In a previous post , I emphasized trustees when discussing distinctions in expectations and roles versus advisors.  Effective advisory bodies play several key roles in a high performance nonprofit, serving as strategic connective tissue between the organization and its significant stakeholder community.  Jan Masaoka recently wrote about four distinct functions of advisory boards.  Her category of programmatic boards encompasses a wide range of powerful possibilities.

Advisory bodies can serve as input channels for key constituencies, such as parents of students in a private school or key allies, such as government and nonprofit officials in the recovery field helping with standards for a treatment organization.  Advisory boards can be filled with players representing a key occupational community, such as business owners for a job training program or health care professionals for a well-family program.  Advisory committees can amplify a boards outgoing ambassador role, opening doors for board members and staff or serve as a radar amplification system, to better hear what the community is saying about the behavior of an organization.  Advisory boards serve as a proving ground for future trustee candidates.

But advisory bodies rarely attract and retain the best participants or manifest full strategic value for organizations and their boards because they are treated as a political gesture or as an afterthought.  To echo another of Jan’s points, effective advisory bodies have staff assigned to their care and feeding, with members being treated with the same dignity as a clients or trustees and meaningful work activity receiving adequate support.  Only then will advice from these groups provide an ongoing fount of wisdom.

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3.22 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."