More women key to better board engagement

The need for board diversity comes in many different shades. Let's look at my own boards. Three of the four I sit on are pretty evenly balanced in terms of gender, perhaps even skewing more female. The other board is two-thirds male. One board is largely white, with some South Asians but no East Asians. Another is primarily white and East Asian, but no South Asians. Two are almost entirely white. There is just one African American in total out of roughly 60 people. Of the four boards, I am the only Hispanic, except for one other member on one board. I am the youngest member on two boards--in one case by at least 10 years. One board skews much older and much younger, with some members in their early twenties. Most of these trends (aside from the tail end Millenials) are not unique.

Sometimes lack of diversity results from the subject matter or function of the board. For example, I sit on a child care board composed of parents, so there is little variation in age. But is that an excuse not to be diverse in other ways? And what are the consequences of this homogeneity?

The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy report, The Impact of Diversity: Understanding How Nonprofit Board Diversity Affects Philanthropy, Leadership and Board Engagement, aims to find out how board diversity affects board engagement. The report, researched in collaboration with Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates and BoardSource, relies on data surveyed from nonprofit CEOs and examines demographic variables of gender, race, ethnicity, and age to learn more about how diversity affects participation in governance, fundraising, and advocacy.

The survey suggests that having more women on boards correlates with more board engagement on governance, fundraising, and advocacy. Boards with a higher percentage of members under 39 tend to be more engaged with governance and fundraising. The only relationship found between racial and ethnic diversity and engagement was lower engagement among boards at older organizations (not newer or smaller organizations) where the boards had higher percentages of African-Americans. The report also notes that older organizations tend to have less diverse boards, so I wonder if the survey is perhaps capturing boards in transition who are experiencing lower engagement as they attempt to diversify.

Looking at the dataset, women hold 47% of board seats, which is close to the 50.8% of the US population that is female. By contrast, the percentages of African-Americans, Asians, and Hispanics on the boards in the study were noticeably lower than the US Census Bureau average: 7.5% compared with 13.3% for African-Americans, 2.5% compared with 5.7% for Asians, and 4.2% compared with 17.8% for Hispanics. While the percentage of board members in the study over age 40 was 83.1%, the percentage of the adult population in the US over 40 is only 61%.

For arts organizations, the percentages of African-Americans drops to 5.6% and Hispanics drops to 2.7% (other categories surveyed remain within one percentage point of the nonprofit average). How do we remedy this situation and recruit more African-Americans and Hispanics to our boards? Do these percentages represent the racial and ethnic makeup of the populations who are visiting and giving to arts organizations?

These statistics raise the question, do boards need to be reflective of the population they serve or the general population? Additionally, is the population they serve the entire US population or is it a demographic subset of people who are using the organization's services or giving financially to the organization? I think those populations might look very different. Further, do we need to make the audience more reflective of the population before we can expect the board to reflect the population?

While gender diversity appears to be the key for increasing board engagement, increasing racial and ethnic diversity possibly has implications for quality and relevance of programming and audience engagement, assuming that the board would then be more representative of and attuned to the people it serves. As such, striving for diversity on both fronts seems to be a good strategy for improving engagement across the board.

For me, increasing board diversity starts at home. My daughter copies my behavior, so on a Saturday morning, she plays board meeting with her toys. Future boards, watch out!