Designing a better board experience.
The Board of Directors lies at the heart of every social impact organization, yet fully tapping into the wisdom and reach of these stakeholders is a challenge for many of us. This summer, I connected with a range of nonprofit leaders to better understand common pain points associated with board member engagement, fundraising participation, and strategic focus, and their insights made me wonder what would happen if we approached these hurdles not as problems to fix, but as opportunities to design?
Here’s why Human-Centered Design might be the key to unlock success:
Empathy Is the Foundation: To solve a problem, you must first understand the people experiencing it. For a board, this means understanding each other's needs, wants, and motivations.
A Bias Towards Action: Instead of endless discussions, prototyping and testing ideas quickly helps groups move past theory and into real-world practice.
The Power of Collaboration: The best solutions are co-created. By bringing board members together to design their own experience, you build greater ownership and a more sustainable culture.
How might this work in real life? Let’s take a look.
Reimagine fundraising.
Many board members feel discomfort with fundraising. A Human-Centered Design approach helps them reframe the ask by focusing on their personal "why." When board members are confident in telling their own story, they become authentic and compelling advocates. A great place to start is by using a Stakeholder Map to identify donors, partners, and community members, clarifying their expectations and relationships.
Prototype engagement.
A culture of engagement goes beyond meeting attendance. It's about ensuring every board member feels their time is well spent. A simple brainstorming session and a Feedback Grid can help a board identify small, low-effort changes that lead to a high impact on engagement. To help a board visualize new ways of interacting, Storyboarding can be used to visually work through new, unfamiliar interactions and scenarios. Many board members feel discomfort with fundraising. A Human-Centered Design approach helps them reframe the ask by focusing on their personal "why." When board members are confident in telling their own story, they become authentic and compelling advocates. A great place to start is by using a Stakeholder Map to identify donors, partners, and community members, clarifying their expectations and relationships.
Ideate for impact.
Boards can get bogged down in day-to-day details. By taking a step back and applying a Human-Centered Design approach, boards can use existing feedback and data to identify areas of great impact, and then prototype new opportunities for the future. This helps them move from maintaining the status quo to building a more dynamic vision. To challenge hypothesis and identify new strategic opportunities, a Questions and Assumptions exercise can help the board clarify what they know, what's uncertain, and what they need to know.
Your board’s future is what you make of it.
A board that leverages Human-Centered Design isn't just a governing body, it's a team of active co-creators dedicated to deeper mission alignment, accelerated innovation, and strengthened morale—leading to increased participation and a more sustainable vision for the future.
In addition to the free activities available through Olio’s online tool box, Olio is also piloting a NEW series of board workshops, facilitated experiences to help boards take their work together up a notch.
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