Ah Hah!!!!

Well, a lot has happened since I last checked in.  Most importantly, we figured out why were having trouble with our Ends Statements.  Turns out that we were mixing up our governance gurus.

As I originally said, we were following Dan Hotchkiss's ideas about governance as posited in his book, Governance and Ministry.  He basically suggests that church boards, especially those churches governed by congregational polity, move more toward a governance system that has the board dealing more at the policy level, leaving the ministry team to do the actual work.  Hotchkiss is quite vague on how this might actually look in action, though he does suggest that the Board develop a policy book and move the congregation forward through strategic planning processes and short-term goal-setting that he terms "Vision of Ministry."

Alas, Hotchkiss makes no reference to a governance document, or Ends Statements, or Executive Limitations or anything else that we have so carefully instructed the congregation about.  All these ideas come from John and Miriam Carver.  Their first book, published in 1990 (Boards That Make a Difference), lays out these concepts as they target governance in nonprofit organizations.

Churches are nonprofit organizations, but they are different than most because they include ministers who are not CEOs and members who are also the beneficiaries of the nonprofit's work.  That's why Hotchkiss developed his system.

However, as a Board, turns out we like a lot of what the Carvers say.  And, we, perhaps mistakenly at the time, adopted their ideas as we developed our governing document.  But now that we've done that, and we realize what we've done, we prefer to follow Carver.  So, I have added Carvers' books as other reference materials.  All Board members (as of this coming meeting) have copies of the 2006 book, Reinventing Your Board: A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Policy Governance by the Carvers and will be working hard to keep us on the policy governance path.

One of the things that the Carvers emphasize for "regular" nonprofits is the strong role of the CEO.  A UU church is NOT the same as "regular" nonprofits so we will all be on the lookout for those places where we need to modify Carver to make sense in our situation.

One thing I'd like to point out is that this is hard work.  Not just for me (though that is also true) but for all of us involved in the governance and operation of the church.  Please be sure to thank your board members and all paid staff for their amazing work on all of this!  (Especially Kay Aler-Maida, Michael Vavrek, Mike Horak, Ed Jenest, Marilyn Martin and Mark Ward.)