Because boards spend so much of their time focused on accountability for “Ensuring Capacity,” it is important to be clear just what accountability for ensuring capacity really means.

Let’s start with an example:

The staff suggests a needed improvement - perhaps additional staff in the mental health area of your clinic, due to increased demand for that service; or perhaps another muralist to train kids, due to increased demand for your youth-in-the-arts program.

If your board’s first reaction is to say, “No, we don’t have the money,” then the board is not ensuring the capacity to provide the mission. This is probably one of the greatest misunderstandings of nonprofit boards - the thought that saying “no” is the same as being accountable.

The irony is that a focus on not having money to do the job is not only NOT being accountable, but is actually the OPPOSITE of being accountable. The more you say, “no,” the LESS your organization is providing benefit to the community.

The accountable response is therefore not, “No, we don’t have the money,” but “Let’s go find the money, to be sure we can do the job we need to do!”

So what do you do when you are approached with that new personnel issue? How about this as just one approach:

If we really need more mental health staffing in that area, let’s form a committee of board, staff and community members, to determine what the position(s) should be, and where we might find funding for those positions. Come back to the board in 30 days with a plan, and let’s aim for having this funded in the next 120 days.

There are many fiscally responsible ways to handle these sorts of issues in a proactive way, all focusing on the board’s accountability to ensure the capacity to provide the mission. Saying, “No, we don’t have the money,” is simply not one of them.