
our mission forward okay so those are
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some of the types of questions that i
would recommend asking on
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a non-profit board application you also
want to make sure that you
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give candidates a deadline so you know
answer all these questions by this date
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and submit with your resume or whatever
you want the deadline to be but that
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will make sure that you have all the
candidates who you're expecting in at a
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certain time and you can go on to the
next stage which is
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an interview process
an interview is i think an important
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part of the vetting process you know
you get all their answers in writing and
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that gives you some insights about them
but nothing beats interacting with a
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person
in person or through zoom at the very
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least during the pandemic
there are lots of different ways to do
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an interview process
in my organization we've been through
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multiple different
ways and we have some ways that we
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prefer to do it uh
over others for example we are currently
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or in our most recent board recruitment
cycle
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we had um more like a networking event
as opposed to
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a one-on-one or one and a group of board
members
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interviewing candidates at one time we
thought it'd be a little bit less
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intimidating
so in that style you would have multiple
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candidates there at once you'd have all
your board members if you already have a
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board assuming
there at once and then everyone's
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mingling and getting to know each other
and then reflecting on
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what they learned about each other at
the very end whatever
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strategy you want to do if you're just
starting out you might not have any
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other board members
to help you be making these decisions on
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new board candidates
if it's just you then interview them
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vet them make sure that you're talking
through all of the expectations
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what it means to be on the board the
board term the
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commitment that they're going to be
making monthly if there's a fundraising
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commitment
all of these things make sure that they
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know that up front
after they submit their application
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during the interview process once you've
had a good conversation and you kind of
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get a sense of who they are
it's always a good idea to do a
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background check of board members
i haven't had any board members who have
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failed a background check but
it's just a good idea just just to be
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safe and
make sure that you're covering all your
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bases this is even more true
if it's a board member who's going to be
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dealing with any of the finances of your
organization
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and or working with vulnerable
populations
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served by your organization finally
you've gone through all the screening
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and vetting you've reviewed their
applications you've met with them
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and you've got a handful of candidates
that you just really love
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and you want to bring on board what do
you do next
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so what we do in our organization is we
send them an email saying you know
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congratulations we would love to bring
you
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on board please let us know by x date if
you
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accept that gives them one final chance
to back out if they think that they're
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not going to be
the best fit for your organization after
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going through that whole interview
process and learning more about what you
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are planning to do as a non-profit
organization
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the other thing you might want to
consider is giving them what's called a
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board
agreement it is a list of things you
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might put it in checklist format
that board members are expected to be
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doing
as board members throughout the year so
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i agree to the following i will
raise x dollars i will attend
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at least 75 percent of board meetings i
will
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um speak to 10 of my friends or you know
whatever
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whatever expectations you want to put
putting it in a board agreement
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having them review that and then sign
off on it
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keep in mind this is not a legally
binding document
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but it's one of those final things you
can put in place to make sure that it's
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super super clear what the expectations
are
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of being on your board okay
so that is the board application process
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in a nutshell i hope that that has
helped you out
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don't forget once again to like this
video share with your friends
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who are in the change maker and
non-profit space and
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subscribe to my channel and ring the
bell to get alerts when my next
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video is posted also share in the
comments where you are
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in your board recruitment process or if
you are on a board and you had a great
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experience being interviewed or applying
for a board sure that
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you know other nonprofit folks want to
know what was it like for you
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so definitely share in the comments one
final thing
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if you are on facebook don't forget to
check out my group
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change the world or bust where
myself and other change makers are
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having conversations about
our non-profit our social impact
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journeys
everything having to do with the state
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of the world and what we can do to
make a dent in some of the problems that
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we're facing
so hope to see you next time thanks so
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much for
stopping by
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you
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