Sitting with my "I read a lot on nonprofit management" hat...
The SCA's biggest problem, is the echo chamber. Managing a business is not the sort of skill that one develops within the SCA, but managing a non-profit is very much that. (Other things to, notably fund-raising.)
The SCA's "experts" at the Board level are home-grown. If they have relevant expertise at all, it is generally either as a lawyer or a middle-manager of a for-profit organization.
The Board absolutely refuses to educate itself on how non-profit management works, nor will it consult with outside experts. As a result it, shall I say, "more and more resembles itself". People do what they know, which is "what they've seen done".
The workload that we dump on the Board doesn't help, either: people still have to earn livings, tend to want to participate actively, and have to micro-manage the day to day operations of the SCA.
There is no time to learn.
I've seen wonderful, talented, great people join the SCA Board, and they remained wonderful-talented-great. But they could not overcome the genuine momentum of the SCA as it is.
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Date: 2015-11-23 02:47 pm (UTC)The SCA's biggest problem, is the echo chamber. Managing a business is not the sort of skill that one develops within the SCA, but managing a non-profit is very much that. (Other things to, notably fund-raising.)
The SCA's "experts" at the Board level are home-grown. If they have relevant expertise at all, it is generally either as a lawyer or a middle-manager of a for-profit organization.
The Board absolutely refuses to educate itself on how non-profit management works, nor will it consult with outside experts. As a result it, shall I say, "more and more resembles itself". People do what they know, which is "what they've seen done".
The workload that we dump on the Board doesn't help, either: people still have to earn livings, tend to want to participate actively, and have to micro-manage the day to day operations of the SCA.
There is no time to learn.
I've seen wonderful, talented, great people join the SCA Board, and they remained wonderful-talented-great. But they could not overcome the genuine momentum of the SCA as it is.