The founder is at the center of all decision-making. Decisions are made quickly, with little input from others. Often, decisions are made in crisis mode, with little forward planning to prevent problems from occurring. The organization becomes reactive, rather than proactive.

The board is recruited by the founder, rather than by the board itself. Often they are friends of the founder, who may have been there from the beginning. Staff may also have been chosen due to their personal loyalty to the founder.

The board’s role is to “support” the founder, rather than to lead the organization. They are often a rubber stamp board, having little understanding of the work the organization does. Their commitment isn’t to the mission, but to the founder. They are unable to answer basic questions without checking first - such as the size of the budget, the major funding sources, the extent of the programs.

A casual observer would hear a lot of “I, me, my” in conversation. My staff. My organization. My vision.

There is little organizational infrastructure in place. There is no succession plan, and it would not be unusual to hear the words, “That’s not how we’ve always done it.”

The following is from Hank Lewis’s article in Nonprofit Boards and Governance Review: “Understand, the resistance is not toward helping people. It is toward those changes that will result in a (perceived or actual) loss of control, toward a change in the working environment – from the comfortable group of friends around a kitchen table to having all those “strangers” messing with “our baby,” toward the (perceived or actual) inevitable change into “something we no longer recognize.”