Q:

“I’m on the board of a small, financially stable charity with low expenditures. Just over a year ago, our board recruited a new treasurer. This person works in the financial services sector and has zero nonprofit or governance experience. He came into the role with an offensive and patronizing attitude toward the sector and the people who work in it, and they seem to think they are the CFO of the organization. 

The treasurer is consistently overreaching; he leads detailed board discussions about finances, has tried to shift the format of our budget, attempted to write the annual report and made an effort to change the organization’s charitable objectives. This has put significant strain on our ED, who at one point was prepared to resign. It has also diverted time and energy away from delivering on our mission. 

Despite repeated concerns raised by multiple board members and the ED, the chair has been reluctant to act decisively, saying that “good treasurers are hard to find.” How should a board proceed when the chair is hesitant to confront a disruptive board director, even as the impact on leadership becomes clear? I’m concerned about how easily situations like this can erode trust, leadership stability, and ultimately, the charity’s ability to serve its beneficiaries.”

A:

Off the top, I want to say that this isn’t really about the challenges of recruiting treasurers (and I’ve written about credential creep and board recruitment previously, so I won’t get into it here). And I also want to mention that some of the examples here are not really red flags for me; there’s nothing inherently worrisome about detailed financial discussions at board meetings (but push back on that is concerning) or about suggesting changes to the budget format. But shared in the context of the full story, I do understand where the concerns about overreach and eroding trust are coming from.  

There are three big underlying issues that I want to talk about here: when and where to address patronizing attitudes from private sector peeps, how to harness ‘new treasurer energy’ for the good of governance, and why conflict management skills are essential to board leadership.

Addressing Patronizing Attitudes From Private Sector Peeps

It’s no secret that private (and often public) sector experience is valued above nonprofit expertise. You don’t have to scratch too far below the surface of most boards to find that the prevailing attitude toward nonprofit organizations, and especially nonprofit staff, is paternalistic in nature. The often unstated assumption is that if nonprofit workers were good at management or leadership, they wouldn’t be working in the nonprofit sector.

Of course this is a very flawed and harmful paradigm. We know that nonprofit staff are some of the most educated workers out there, and across a large and diverse sector, most organizations are managed thoughtfully and resourcefully, often under far greater constraints and accountability than private corporations. And yes, some nonprofits are inefficient, but so are many businesses. None of this is news.

What we don’t talk about enough is how our board recruitment practices often reinforce this paradigm. We actively seek out credentialed professionals from the private sector, positioning their experience and expertise as absolutely essential to making the organization ‘work’. So it’s not surprising when new board members arrive with paternalistic assumptions, a “charity mindset,” and a bit of a saviour complex.

If we want to avoid this very predictable outcome, we need to be intentional about it. Board recruitment should prioritize values alignment before credentials, and orientation needs to address the common misconceptions and assumptions about the sector. A few approaches that might be helpful include:

• Sharing and discussing resources that name the dynamic, like Vu Le’s classic, ‘Dear business people, please stop bizsplaining things to us nonprofit folks’.
• Providing explainers and background documents on the structural challenges that exist in the sector (there are many, many great reports that are released on an ongoing basis that boards should be reading). 
• Focusing on building governance and operations to advance core purpose, rather than emulate a particular organizational model
• Encouraging a leadership culture of respect and humility. 

The reality is that many board directors come to their role without a strong understanding of the nonprofit sector, or even the landscape of the organization’s change work. And that’s totally fine, as long as we are helping them understand that they have a lot to learn, and supporting them on that learning journey. And remember that your organization's staff are the experts in the organization, and the work you do. That expertise needs to be valued by the board, and leveraged for everyone’s benefit. 

How To Harness ‘New Director Energy’ For The Good Of Governance

It’s not necessarily a bad thing when a new board director comes into their role and wants to ‘roll up their sleeves’. But it can be disruptive when that energy isn’t coming from a place of respect and humility. 

This is especially true when we’re talking about an officer role like the treasurer. It’s not uncommon for new treasurers to push for changes in how financials are managed or reported. Sometimes that’s valuable. Other times, it reflects personal preference rather than organizational need, creating unnecessary administrative burden.

We don’t want to tell new directors that their contributions aren’t welcome; after all, board roles come with significant responsibility, and it’s not fair to ask people to take on responsibility where they don’t have influence. And a blanket ‘cool it’ approach often reinforces the status quo, cutting the organization off to growth and change, while also creating division between board and staff. But there does need to be a balance between an openness to change, and overreach from enthusiastic individuals who may not yet have the full picture in view.

That balance comes primarily from role clarity (I know, I know, I say it all the time!). New directors (I mean, all directors) need to know where, how and why to fulfill their board role. Having really thoughtful role descriptions for board directors and officers matters a lot, along with a code of conduct (that includes a section on board/staff relations). What we want here is for all directors to understand the role of the board as a whole, how they can contribute to the board’s success as an individual, and what limitations exist on their authority (and why!). All directors must remember that their personal preferences, while sometimes valuable, don’t carry any formal authority in the organization. Only the board can make board decisions!

So for example, if a new treasurer comes into the organization and wants to make a significant change to the way that financials are managed, their role is to make that recommendation to the board - not to single-handedly drive that change forward. As a whole, the board can consider the recommendation, and in consultation with the ED, decide on whether or not it makes sense. If the board decided - through a vote - that this is an important shift to make, then they can choose to delegate some or part of that work to the treasurer or the finance committee. In either case, a workplan would be drawn up and approved by the board (again, delegation should be documented in a vote). 

In this situation, the treasurer is serving the board’s aims, with a clear mandate and appropriate accountability mechanisms in place, rather than acting unilaterally. This formalized, deliberate approach creates more transparency, and ideally, helps buffer the organization from the changing preferences of any one individual around the board table. (For more context on why we need to shelter organizations from the whims of individual board directors, check out “Our Board Chair Called a Secret Meeting and Killed Our Strategic Plan. Now What?”) 

This approach would likely have prevented issues like the treasurer attempting to write the annual report. If an individual board director wanted to do this work, they would have to make a case to the board for why they should intervene in an area of the ED’s role description. One would hope that such a discussion would quickly point to the risks of unneeded interference with the ED’s work, while also creating a learning opportunity for the board.

Why Conflict Management Is An Essential Governance Skill

Of course, having role descriptions, policies, and protocols in place is only half the battle. The board has to actually stick to them, and be willing to hold one another accountable in situations of non-compliance. And as this story illustrates, that’s actually very rare. Boards tend to be very ‘polite’ places, and when I say polite, I mean it in the white-liberal sense of an unwillingness to challenge the status quo or disrupt power. I have seen boards go to great lengths to avoid confronting any kind of conflict in an open, transparent way, sidestepping hard conversations and sweeping difficult situations under the rug.

We need to consider conflict management as an essential leadership competency for board directors. Our story mentions a chair who doesn’t want to deal with an overstepping treasurer because ‘a good treasurer is hard to find’, but I think the reality is that this is someone who just doesn’t want to have an awkward, uncomfortable conversation. That sucks. But the good news is that the chair is not the only person who can talk to the treasurer about their behaviour. As I’ve said before: every board director holds equal power and equal responsibility. Anyone at the board table can speak to, or call a vote on, any governance issue they choose. But you have to be willing to step into that uncomfortable space, politeness be damned, and do the right thing.

Often, having some basic accountability mechanisms in place - role descriptions, code of conduct, conflicts and complaints procedure - makes this easier. But ultimately, it takes a bit of courage and some decent conflict skills, which, while great to have in a chair, are freely available to everyone at the board table.

Clarity, Courage, and Intentional Governance

Boards are always changing. New people come with new personalities, new perspectives and new tensions. With a strong orientation, clear guidelines and guardrails in place, and a willingness to engage in open, sometimes uncomfortable conversations, we can create an enabling environment for new directors to bring their full energy to the role in a responsible way. But when we are not intentional about who or how we recruit, when we let harmful assumptions and attitudes drive the agenda, and when we don’t have the courage to hold ourselves and our peers accountable, things can unravel quickly. And as this story illustrates, the consequences aren’t abstract - a loss of trust, breakdowns in communication and strained board/staff relationships can cause serious harm to an organization.

Big Takeaways

• Unexamined assumptions shape board behaviour. When directors bring in beliefs about nonprofits being inefficient or staff being less capable, those assumptions quietly drive decisions and dynamics.
• Clarity creates space for accountability. Clear roles, boundaries, and decision-making processes are what keep individual directors from overstepping, and provide a pathway for correcting missteps when they do happen.
• Conflict avoidance is a governance failure. When boards avoid hard conversations, they allow harm to continue; addressing issues directly is part of the job.