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A Fresh Look at Your Sense of Purpose

What’s your reason for being?

Not you personally, though that’s not a bad question to ask every so often. I’m thinking more of the organization you lead. How often do you and your board discuss what the purpose of your association is?

Probably not often enough, association executive David M. Patt, CAE, suggests in a recent blog post. Though most associations have a mission statement, he writes, such statements are vague and may bear little resemblance to the image that stakeholders carry in their heads. “Board members, you may find, often have different notions of the organization’s purpose, and they think, speak, act, and vote in accordance with those notions, usually assuming their colleagues think similarly,” he writes.

“Nonprofits do this all the time: They twist in the wind, chasing money rather than adhering to their guiding mission.”

That’s a problem. Though I’ll argue in a moment that it’s also not.

First, the problem. Certainly, disagreement about the focus of your organization can be a divisive thing. It complicates what you’re focusing your energies and resources on. And when you lack focus, you wind up doing a lot of things you don’t need to do and probably shouldn’t do. That happens often enough that there’s a term for it: mission creep. It occurs for a lot of reasons, but one likely reason it happens is because somebody sees an activity happening over the hedge and thinks it ought to be tried out closer to home. They have a big advertising campaign—why don’t we? They have an office in Australia—why not us? They have a credentialing program/Kickstarter/shiny new member-generating product—etc.

That’s often to path to going somewhere your organization needn’t be. Last week, scholars Mark A. Hager and Elizabeth A.M. Searing published an article at Nonprofit Quarterly, “10 Ways to Kill Your Nonprofit,” that highlighted some key ways organizations fail themselves. Most of those daggers, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved poor stewardship of funds. And one way to mismanage funds is allowing for mission drift. “Nonprofits do this all the time,” they write:

“They twist in the wind, chasing money rather than adhering to their guiding mission. The smart nonprofit will have one ear to the ground and focus on community needs. The nonprofit with the death wish will look only to requests for proposals and chase dollars into a competitive resource niche. If you can get your nonprofit to value resources over mission, you can put at least one foot in the grave.”

A clear vision from the board about what your mission is can help you escape that problem, especially if there’s been a change in your reason for being. The most famous example of this in nonprofitdom, arguably, is the March of Dimes. As Eugene Fram recently wrote at the Huffington Post, the organization was founded to raise funds for polio research; the arrival of the Salk vaccine prompted it to refocus its mission to one about care for infants.

But there are plenty of more recent examples of this in the association space—those that been affected by changes in technology, member needs, and new growth markets. At one ASAE Annual Meeting I recall hearing Enid Borden, the former CEO of the Meals on Wheels Association of America, has talked about how the organization shifted from one that provided meals to one that provided a host of services for seniors given the change in its demographics. (A name change for MOWAA’s charitable arm reflects that change: Where once it was the Meals on Wheels Research Foundation, it’s now the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger.)

Which gets us back to why disagreement about mission isn’t necessarily a problem. That disagreement about the purpose of the organization can be a sign of health; it suggests that the organization has the potential to find new ways to serve its members, and even to redefine what those members are. The trick, though, is manage that conversation about purpose with a healthy amount of skepticism. You’re not just asking what your purpose is—you’re asking whether that’s the right purpose for you to have.

But you don’t get the answers to those questions unless you ask them.

What do you do to get stakeholders talking about your association’s purpose? Share your experiences in the comments.

How to Get a Board’s Trust Early

CEOs often like to remind people that they serve at the pleasure of their boards. Rarely, though, does it seem like they’re eager to discuss that fact as a pleasure itself.

The relationship between staff and volunteer leaders can be fraught. That’s particularly pronounced in the early months of a CEO’s tenure, when the new executive is eager to implement a new vision but has to be mindful of all the things the board carries with it—institutional folkways, firmly held (but frustratingly unspoken) preferences, a general suspicion that the new person who’s arrived is ready to unwittingly wreck the organization. Worse, there’s a disinterest in engaging in such discussions: According to one recent survey, a substantial proportion of nonprofit executives say they received little board support in their first year.

Gaining endorsement from a board for your ideas is rarely unanimous.

Last week Kerry Stackpole, FASAE, CAE, a longtime association executive and managing director of Neoterica Partners, wrote thoughtfully about this predicament. In an extended blog post directed to new CEOs, he stressed the importance of being attentive to the board’s behavior. “Newly appointed CEO’s need to be extremely sensitive to the past—specifically the systems, processes and expectations––built by their predecessors,” he writes. The ways that boards cling to old behaviors manifests itself in a variety of ways: A past CEO asked to “stick around” with vague duties that still muddle with lines of authority, reflexive resistance to new proposals, benign neglect.

Stackpole’s recommendation in response is similar to a line this blog (and the experts I lean on for it) has long taken: Communicate. But, he stressess, do it tactfully and diplomatically. “You need to meet with all key executives and informal leaders in the organization,” he writes. “The tone and tenor of your initial contacts go a long way in carrying your message and setting the stage for your leadership and the organization.”

That’s good advice for a CEO navigating his or her honeymoon period, which ends….well, when does it end?

I put that question to Stackpole: When does the onboarding or transitional period end for a CEO, to the point where earning the board’s respect isn’t the primary concern?

The answer: Slower than you might like, and perhaps never. “In my experience, the transitional period is done when the board begins to endorse and actively support the ideas of the new CEO. Notice I didn’t say ‘accept.’ Accepting is far too passive and lacks the essential elements of enthusiasm and commitment to assure success for the new CEO. The true challenge here is that gaining endorsement from a board for your ideas is rarely unanimous.”

When it comes to getting to the point of active support, Stackpole makes a distinction between the speeds at which the new CEO needs to operate—fast when comes to understanding the board intimately and well, slow when it comes to implementing new ideas. Doing the opposite may force the CEO to play defense. “If a CEO hasn’t worked early in their tenure to quickly build understanding of board members, strengthen personal relationships and mold a general consensus for the future, the only ‘safe’ route for the CEO is to make small changes at the margins and move slowly toward their own implementation,” he says.

That doesn’t mean you need to be timid going in, but your actions need to be meshed with passion for the organization you’re leading. That’s what the board will be looking for when they first get to know you, Stackpole says. And of course they’ll want it for years to come as well. “In many ways the CEO is earning the board’s respect everyday,” he says. “It is an ongoing effort and something that can be easily derailed by the CEO.”

How did you establish strong communication with your board early on, and when did you feel confident that you had the board’s support? Share your experiences in the comments.

Do Boards Do Enough to Support New CEOs?

Last week, Associations Now’s Rob Stott wrote about a great success story: Amy Snell, CAE, the relatively new executive director of the Wood Component Manufacturers Association, has revived an organization in the doldrums, in part by lighting a fire under the board.

When she joined the association, Snell says, “the board had become somewhat stale…. They weren’t engaged in any sort of planning or looking at the future of the organization, there was no committee structure, and they only met once a year.”

Onboarding is a two-way street: It’s not so much the board guiding a new CEO as much as the CEO and board working together.

Snell was put in a position of being a CEO who was helping to lead the board strategically. In a more stable situation, the roles would more properly be reversed, or at least in some kind of balance. Snell’s predicament is frustrating. But on the evidence of a recent survey, it’s also not unusual.

At the website of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, three staffers of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consultancy, discuss the lack of a hands-on role that boards take when “onboarding” new nonprofit CEOs—that is, preparing them for their new role and helping them settle into the job.

A few data points from the Bridgespan study:

  • “39 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement, ‘My board was effective in helping me set priorities the first year.’”
  • “50 percent of executive directors did not clarify with their boards how they would work together in the first few months on the job.”
  • “66 percent of executive directors disagreed with the statement: ‘The board and I worked effectively together to establish concrete measures and milestones for the board to use to assess my performance in my first year.’”

The story’s authors attribute this general apathy to the exhaustion that comes following the CEO search. “They are often burned out from a demanding executive search, and eager to hand things off to the new leader and go back to their day jobs.” That’s just as true in the association world: As Jackie Eder-Van Hook wrote in Associations Now in 2011, “[The board members] are tired and have done their job. Yet, there is a rich and untapped opportunity to jumpstart an executive’s tenure and help ensure that the new executive starts out on the right foot.”

One point underlying those statistics above is that onboarding is a two-way street: It’s not so much a function of the board giving guidance to a new CEO as much as the CEO and board working together to make sure they’re both moving in the same direction. The Stanford Social Innovation Review article makes five prescriptions for how a board can help onboard a CEO—”collectively set the new leadership agenda,” “get clear on roles’—but they all effectively boil down to one thing: communication. That goes beyond communication between the board and the CEO but with staff and members too.

That kind of communication is hard work, and something that CEOs in the association world seem to be hungering for: One of the more packed Learning Labs I attended at last year’s ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition in Atlanta was on CEO performance evaluations and how CEOs can get better feedback from their boards about how they’re doing. Many of the recommendations at the session involved repairing a dysfunctional relationship. But the session stressed the importance of having forward-looking conversations regardless of whether the relationship is smooth or rocky. “Instead of measuring against past metrics, turn the evaluation conversation that looks at the association’s future needs,” the speakers emphasized.

Amy Snell did it when there was pressure to turn around a struggling association, but the conversation doesn’t have to—shouldn’t—wait until things come to that point.

How well were you supported by your board during your first months of the job? How do you keep lines of communication open about your performance? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Lessons From a Failed Governance Change

Many things can prompt an association to consider a governance overhaul. The board may be too large or too small. The number of committees may have expanded over the years, with no attention paid to whether they remain relevant. Executive committee roles may be a poor fit for the organization’s current goals.

Regardless of the reasons, the transition to a new governance model may not go smoothly. Michael Fraser, executive vice president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, learned that lesson when he came to the organization in August 2013, just as it was considering a sizable change to its structure.

PMS currently has a 37-member board as well as a 300-person house of delegates that makes policy recommendations. A member vote to shrink both the house and the board and move policy making out of the house failed in October 2013, which means Fraser faced some intense member emotions after less than three months on the job.

“People are still pretty raw about it,” he says. “There were a lot of feelings about losing the democratic process they felt the house represented, a lot of concerns about board’s power and control. [Many members felt] that the house acts as a check on that.”

That split about the virtues, or lack thereof, of a governance restructuring speaks to one of the challenges of this kind of change.

“Agreement on the need for change needs to precede conversation about what the change should be,” says Glenn Tecker, CEO of governance consultancy Tecker International (not speaking to PMS’s situation specifically). “Sometimes the analysis produces a finding that a change in a group’s process will achieve the same outcomes that would be achieved by elimination of the group. Modification of a group’s contribution to the organization is far less difficult than making a case to abolish [it].”

As important as the discussion of change itself is gauging what level of change the organization is comfortable with. Fraser believes that PMS’s proposal didn’t sit well with members who were willing to accommodate some change but were not ready to eliminate the house of delegates or rename and restructure other volunteer bodies.

“There was a lot of ‘new’ in the proposal,” he says, and that diminished the strategic discussion of its merits. “There was a lot less about, ‘What do we want the Medical Society to look like in 20 years, and is this the governance structure that’s going to keep things going?'” That’s the conversation the association is having before a revote in October, Fraser says.

Tecker stresses that a second vote requires more soul-searching among the participants. “A no vote is a political and communications problem. It requires political and communication strategies to reverse,” he says. “Informed analysis of the thinking in favor of and opposed to a change is necessary before the initial vote and certainly before any revote.”

Fraser also says that it is critical for staff leaders to stay neutral during these periods—to support the volunteers as they make a decision but not to lobby on behalf of one side or another.

“The kiss of death for me would be having to choose a side and defend it,” he says. “We really are here as stewards and servant leaders of our organizations that we maintain on behalf of our members, and I strongly caution any CEO from getting too close to either side or being seen as a champion for a particular model, because that comes with a very huge political price. Instead, guide the conversation in a way that’s responsible and will lead members to the right answer in terms of what the organization should look like to be effective. For us to own this as a staff thing would have been a horrible way to go.”

Does Your Board Need an Outsider?

Your board might seem like it’s running smoothly and governing soundly, but sometimes it’s not clear until after a big change that something important was neglected. When that happens, the results aren’t pretty: Consumers in your industry are confused. Stakeholders are infuriated. If one of them had been in the room before the vote, perhaps you wouldn’t be in this predicament.

A “public member” or “lay member” of the board is designed to avoid such mishaps and bring a different outlook to governance. Since 2002, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons has had a lay member on its 18-person board. According to CEO Karen Hackett, FASAE, CAE, the idea was implemented because the organization “wanted to hear an outside perspective at the board table. Someone who wasn’t an orthopedic surgeon [and] someone who wasn’t a staff member.”

AAOS has no firm rules about who can be a lay member, except that he or she cannot be an orthopedic surgeon and does not serve on standing committees. The system works, Hackett says, in part because of that relative lack of restrictions: The lay member is fully integrated into the full board structure.

Lay members “don’t come in with a portfolio or a specific set of marching orders,” she says. “They participate in discussion. They participate in the entire board meeting. They are assigned work based on the needs of the organization.” For example, AAOS is currently building a new headquarters building, and Hackett says the lay member was fully part of the discussions about it.

Though AAOS makes it work, Leigh Wintz, FASAE, CAE, a principal consultant with Tecker International, advises caution when considering adding a public member to your board. Without a clear sense of what role that person plays in the organization, he or she could be less of an “official outsider” and instead just a poor fit.

“The biggest problem is when people aren’t clear what their role is,” she says. “You need a real good match of expectations and skill set.”

AAOS works around those concerns by making sure that its vetting process for lay members is thorough. Nearly a year before the lay member’s term ends (he or she serves for two years and is limited to two terms), AAOS sends a communication to its fellows, requesting nominations for the person’s successor. That call typically results in a pool of 50 names that AAOS staff considers. Each nominee is contacted and informed about the role’s responsibilities and time commitment. Finalists are then vetted by the association’s top board leadership before a final candidate is voted on by the full board.

Far from complicating the dynamics of the board, Hackett says, an outsider can sometimes voice ideas and opinions that might be politically difficult for insiders to say out loud.

“It is a position that I truly appreciate personally, because sometimes the lay member can say things that are better coming from a lay board member than they are coming from staff,” Hackett says. “They can be very helpful in that regard.”

Creating a Compliance and Dispute Resolution Policy

In many associations, particularly trade groups, members are both colleagues and competitors. Disputes among members, including claims that a member violated association bylaws or ethics rules, can lead to damaging internal conflict.

Ensure a fair, consistent process for resolving these issues by creating a formal compliance and dispute resolution policy.

An inherent challenge for many associations is establishing a practical policy that deals with disputes between members or alleged violations of the organization’s bylaws or ethics code. Without an agreed-upon policy, members can waste time at meetings discussing such problems and pointing fingers. If an allegation or dispute is serious enough, factions can form and feelings can fester, potentially undermining the association and its mission.

At the association where I served as director for five years, we successfully established a compliance and dispute resolution (C&DR) policy to help us navigate these difficult situations. I learned some great lessons in that process that I believe can help other associations come to grips with this thorny issue.

Patience and the spirit of collaboration are key attributes that should be embraced from the get-go. Here are nine essential steps to guide you through the process.

1. Begin With Agreement

Once your members realize that the organization is only going in circles as it attempts to resolve disputes, it’s time to get a proposal to create a codified C&DR policy in front of the membership for a vote. Such a proposal might include the establishment of a working group of volunteers and some basic terms of reference to guide the group. The goal is to get a majority of the membership on board with the idea that a C&DR policy is needed and to gain their support for its development.

2. Create a Compliance Framework Document

Depending on the extent of an association’s bylaws and policies, this can be simple or time-consuming. But it is important background work. We used an Excel spreadsheet to itemize all those bylaws or previously approved directives that were considered enforceable.

By “enforceable” I mean those that are measurable or definable in some way. Different members might interpret bylaws differently: Some might be seen more as recommendations than rules, and, while important, they may not be specific enough to charge a member with violating. Other provisions, while clearly measurable or definable, might be relatively minor unless violations are frequent or repeated. It’s important to get consensus on these distinctions by the working group.

3. Plan to Create a Compliance Committee

Dispute resolution and policy compliance are serious matters, and shepherding the process of resolving a dispute should be the task of a full-ranking committee of volunteer members. One of the first tasks of the working group is to consider how to create a compliance committee and to develop terms of reference that detail its structure and role.

In the structure that my association devised, the compliance committee acts as a sort of district attorney’s office, but with no legal power, of course. As the volunteers on the committee have full-time jobs, the association staff expects to do a lot of the spadework to make the committee’s task as easy as possible once the process is underway.

4. Draft the Rules of Procedure

The rules of procedure are the heart and soul of any C&DR policy. This document details the standard operating procedure for each stage of the proceedings once an allegation is made.

The rules of procedure should be as simple and straightforward as possible. The document the working group creates will inevitably evolve as it is vetted by the executive committee and, eventually, an attorney. It should avoid legalese, if possible.

Where to start in drafting your own rules of procedure? Every association will have different needs and objectives, but a few key goals should be kept in mind:

  • Ensure that the rules follow a deliberative step-by-step process and are fair and objective for all parties involved.
  • Agree that the work of pursing a complaint is feasible and balanced appropriately among the association’s staff, compliance committee, executive committee, and membership, with proper authority falling where it should.
  • Make sure the rules of procedure are flexible and accommodate a wide range of theoretical bylaw or ethics code violations, disputes, and complaints.
  • Agree on proposed general sanction categories.
  • Determine if your new rules of procedure conflict in any way with your current association bylaws.

5. Include Time Limits

Each step in the rules of procedure should include a time limit for reply by the accused member or the compliance committee. This goes to fairness for all the parties involved, as well as providing for a consistent application of the policy from one case to the next.

As the working group crafts the rules of procedure, I suggest keeping a spreadsheet that tracks the maximum number of days allowed in each step of the process, along with the running total. This will provide an overall timeline. If the process seems too long, the working group can trim time limits as appropriate to make sure the time required to complete the process is practical.

6. Protect the Rights of the Accused Member

In order for the C&DR policy to be fair, a high degree of transparency and open communication is imperative among all parties. If a member is accused of violating bylaws, he or she needs to know about it shortly after a complaint is lodged.

The accused member also must have opportunities to communicate directly with the complainant or observers of the alleged violation, association staff, compliance and executive committees, and, ultimately, the membership.

The review process also should provide the accused member with opportunities for dismissal of the complaint along the way. The vast majority of disputes and compliance issues likely will be resolved by the parties in the early stages of the review process.

7. Get Buy-In

Drafting the components of the C&DR policy can be a lengthy ordeal. While I did my best to keep the executive committee abreast of our progress, they didn’t have the time to get into the nitty-gritty of the draft language.

Although the working group is the primary body charged with drafting the policy, don’t assume that this group knows better than anyone else how to do it. Seek as much input as possible.

We did this by conducting a two-day workshop late in the C&DR policy drafting process. The workshop was open to all members, and quite a few attended. Their contributions in the final draft were invaluable. By getting involved, the workshop participants also became invested in the policy, and they were much more likely to support it when it was voted on at the next annual meeting.

8. Avoid Antitrust Pitfalls

Every industry needs healthy competition, and an association policy cannot be binding in the larger scheme of commerce. In other words, there can be no association sanctions or threats that would inhibit a member’s ability to conduct business, as such a policy would raise antitrust concerns.

Contact legal counsel with experience in these matters to review your C&DR policy components and rules of procedure, once the working group and the executive committee agree to them. Money spent at this point is money invested in the long-term viability of your policy.

9. Court Member Acceptance

Let’s face it: Most association members don’t have time to pore through detailed drafts of documents that require their approval to become new policy. So, they will rely on a good executive summary to understand and vote on the issue.

The summary should provide a brief road map tracking the membership’s initial vote to approve creation of a C&DR policy and any interim updates that kept them informed of progress. Members should not feel as if an important new policy is being thrust on them unexpectedly, particularly one that could result in their being sanctioned at some future point. Remind them that the policy has been created out in the open, with many opportunities for input.

The new C&DR process needs to be communicated clearly and concisely. Because of its step-by-step nature, a graphic flow chart is a good way to show members how the process will work. Presenting the procedure visually will go a long way in making it easier to grasp.

Trade associations are built on mutual trust and a firm belief in the organization’s mission. To achieve member acceptance and success in practice, a C&DR policy must thoroughly embrace these characteristics.

Think Big. Embrace Risk. Change the Rules.

Dan Pallotta has a message for you: You’re too timid.

It’s nothing personal. It’s just that he’s lost patience with a nonprofit culture that, to his mind, has stifled its urge to innovate and is handcuffed by legal restrictions and media misperceptions. He’s come around to this way of thinking out of frustrating personal experience.

In 1994 Pallotta launched Pallotta TeamWorks, which sponsored successful bike rides and walks to raise funds for AIDS and breast cancer research. When that organization collapsed in 2002—in part due to criticism that an overly large proportion of its revenue was dedicated to salaries and other overhead costs—Pallotta launched a second career: professional firebrand and advocate for nonprofit innovation.

His new book, Charity Case, follows up his 2008 book, Uncharitable, and his popular Harvard Business Review blog to challenge nonprofits, including associations, to innovate and make a better case for their value. And he unapologetically frames his argument in terms of some of the fiercest civil rights battles of the past century. He’s launched a Charity Defense Council that’s modeled after the Anti-Defamation League and wants a rewrite of nonprofit regulations in the form of what he calls a National Civil Rights Act for Charity and Social Enterprise.

In my mind, those were sweeping national efforts by communities that were previously disorganized.

An unfair comparison? For Pallotta, the stakes are just as high for nonprofits as for any other wrongfully treated group. “In my mind, those were sweeping national efforts by communities that were previously disorganized,” he  says. “And they’re models of what can happen when a community organizes itself on its own behalf and in its own defense and in the name of its own potential.”

So what do nonprofit leaders need to do? Here are four of his challenges to them.

1. Have the nerve to innovate.

Pallotta’s big-picture vision includes revising the IRS regulations to allow outside investment in the activities of charities and association foundations—an almost total rewiring of the system, but one that would improve the flow of funds that he says are essential to effect change.

“I absolutely do see the need for some kind of ability to trade in risk in futures of nonprofit organizations,” he says. “The risk-reward dynamic is what has built American business, and yet it’s prohibited in our sector. We’re starved for that kind of capital. If somebody is willing to put up $10 million and is willing to risk losing it and wants $15 million back, then why on earth would we not want to do that?” Pallotta imagines a “for-profit foundation” that is not tax-exempt but can deduct all its gifts from taxes. Donations would remain tax-deductible.

I’m not down on social media, but I’m down on the way we conceive of it as a free lunch.

Nonprofits could still benefit from an ambition boost, even if such a restructuring doesn’t come to pass. If an association doesn’t aspire to a bare-knuckle corporate culture, in can still aspire to corporate ambition, Pallotta says.

“If we try something big and it fails [in a nonprofit], the price to pay is steep,” he says. “People’s character is called into question, attorneys general start to want to investigate. It’s not a normal business failure. … It’s just common practice in the for-profit sector to dream big and try great things, and we just don’t do it.”

2. Stop cheaping out.

Pallotta’s Charity Defense Council, which was founded in part to respond to what he sees as public anti-nonprofit bias, intends to start test- promoting itself with an eye on the budget: It’s spending $5 million in a midsize city to send its message via TV and print advertising. He says it’s critical to recognize that an organization’s message needs some breadth and serious investment to be heard—which is why he worries that many nonprofits see social media not just as one part of a marketing plan but the whole package. “I’m not down on social media, but I’m down on the way we conceive of it as a free lunch,” he says. “It doesn’t produce tons of results when it’s free. The media is free, but you have to put resources into it to drive people to you.”

3. Build a risk-oriented board.

Board members are attracted to the responsibilities of board work for a variety of reasons—and many of them stifle change, Pallotta argues. Passive goals like enhancing a resume are bad enough, but vague ideals like “I want to do something good for the community” are only marginally better. “In the for-profit sector [the incentive for board members] is to create value for the shareholder,” he says. “There’s not really a lot of incentive for somebody on a nonprofit board to try something new. The risk of failure is way too high. Nobody wants to see it on their watch.”

The irony is that the solution to the problem is largely built into the personalities of the people nonprofits recruit to their boards. So it becomes imperative for executive directors to retain the innovative mindsets that made board members leaders in the first place.

“People do a number of things that make them successful in business, and they come into the nonprofit boardroom and they demand that the nonprofit stop doing all those things while at the same time they’re telling the nonprofit to act more like a business,” he says. “It could not be more dysfunctional.”

4. Build better storytelling into the 990.

The IRS Form 990 gives nonprofits opportunities to spell out their mission and goals but fewer opportunities to describe their progress and show that they’re an organization worth time, attention, and money. In Charity Case, Pallotta mentions an idea from GuideStar president and CEO Bob Ottenhoff that changes the 990: He would require organizations to file a three-year progress report before they are granted nonprofit status. The document would lay out not just the organization’s mission but how it has measured its progress toward fulfilling that mission.

“I think there needs to be much more opportunity to talk in a narrative sense about goals and progress,” Pallotta says. “We react in a defensive way to legislation that comes up that can hurt us. I want to excite people’s imaginations and show them what a new conversation might look like.”