By Linda Crompton, BoardSource president & CEO

Our friend Jan Masaoka has, as usual, penned a provocative and thoughtful article for Blue Avocado, called — bluntly enough — “Ditch Your Board Composition Matrix.” In typical Jan fashion, she fearlessly examined this received wisdom of the sector: “Use a matrix to ensure diversity on your board” and came out with the verdict: Ditch it.

If boards were to use the matrix purely to categorize people, and if, as she suggests, board members viewed adding a person of color to their board as one more box to check off, I’d agree wholeheartedly with her conclusion. And if that’s how you’re using it, stop.

The board matrix is a tool, and like any tool, it is never a means unto itself. Detailed in our book The Board Building Cycle, among others, a matrix only should be used as a worksheet for detailing the skills, characteristics, and talents of your board members, and identifying gaps. And using a matrix is not the first step in board building. A strategic plan that details the future of the organization and identifies what you’ll need to enact the plan — the resources of all kinds — financial and human, both board and staff, must be created first. The Board Building Cycle’s introduction reads, in part:

The search for new board members is a strategic activity; it has long-term implications for the board’s effectiveness. It should be driven by considerations of what resources the board will need among its members in order to serve the organization well during the next few years. Having a strategic plan in place will guide the board in its choice of whom to bring onto the board. The organization’s strategic direction can help to clarify the special skills and resources required on the board.

Jan’s primary beef with the board matrix is that it focuses on what people are, as opposed to what they do. Fair enough, but I reiterate: It’s a worksheet, not a job offer. If your strategic plan focuses on ramping up your organization’s technological capacity over the next five years, and your matrix of existing competencies on your board identifies a gap in that area, you know where to start looking. But finding a technologically savvy potential candidate is just the beginning — now you need to determine whether that person has the right combination of qualities, both personal and professional, for your board, in addition to that one you’ve identified.

I imagine the whole idea of board matrices becomes particularly uncomfortable when we get into the area of other kinds of diversity, especially racial and ethnic. Again, using it to categorize and check-a-box is reductionism at its worst. Not one of us is ever just one thing. No Hispanic man, for example, could ever be asked to represent the “Hispanic viewpoint.” But look at your board holistically — Are there voices that are not being heard that should be? If you’re not systematic about looking at who is around the table now, you may not realize who is not around the table.

How does your board ensure that the voices you need to hear are around your table?

By Aaron Hurst, president and founder, Taproot Foundation; board member, BoardSource Board of Directors   

Board recruitment is broken — and I’m not the only one who thinks so. In recent surveys conducted by the Taproot Foundation and BoardSource, nonprofit leaders reported frustration in securing the right talent and, specifically, with knowing where to look for it.

From my perspective, there are two basic problems with how the majority of nonprofits approach board recruitment.

The first is a lack of transparency. Boards are like secret clubs with secret handshakes! Only current board members know how one goes about joining them. With no insight into how the process works, outsiders are left confused, intimidated, and sometimes with the impression — the wrong impression — that their knowledge, skills, and experience don’t match up with board service.

The second problem is that most boards recruit new members primarily through their current members’ networks, which make creating a diverse board a challenge — and I’m not simply referring to an ethnically diverse board here. A diversity of approaches and life experiences are vital for good governance. When current board members tap only their friends and acquaintances, the new recruits tend to have similar backgrounds to the current members.

The good news is that I firmly believe that these two problems can be solved, and easily. In 2010, for the first time, Taproot reached out to its pro bono consultants and nonprofit clients for nominations for our national board of directors, stipulating the critical leadership skills and experience required. We received more than 100 applications! Taproot staff members read through each and every one to determine who best met the selection criteria and then forwarded those names and applications to the board’s governance committee. The governance committee members then selected its top two to three candidates for each of the board’s open positions. Three board members and I then interviewed each candidate and made our recommendations to the committee and the board. The result? In March 2011, the board elected five stellar new members who were on-boarded as a class the day before Taproot’s annual board retreat. In 2012, we’ll be electing another class of board members who have been identified and recruited in the same way.

Taproot has found a way to “fix” its “broken” recruitment process.  Are you attempting to fix yours?  If so, please share your experiences with us here.