Next Modern Grantmaking Trainings
We’re running our next two "Fundamentals of Modern Grantmaking" training workshops on
9 June and
9 October, in London. Our last two fundamentals workshops
sold out so
book your place now!
PS We want to run more training workshops outside London! Please help us decide where by telling us where you’d like us to come. Drop a mail to
Hello@ModernGrantmaking.com with your suggestion!
Boards vs CEOs in funders - who should be doing what?
During our consulting and coaching for grantmaking organisations we often witness problems that stem from unclear or inadvisable divisions of roles and responsibilities between a funder’s board, and its staff team, especially the CEO.
Given that we’ve now seen these issues manifest in some very different funders, we’d share some thoughts on what we think is probably a sensible balance of duties for each side of a grantmaker's board table.
Caveat Emptor - Every funder is, of course, different, so some of what you read below might not apply in your context, especially if you work for a funder with a tiny staff team, or no staff at all. Plus, this list is not an exhaustive set of duties: we’ve limited the contents to common causes of disagreements or problems.
The Board's roles and responsibilities
The
Board of a funder should:
- Hire the best CEO they can.
- Support that CEO to succeed in every way they can.
- Be willing to replace the CEO if things go really badly.
- Sign off the organisation’s strategy, having provided input and constructive challenge during its creation.
- Review that the CEO and teams’ work is aligning with the strategy that the board has signed off.
- Regularly self-evaluate to ensure that the board’s own decisions and its own conduct are in alignment with the organisation’s strategy (boards can be very naughty in terms of demanding that others follow their strategy, while ignoring it themselves).
- Delegate lots of grant decision-making responsibilities and powers to the CEO and staff team. This means writing and approving clear policies like “All proposals up to £x should be decided by the team or a specially convened panel”. Boards should do this rather than hoarding all the decision-making power as a way of humbly acknowledging that full-time specialists with close exposure to grantseekers are generally likely to make better choices than part-timers (no matter how eminent) viewing potential partners from a considerable distance.
- Boards should help to decide on especially difficult, significant or risky grant decisions, when these are brought to it by the CEO or team.
- Agree the organisation’s non-grantmaking budget, and then delegate the power to spend that to the CEO. The board shouldn't get into signing off for new laptops or packs of office biscuits.
The CEO and staff's responsibilities
The
CEO and staff of a funder should:
- Be the primary authors of the organisation’s strategy, while listening carefully to the ideas, aspirations and feedback of the board members.
- Use their delegated grant decision-making powers to make decisions in the best ways they can. This could include making decisions directly, running participatory grantmaking exercises, or convening other types of decision-making panel.
- Identify funding proposals that are appropriate to bring to the board for debate and approval, perhaps due to large size or high risk.
- Be responsible for operational decisions like staff composition and performance, office rental, equipment, training, use of consultants and so on, within the budget approved by the board.
No nos - the
Board should
:- Not be the primary authors of the organisation’s strategy. Developing a good strategy is simply too time and energy intensive for a part time board to do with any level of acceptable quality. Instead the board should task their CEO with creating a new strategy, and then they should contribute to it, review it and ultimately sign it off. But the board members shouldn’t be holding the pen.
- Not insist on reviewing and approving every single grant proposal (unless they don’t actually have anyone else to do this work because they're the board of a very small funder). This might disappoint some board members who thought that getting to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ to the exciting money decisions was the whole reason to volunteer. But the belief that deciding on grants is the key role of board members is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of a board in any organisation (not just a funder). A board is not there to do the critical work of an organisation - it is there to make sure that the CEO and the team are doing that work. This is the very essence of the word ‘governance’; if you’re doing all the key work yourselves then you’re not governing anything meaningful. Governance work is difficult and time-consuming enough without having piles of proposals to review, too. Every minute a board is debating the qualities of a grantseeking organisation is a minute that it isn't helping the CEO and staff team to succeed. And it is also a minute where the board is not reviewing the CEO and staff team's work to make sure it’s aligned with both your strategy, and the law. As a board member, that’s your actual job.
Got any views on other roles or responsibilities we’ve missed? Want to tell us we’ve got this totally wrong? Drop us a mail to
hello@ModernGrantmaking.comLatest Reading - Modern Grantmaking recommends
How about a new job or trustee role in grantmaking?- Tudor Trust (UK) is hiring for a Programme Officer. £38,500 - £45,000 per year. Deadline is 3pm, 16 April 2024.
- The National Lottery Heritage Fund (UK) is hiring for a Head of Strategy. £57,116 to £65,872 per year (London: £60,515 to £69,272 includes London Weighting). Deadline is 18 April.
- Quartet Community Foundation (UK) is hiring for a Grants Officer. £28,000 per year. Deadline is 12 noon 18 April 2024.
- The Dulverton Trust (UK) is hiring for a Grants and Administration Officer. £32,000-38,000 per year. Deadline is 23.59 on 19 April.
- Porticus (EU) is hiring for a Programme Manager Europe. EUR 68.000 - 85.000 gross per year in Austria (and similar in Belgium). Deadline is 19 April.
Want to see your job ad in next month’s newsletter? Ping us, it’s free! Just… #ShowTheSalary
Grantmaking puzzle of the month
To switch things up this month, instead of a ‘grantmaking joke’ we’ve included a word puzzle that works in a similar way to another online puzzle that rhymes with…‘curdle’.
How many tries will it take you to solve it? Click here for the word puzzle.
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Who are we?
Gemma Bull and Tom Steinberg run Modern Grantmaking, and we write this newsletter. We do consulting and training exclusively for funders, and wrote a book on how to be a modern grantmaker, too.
