Comments on: Dear Nonprofiteer, How to reconcile Board and ensemble?

By: Dear Nonprofiteer, Does a staff member get a seat on the Board? «

Dear Nonprofiteer, Does a staff member get a seat on the Board? « — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:50:00 +0000

[...] The Nonprofiteer doesn’t have any books or pamphlets or anything (though she’s thinking maybe she ought to try writing one), but please feel free to refer staff and Board members alike to earlier postings here, as the issue has come up more than once. See, for instance, “How do we keep it all in the family?” and also the first paragraph of the Nonprofiteer’s reply to “How to reconcile Board and ensemble.” [...]

By: Nonprofiteer

Nonprofiteer — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:56:22 +0000

You’re right, and I’m especially taken with your observation that the divide between “staff” and “artist” leads to an unhealthy tendency to treat artists as guns for hire instead of full partners. I don’t think, though, that the situation you describe (all staff are ensemble members) means that you can’t have the ensemble represented on the Board–it just means that ensemble representatives need to make a good-faith effort to serve in their representative rather than individual capacities on the Board. The reason it’s generally considered poor practice to put staff members on the Board is, as I’ve said, because we fear that individual concerns (“Will I get a raise?”) will outweigh group concerns (“Will we program a daring season?”). Members of the ensemble are, if anything, more likely to be thinking of the group than any other kind of staff member, and a simple reminder that they’re expected to do so (“You serve on the Board in a representative capacity, speaking for the whole ensemble”) should be sufficient to assure that artist/staffers approach company issues in the appropriate frame of mind.

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:33:28 +0000

Hi Nonprofiteer,
Thanks for speaking to this. Your advice makes sense, though there is one problem it doesn’t address: with many small non-profit theatre companies with an ensemble, ensemble and staff *are* synonymous. For example, I’m an ensemble member with my company, as well as our PR/marketing director. Our Development director, Executive director, and Education/Outreach director are likewise artists in the ensemble of the company in addition to their staff positions. I actually think this is a good thing- the artist/business divide is an artificial one, and who has more investment in making sure the day to day operations of the company run smoothly than we do? But it does mean we don’t have non-staff ensemble members to put on the board, doesn’t it? Which brings me to a new business model for larger arts organizations that’s been proposed by Mike Daisey (of “How Theater Failed America” fame, http://www.mikedaisey.com) in which staff positions should be occupied by the company’s artists in a staff/artist hybrid that bridges that artificial divide. I think it’s one great way to stop or at least reduce the manner in which non-profit arts organizations serve their community at the expense of the artists they employ (i.e., by treating them as underpaid migrant workers). But it does make it more difficult to solve the board/staff/artist conflict with the methods you describe above.

By: Nonprofiteer

Nonprofiteer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:17:28 +0000

If everyone accepted advice in your gracious spirit, we’d have a lot more high-functioning organizations! Happy to have been of help.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:08:25 +0000

This is a topic near to my recent experience. I am a Development guy at an ensemble-driven theater in Chicago.

Your counsel that the ensemble should always have a representative voice on the board is excellent – our organization has always adhered to this policy and it serves the interests of the company well, I think. What we have not had – and what was (I’m embarrassed to say, as it’s so abundantly sensible, I see now) revelatory to me was your suggestion that the ensemble rep should have the same financial obligations as the rest of the board, or, if they do not, at the very least these expectations must be shared and explicitly articulated.

For our organization they are not and never have been – the assumption is that the ensemble rep has no fundraising or giving responsibility. I feel suddenly quite certain that if they did, then fundraising would come quite rapidly to occupy a more central place in the ensemble’s conception of how the company must operate and would serve to reduce sharply any lingering tendencies to view the board and staff and being in any way separate from or subordinate to the ensemble. A smashing idea that I feel ridiculous for not having arrived at myself.

Thanks to you.

By: Nonprofiteer

Nonprofiteer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:40:40 +0000

I don’t have enough inside information to apportion blame, even if I wanted to. The Board shouldn’t be firing ensemble members–that happy task, if necessary, is left to the Artistic Director–but is that really what happened, or was there just a misreading of the Board’s appropriate response to an effort to go over the Artistic Director’s head? That is, if the Board’s reply to the artist was, “We’re backing this guy, and if you can’t find a way to work with him that’s too bad,” the Board hasn’t overstepped its bounds and “fired” anyone: it’s just told someone an unpleasant truth.

Your question–”Is change management separate from governance?”–is a great one; the answer, I think, is, “No, but it’s different.” That is, any governing body needs to be able to predict the consequences of the changes it institutes, and prepare itself to handle those consequences, while it also continues the day-to-day process of making sure the agency has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission and is deploying those resources appropriately (a nickel definition of “governance”). Change management, in other words, is governance that requires you double-check the bylaws and be certain who has the power!

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:22:50 +0000

I was wondering if you would weigh in on this. There are so many missteps in that fall out, it’s hard for me to make sense.

But I wonder . . . the board backed the AD, deflected ensemble members emailing the board by trying to go around the AD’s back about, but also fired a 22-year ensemble member via email.

It may be a little inside baseball, but how much culpability rests with the board in this specific case, (where no one is blameless for the fallout.)

How much of this was unruly artists and how much was a lack of leadership and governance by the Board?

Should it have ever gotten to that point? Is change management separate from governance?

ps. I totally concur about the “blue-hairs.” I also think it’s easy for artists to forget that the “blue-hairs” are actually the audiences that supported Beckett, Pinter, Fornes, Churchill, and all the experimental writers in the 50′s 60′s, 70′s and 80′s before they were legendary playwrights.

And they still go to the theatre on a regular basis.

Most older audience members I’ve ever spoken to don’t want to be bored either, but they still show up in support of the theatre.

After 40 plus years of sitting in the stalls, they just don’t conflate “shocking” or “new” with good, unlike many artists and producers.