Canter Bridge

Widespread confusion marks the role and function of the governing board in the non-profit environment both in the United States and internationally. Indeed, the board figures as one of the top three the make-or-break entities in the more than one hundred educational institutions in sixty-odd countries with which the organization I direct finds itself in partnership.

An excellent board turns the sky into the only limit. A passive, confused, or nuisance board makes progress nearly impossible.
So welcome, then, comes Sally Patterson’s BoardSource volume on how the board of directors and individual board members can play a critical role in the non-profit organization’s strategic communication. Speaking of which, it would be a good thing to allow the author to define that:

The term strategic communication describes the combination of plans, goals, practices, and tools with which a nonprofit organization sends consistent messages about its mission, values, and accomplishments.

It’s probably fair to say that most of our organizations do not send that quality of message. Thus the importance of a book like this that raises the conversation level of communication with respect to at least one of the organizaton’s critical organs, the governing board.

The author expertly—at times uncannily so—describes the lost value inherent in the error of not leveraging the influence of board members for communication and the large reservoir of value that inheres in the choice of a CEO and board chairman intentionally to do so. Along the way, Patterson scatters helpful counsel regarding framing and branding the organization and its mission, not least so that board members have something good to create buzz about.

Communicating under crisis conditions and monitoring communication efforts comprehensively fill out the final two chapters of this characteristically rich BoardSource offering.

What do to with a book like this, given the very buzz-worthy organization is usually presided by a board of very busy people, most of whom will not spend quality time with each of Patterson’s sixty-five pages?

At the very least, an organization’s CEO and chief communications officer should read this carefully, together with either the board chairperson or a board member charged with particular oversight and attention to communications matters. The buzz decibels could hardly but elevate if Patterson’s concepts sneaked into the body politic by means of careful reading by at least these key officers.

Go on, then. Make some buzz.