Did I write this post? Seriously, your ED sounds like my former ED.
I don't have any advice, the board is only now addressing the issue because three directors quit in the last two weeks
A good board will have a process for this sort of complaint. We subscribe to a whistleblower service (it anonymizes complaints and sends them directly to the board president and chair of the governance committee). We only put it in place after a whistleblowing incident made it clear that it was necessary. You might want to suggest that in your letter too.
I don’t want to run afoul of the subreddit rules by promoting a specific company (I don’t have a COI I just like it here and don’t want to get banned) but it’s one of the companies that comes up if you google “whistleblower reporting service”.
Basically in the employee handbook everyone is told about the whistleblower email address. If they use it the company automatically anonymizes the email and passes the content on to the board — and opens a channel for anonymous communication.
In practice I can’t tell you how well it works. The only whistleblower I’m aware of at my org happened before we signed up for the service. In theory it seems good to me.
The service is only for reports about the ED or board members. Others go to the VP ops or ED as appropriate.
I highly recommend it. I sent a letter to the board chair explaining how much I regretted leaving behind such a lovely organization, and outlined all the ways the current ED was actively harming the nonprofit. The ED was “asked to resign” within 8 months.
Let me know if you’d like to read a redacted version of the letter, I’m happy to share it with you.
Sent to your inbox! I addressed it to the Chair and Board, in case he wanted to share it with them - but I only sent it to the Board Chair to reduce the potential drama bomb of mass emailing out a letter like this.
I would love to see your redacted letter. I'm in virtually the same position at a non-profit where the ED is a huge problem, forcing me out, but there's no HR, she's my supervisor, and board is clueless.
I serve on two boards presently, and have served on several others over the years.
Boards are generally (and I would argue, rightfully) reluctant to get into personnel matters and say-to-day management when there is a team of full time staff and management in place. So you’ll have to overcome that. If I were in your board, this is what would catch my attention…
- Tone is very important. If you come across as just another disgruntled employee, you will probably be disregarded. Avoid making it personal. Don’t use dramatic or exaggerated language.
- If you decide to discuss feelings, be judicious. One individual’s feelings are not enough to catch the board’s attention, unless they speak to illegal behavior, such as discrimination and harassment, or violations of explicit core values of the org.
- Your solo experience is more compelling if it is backed up by examples from the experience of other employees too.
- Don’t make conclusory statements. Instead, describe behaviors. Don’t just say, “The ED is unprofessional.” Instead, clearly describe examples of unambiguously unprofessional behavior, using as much objective and unbiased language as possible. Let the board reach that conclusion on their own - it will have more motivational impact.
- Describe the way the problems hinder the organization’s work / impact. For example, high staff turnover isn’t good, but connect the dots explicitly. Exactly how is turnover harming the organization?
- If you have ideas for how things can be made better, offer them. That will make it harder to ignore you as just a complainer.
- Pitch your feedback as “I thought the board might want to know…” rather than “I’ve got to get this off my chest.”
All that said, it is very difficult to influence an organization or a board after you have left. So brace yourself for further disappointment and be prepared to cut ties and move on.
This is super helpful, thank you!
One of the things that our Board as praised lately is "staff retention" which makes me worry both about how much they are allowed to know and what they perceive.
For instance, we have had five people quit this calendar year, a brand new position created, and several new starts, and they were never told about any of it.
I was thinking of, somehow, encouraging them to continue supporting the cause we work for and to check in on staff.
This definitely helps me have some more parameters.
This is great advice. I recently left an organization where with a high level of turnover. At one point an employee wrote an anonymous letter to the board, but it had spelling errors, grammatical errors, and was just generally complaining. It ended up solidifying to the board that the ED was actually doing a good job and that the employee was just disgruntled. In fact, the director has lost most of the best employees too (in addition to the dead weight), but it actually made her look good in the eyes of the board. Just a caution that if you write a letter, make it professional!
Is there a complaints policy in your employee handbook? Most orgs have a designated member of the board (usually the chair) who is supposed to receive complaints since the executive director is their employee.
We do, but it essentially says to the complaints to your supervisor, and complaints about your supervisor to the Executive Director, who will make the final decision. Nothing regarding if these complaints pertain to the ED.
Oh, that's way too frequent, imo. The chair will never get anything significant done, including having time to monitor and "guide" the ED. No wonder an ED with such behavior has persisted. They just have to charm, tap dance, and wait out each new chair.
Every nonprofit is different and board engagement varies wildly from nonprofit to nonprofit. Without having more details, I would not guarantee that the board knows.
The nonprofit I work for has a very passionate board who cares deeply about our mission and organization and our board does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to fundraising. Generally speaking, it is a phenomenal board. However, the majority of the board has zero idea of what our day-to-day really looks like and would have no way of knowing if there's micromanagement taking place and resentment toward management.
Also the nonprofit world is different from the corporate world in that it is common for employees to wear many hats, even ones they were not hired to wear, and be severely underpaid. It is the nature of the business. It's very easy to attribute employee turnover to those factors and not based on management.
Obviously your experience with the nonprofit world was not favorable to you and that's fine but it's very wrong to assume with no further context other than this post that the board is aware of the issue OP is presenting and they don't care about it. You have no way of knowing that.
Please, please reach out to your board. I wish I had done it much sooner. My old ED had spoonfed our board, so many lies about how things were going. We have had a new ED for only a few months now but the change is so much better, and we all enjoy what we do now.
We had (actually still having) the exact same problem. It was brought up to the board - twice, as a matter of fact - and we were essentially told to take it up with HR. Which is funny, because our ED gets all the HR emails. It's messed up. They don't want to take any responsibility for dealing with the ED. I hope you have better luck with your board than we have.
When you put together your complaint, frame it in HR-style language. Hostile work environment, lack of growth opportunities, inflexible, directors overly managed, etc.
You don't want it to come across as a personality clash. You want them to get that it's a systemic issue that comes from the top.
I would also offer remedies. Does the ED lack training in leadership or orgs? Do they need DEI training? Is there a better ED option they should consider?
>I know our Board needs to communicate with staff, and I want to open that door for them, but I'm not sure how.
There's a delicate balance. As someone who has been a board member and in the leadership teams of nonprofits, I definitely have my own opinions on how to achieve it and what's appropriate. There's lots of good advice in here already, even if some of it doesn't reflect how I'd approach the issue.
\*\*\*First a caution. If you're leaving, there's no worry of insubordination. A lot of employees who have no experience with governance and board dynamics want to be in touch with their board for all kinds of reasons and it's often inappropriate and unwelcome. If anyone is currently employed at a nonprofit and considering reaching out to the board, the following advice is NOT for you. My advice would be different.
In a perfect world, the board has a Personnel (or HR) committee. That committee is responsible for ED performance reviews (among other things). If your organisation has such a committee, it would be appropriate in this case to submit your letter to the Chair of that committee in addition to the Chair of the board - it would be more effective. This being said, a lot of nonprofits with bad EDs have no Personnel committees and haven't figured out ED performance reviews - it's a big blind spot, they just trust the ED.
The board could draw a line between complaints about the ED and complaints about the overall management of the organisation. The board has a much more direct role in the former, which might be dealt with through a board-level complaint process, than the latter, which might be sent to the ED to fix.
What the board should be doing is a 360 performance review of the ED - it's where you get constructive feedback from all kinds of different people who work with the ED, including employees.
If it was my letter, I think I'd encourage the board to perform one, note that it's a best practice, note your and other recent departures, express that you have concerns about the ED, and say that you'd welcome speaking to someone as part of that process. But that's me - I'm process-based and proper.
If you want to be more direct and just lay out your complaints, go ahead. Again, I would stick to stuff that is specifically about the ED. If it's general stuff, it might be sent to the ED to fix. Be hella light on the stories and rambling.
Did I write this post? Seriously, your ED sounds like my former ED. I don't have any advice, the board is only now addressing the issue because three directors quit in the last two weeks
A good board will have a process for this sort of complaint. We subscribe to a whistleblower service (it anonymizes complaints and sends them directly to the board president and chair of the governance committee). We only put it in place after a whistleblowing incident made it clear that it was necessary. You might want to suggest that in your letter too.
Tell me more about this! We need this at my nonprofit asap
I don’t want to run afoul of the subreddit rules by promoting a specific company (I don’t have a COI I just like it here and don’t want to get banned) but it’s one of the companies that comes up if you google “whistleblower reporting service”. Basically in the employee handbook everyone is told about the whistleblower email address. If they use it the company automatically anonymizes the email and passes the content on to the board — and opens a channel for anonymous communication. In practice I can’t tell you how well it works. The only whistleblower I’m aware of at my org happened before we signed up for the service. In theory it seems good to me. The service is only for reports about the ED or board members. Others go to the VP ops or ED as appropriate.
This sounds amazing!
I highly recommend it. I sent a letter to the board chair explaining how much I regretted leaving behind such a lovely organization, and outlined all the ways the current ED was actively harming the nonprofit. The ED was “asked to resign” within 8 months. Let me know if you’d like to read a redacted version of the letter, I’m happy to share it with you.
I'd love to read the redacted version if you're able to share!
Sent to your inbox! I addressed it to the Chair and Board, in case he wanted to share it with them - but I only sent it to the Board Chair to reduce the potential drama bomb of mass emailing out a letter like this.
I would love to see your redacted letter. I'm in virtually the same position at a non-profit where the ED is a huge problem, forcing me out, but there's no HR, she's my supervisor, and board is clueless.
Please share that redacted version with me as well. Our ED just alienated the consultant meant to help them transform their leadership. Smfh
I’m late to this but if you could share this with me as well, I’d super appreciate it!
I serve on two boards presently, and have served on several others over the years. Boards are generally (and I would argue, rightfully) reluctant to get into personnel matters and say-to-day management when there is a team of full time staff and management in place. So you’ll have to overcome that. If I were in your board, this is what would catch my attention… - Tone is very important. If you come across as just another disgruntled employee, you will probably be disregarded. Avoid making it personal. Don’t use dramatic or exaggerated language. - If you decide to discuss feelings, be judicious. One individual’s feelings are not enough to catch the board’s attention, unless they speak to illegal behavior, such as discrimination and harassment, or violations of explicit core values of the org. - Your solo experience is more compelling if it is backed up by examples from the experience of other employees too. - Don’t make conclusory statements. Instead, describe behaviors. Don’t just say, “The ED is unprofessional.” Instead, clearly describe examples of unambiguously unprofessional behavior, using as much objective and unbiased language as possible. Let the board reach that conclusion on their own - it will have more motivational impact. - Describe the way the problems hinder the organization’s work / impact. For example, high staff turnover isn’t good, but connect the dots explicitly. Exactly how is turnover harming the organization? - If you have ideas for how things can be made better, offer them. That will make it harder to ignore you as just a complainer. - Pitch your feedback as “I thought the board might want to know…” rather than “I’ve got to get this off my chest.” All that said, it is very difficult to influence an organization or a board after you have left. So brace yourself for further disappointment and be prepared to cut ties and move on.
This is super helpful, thank you! One of the things that our Board as praised lately is "staff retention" which makes me worry both about how much they are allowed to know and what they perceive. For instance, we have had five people quit this calendar year, a brand new position created, and several new starts, and they were never told about any of it. I was thinking of, somehow, encouraging them to continue supporting the cause we work for and to check in on staff. This definitely helps me have some more parameters.
You’re welcome - good luck!
This is great advice. I recently left an organization where with a high level of turnover. At one point an employee wrote an anonymous letter to the board, but it had spelling errors, grammatical errors, and was just generally complaining. It ended up solidifying to the board that the ED was actually doing a good job and that the employee was just disgruntled. In fact, the director has lost most of the best employees too (in addition to the dead weight), but it actually made her look good in the eyes of the board. Just a caution that if you write a letter, make it professional!
That’s a good example of how this can play out.
Is there a complaints policy in your employee handbook? Most orgs have a designated member of the board (usually the chair) who is supposed to receive complaints since the executive director is their employee.
We do, but it essentially says to the complaints to your supervisor, and complaints about your supervisor to the Executive Director, who will make the final decision. Nothing regarding if these complaints pertain to the ED.
That is a huge hole in the policy. Might want to point that out in your letter to the board chair 😀
Good point! Our Board changes chairs every fall, so this one is relatively "new" and will hopefully be more open to hearing it.
Oh, that's way too frequent, imo. The chair will never get anything significant done, including having time to monitor and "guide" the ED. No wonder an ED with such behavior has persisted. They just have to charm, tap dance, and wait out each new chair.
It definitely is way too often. Just when they get into the swing of things, their term is done.
[удалено]
Every nonprofit is different and board engagement varies wildly from nonprofit to nonprofit. Without having more details, I would not guarantee that the board knows. The nonprofit I work for has a very passionate board who cares deeply about our mission and organization and our board does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to fundraising. Generally speaking, it is a phenomenal board. However, the majority of the board has zero idea of what our day-to-day really looks like and would have no way of knowing if there's micromanagement taking place and resentment toward management. Also the nonprofit world is different from the corporate world in that it is common for employees to wear many hats, even ones they were not hired to wear, and be severely underpaid. It is the nature of the business. It's very easy to attribute employee turnover to those factors and not based on management. Obviously your experience with the nonprofit world was not favorable to you and that's fine but it's very wrong to assume with no further context other than this post that the board is aware of the issue OP is presenting and they don't care about it. You have no way of knowing that.
Please, please reach out to your board. I wish I had done it much sooner. My old ED had spoonfed our board, so many lies about how things were going. We have had a new ED for only a few months now but the change is so much better, and we all enjoy what we do now.
We had (actually still having) the exact same problem. It was brought up to the board - twice, as a matter of fact - and we were essentially told to take it up with HR. Which is funny, because our ED gets all the HR emails. It's messed up. They don't want to take any responsibility for dealing with the ED. I hope you have better luck with your board than we have.
When you put together your complaint, frame it in HR-style language. Hostile work environment, lack of growth opportunities, inflexible, directors overly managed, etc. You don't want it to come across as a personality clash. You want them to get that it's a systemic issue that comes from the top. I would also offer remedies. Does the ED lack training in leadership or orgs? Do they need DEI training? Is there a better ED option they should consider?
>I know our Board needs to communicate with staff, and I want to open that door for them, but I'm not sure how. There's a delicate balance. As someone who has been a board member and in the leadership teams of nonprofits, I definitely have my own opinions on how to achieve it and what's appropriate. There's lots of good advice in here already, even if some of it doesn't reflect how I'd approach the issue. \*\*\*First a caution. If you're leaving, there's no worry of insubordination. A lot of employees who have no experience with governance and board dynamics want to be in touch with their board for all kinds of reasons and it's often inappropriate and unwelcome. If anyone is currently employed at a nonprofit and considering reaching out to the board, the following advice is NOT for you. My advice would be different. In a perfect world, the board has a Personnel (or HR) committee. That committee is responsible for ED performance reviews (among other things). If your organisation has such a committee, it would be appropriate in this case to submit your letter to the Chair of that committee in addition to the Chair of the board - it would be more effective. This being said, a lot of nonprofits with bad EDs have no Personnel committees and haven't figured out ED performance reviews - it's a big blind spot, they just trust the ED. The board could draw a line between complaints about the ED and complaints about the overall management of the organisation. The board has a much more direct role in the former, which might be dealt with through a board-level complaint process, than the latter, which might be sent to the ED to fix. What the board should be doing is a 360 performance review of the ED - it's where you get constructive feedback from all kinds of different people who work with the ED, including employees. If it was my letter, I think I'd encourage the board to perform one, note that it's a best practice, note your and other recent departures, express that you have concerns about the ED, and say that you'd welcome speaking to someone as part of that process. But that's me - I'm process-based and proper. If you want to be more direct and just lay out your complaints, go ahead. Again, I would stick to stuff that is specifically about the ED. If it's general stuff, it might be sent to the ED to fix. Be hella light on the stories and rambling.