Please welcome Anne Ackerson, author of the blog Leading By Design: A Resource for Nonprofits. Anne is the director of the Museum Associations in New York and consultant helping nonprofits with issues of governance and leadership. She's here to share her insights on the importance of recruiting young people into leadership positions. Take it away, Anne!
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If "Younger Minds Attract Younger Audiences" isn't your institution's mantra, you should seriously consider making it so. Not just for staff and volunteers, this needs to be your board's mantra too. That's particularly true for well-established, highly-structured cultural organizations presenting traditional programming formats. You know these organizations; you may work or volunteer in one.
While we read about the graying of audiences for some cultural activities, I'm wondering how gray the board and senior staff are. Do you think there's a distinct correlation?
Younger minds do more than attract younger audiences. They keep the cobwebs at bay. They help us question accepted practice and remix familiar elements to make new connections. And they are the fundamental bridges to our organizations' futures.
Some organizations use "junior boards" for folks under 40 to try out their chops. If you shine there, you'll get to move up to the "grown-up board" someday. Some organizations create "junior committees" primarily to foster under-40 philanthropy (their activities always look a lot more fun than the grander, big-money affairs).
In big, bureaucratic institutions these mechanisms undoubtedly have a place for training, mentoring, and shaping next generation leadership. But for most culturals, there's a pressing need to bring younger minds to the board room today. It seems that few though, have any inkling how to do that.
Stereotypes about board service -- good, bad, and downright ugly -- seem to prevent so many boards from looking beyond a fairly short radius of known quantities. This is true when it comes to looking for younger minds. These boards need to do two things immediately:
1) Quit repeating that under-40's don't have time for board service
2) Quit saying you don't know anyone. All great boards are fed by far-reaching, complementary networks, and age is one of them.
If you've made an honest attempt to attract younger minds to board service and come up short, you need to rethink your organization's expectations of board service and its mission.
