Climbing to the summit of board success
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About This Saving Land
Though their backgrounds may vary, all land trust board members bring valuable experience and a shared passion for conservation. But being a volunteer board member requires activating that passion to ensure their organization’s success.
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Some people come to the work of being a land trust board member because they love walking on their local land trust’s trails or volunteering to pull invasives, clear trails and build bog bridges—they are inspired by the simple joy of being outside with others to do something meaningful. Others come as land owners, scientists, ranchers, farmers, foresters or other land based specialists, bringing specific expertise, relationships and interests to the role. And many others come from a wide diversity of backgrounds, ranging from business to social work and everything in between, hoping to channel these skills into land trust work.
Though their backgrounds may vary, all land trust board members bring valuable experience and a shared passion for conservation. But being a volunteer board member requires activating that passion to ensure their organization’s success. This can mean augmenting personal expertise with specific knowledge and skills to help meet the important duties of being a land trust board member.
At Rally in Providence this year, the Alliance brought together over 80 participants in a Board Member Summit to explore how a board can reach its fullest potential. The summit was facilitated by Jen Plowden, the Alliance’s New England senior program manager, with Dianne Russell, president of the Institute for Conservation Leadership, and Connie Manes, principal at Manes Consulting LLC.
At its core, the goal of the summit was to create an opportunity for board members to connect, share ideas and learn from each other, providing a rare chance to meet others in similar roles and discuss common issues. New board members learned fundamental aspects of land trust work, and more seasoned board members explored new ways of approaching the work. The day was designed to foster connection while creating space for land trust leaders to ask questions and help others by sharing relevant experiences.
“I see a perennial need for this type of opportunity,” says Plowden. She notes that in New England in particular, many land trusts are small and all-volunteer, making the work of the board even more critical. But ultimately size doesn’t matter. “Board governance is a hot topic, and whether you’re an all-volunteer land trust or fully staffed, everyone wants to talk about how to be a good board member,” says Plowden.
Leaning into each other
To facilitate a sense of community and celebration, the summit started off with participants sharing about recent accomplishments that instilled pride and also about areas that their boards excel in. This positivity-boosting warm-up elicited a range of input. One participant was proud of an accessible trail their organization built with state and federal funding. Another shared that adding five new board members under the age of 50 is a source of pride. Affordable housing projects, achieving accreditation, installing a sensory trail and more rounded out the list. Boards are excelling in equally commendable ways, such as partnership building, community outreach and engagement, and managing during executive director transitions.
Dianne Russell and Connie Manes then led the group in two different exercises to consider big-picture thinking and the nitty-gritty of board membership. Russell helped board members get to know their own strengths and limitations through the Leadership Tensions Framework, which asks individuals to consider if they are oriented more toward strategy level thinking or specific tasks; doing it alone or sharing leadership with others; building internal capacity or developing external organizational relations; the present/past or the future.
Like all good frameworks, there are no wrong answers—the key is to know where you are and where your board tends to fall alongside what the organization needs. The group considered questions such as: What does it mean to you to be a board leader? How do you think about your role? How do you spend your time?
“Land trusts are unique from other nonprofits in that they are intended to exist in perpetuity,” says Connie Manes. “Because of this, directors’ attention to organizational sustainability is paramount. Strategic visioning drives an organization’s internal analysis of board needs, as well as how it communicates to potential directors about expectations for board service.”
Manes led the group in an exploration of the core day-to-day duties of board members and how these intersect with strategic goal setting, budgeting, fundraising and succession planning. For newer board members, this exercise provided a learning space to better understand and develop their roles, while for longer-standing board members this was a chance to review and possibly recalibrate their functions.
The exercise took them on a deep dive into three key areas: fiscal management, board operations and strategic planning. In addition to discussing each of these areas in depth, the group gained ideas for strategies and best practices to achieve success in each.
“We think of strategic planning and succession planning as cyclical, but they are really continual. Establishing processes for regular review and cultivating a leadership pipeline helps make this more manageable and helps avoid unexpected disruptions.”
Common themes
One of the strengths of the summit was the range of participants, from new board members to long-time members, and board members from all-volunteer to fully staffed organizations.
“We purposely designed the summit to provide a space where everyone could share and learn—knowing that there was an abundance of expertise in the room, regardless of how long any one person has been on their organization’s board,” explains Plowden.
This was evident in the lively discussion at breakout sessions organized around common themes and topics suggested by the participants. Participants were asked to write down a short topic, in three words or less, on sticky notes that were then collected and used to organize discussion groups. A handful of key themes emerged:
Board recruitment, including recruitment of younger people and people of diverse backgrounds.
Onboarding and training of new board members.
Engaging and stewarding board members throughout their commitment to the organization.
Succession planning for staff and board member positions, including how to prepare for leadership transitions.
Empowering board members to be active fundraisers.
“I was happy to observe our breakout groups engaging so deeply with each other. It was hard to get them to stop talking to each other so we could move on to the next subject, which is a great sign!” says Plowden.
Participants agreed.
“This session really helped me in my position as a vice president at a newly created land trust,” says Adella Bass of Riverdale Community Land Trust. “The information was gold!”
Brad Cilley, a trustee of the accredited Five Rivers Conservation Trust in New Hampshire, sent an email about his experience: “I was thrilled to participate in the Board Summit, [and] I came away with two very big ‘ah-ha’s.’ First, our Five Rivers board is on the right track, and we are doing many things very well despite sometimes feeling like we are walking in the dark. Second, for the areas where we know we need to improve as a board, I came away with some very good ideas on how to move forward thanks to the way the summit was structured around peer-to peer interactions.”
Plowden says this is exactly what she hoped the summit would provide. “Board members are doing great work and it’s not an easy job—they should feel valued and celebrate their achievements,” she notes. “There aren’t always easy answers to the challenges we face, but we can share best practices and create a community with each other.”