Boards are notorious for expending tremendous amounts of time, energy, and resources of nonprofit leaders who are already stretched thin by the demands of the job. But this doesn’t have to be the norm. A more liberatory future is possible, one in which nonprofit leaders and boards work together more equitably, effectively, and impactfully by reimagining the role of boards in the broader nonprofit governance ecosystem, shifting from power-hoarding to power-sharing.

To get there, however, requires an understanding of how boards came to be. This includes grappling with the invisible systems of institutional oppression, built to hoard wealth and power, that laid the foundation for how many boards operate today.

This series will give you a clear-eyed picture of the past, and then offer a different model for effective nonprofit governance, providing some specific examples of current-day boards that are walking a better path. If we are to co-create a more liberatory future, we must find new ways of working together that can more effectively achieve our dreams.

Where Did Boards Come From? How Can They Shift From Power-hoarding to Power-sharing?

Historically in the United States, instead of expecting our government to create a healthy, equitable social safety net, much of that responsibility was outsourced to a beleaguered array of charities controlled by rich people with the power to decide who deserves to be saved. This has continued into the present day, where predominantly White, wealthy board members exercise their power over nonprofits struggling to solve huge societal problems. We need to dive briefly into the past in order to make sense of the unwritten rules limiting how modern-day boards operate.

In the 1500s, the Catholic Church and a handful of aristocrats controlled most of England’s wealth, which threatened King Henry VIII’s power. In turn, he created the Rule Against Perpetuities, which deemed that a person’s control over property must cease within 21 years of that person’s death. By forcing property to change hands, the king could tax it, limiting others’ consolidation of power.

Read the full article about shifting from power-hoarding to power-sharing by Ananda Valenzuela at Nonprofit Quarterly.