A Call to Action and a Good Partnership Lead to Governance Change
Case: The American Camp Association
This is a story of a board investing in diversity to stay relevant. The “call to action” came from the CEO, but it took steady leadership from the chair to make it happen. This case is a bit longer than some, but that's because both partners in the governance change have plenty of good advice for association boards.
The American Camp Association (ACA) is a community of camp professionals who, for more than 100 years, have joined together to ensure the quality of camp programs. Organized in the state of Indiana, ACA is a 501(c)3 organization that collectively has an impact on 6.9 million campers and learners annually. Through the strategic planning process described further in this case, the association adopted three goals:
- Greater public understanding of and support for the value of the camp experience
- An increasing number of children, youth, and adults of all social, cultural, and economic groups with a camp experience
- Camp experiences of high quality
ACA's services to camping professionals include educational resources; research; policy work; outreach to parents, families, and other professionals to build safer, healthier, more fun environments where children and youth can become leaders; environmental stewardship; and promotion of public health. Their slogan: “Camp gives kids a world of good” (www.acacamps.org/about/who-we-are).
We had been through a name change and a rebranding. We did everything on the surface to look different but inside we weren't different.
Challenge: A Name Change Doesn't Mean the Board Is Any Better
Peg Smith, CEO of ACA, described where the governance change began:
We had been through a name change and a rebranding. We did everything on the surface to look different but inside we weren't different.
Ann Sheets, currently the senior vice president of administration and finance for Camp Fire First Texas, and then president of the American Camp Association, recalls:
Peg was an association professional. A lot of what we did came as a result of some forward-thinking by Peg and looking at the association not from the “camp professional lens” but from a new perspective. When she was hired, we were going through a process of looking at the core services we were providing to our members. We had done a market study. We then changed our name. But we realized we had some fundamental problems. Our board did not include the kinds of people we needed in order to have the voice we wanted in the world.
Smith recalls the moment she delivered the news:
I believed that I had engendered a level of authenticity with the board and within the membership. But when I first presented the “call to action” to the board, it became eerily quiet. I was very worried—I wondered if I had blown all my social capital in one fell swoop. Then the conversation started.
Strategy: Board Chair Leads Conversation
Smith noted the important role that the board chair took in leading this conversation: “It was Ann's courage that challenged the board forward to ‘do something different.’” Sheets continued:
Sometimes if you stay around an organization long enough and participate in enough difficult discussions over the years, you will have some credibility. I was very fortunate to have previously been in a couple of leadership roles that allowed me to do this.
Smith described the difficult conversations that followed within the board:
Privately, there were many conversations that were very personal and often emotional. None of the books prepare you for the need for psychological hardiness. No one talks about what you have to be steeled for. There are moments when you really doubt what you have started. Change frightens people and people hate ambiguity.
Strategy: Leadership Commits to the Process
According to Smith, it was the board chair who provided the right amount of reassurance:
If not for Ann's leadership, the volunteer board members would not have been able to get through the messiness. When you have leadership that publically appears resolute and committed to a vision, that's inspiring and it allows change to unfold. Ann was always inspirational and enthusiastic about what the changes would ultimately mean. The initial commitment and willingness to embrace chaos happened under Ann's leadership. When it got tough and people wanted to quit trying, we both would say, “If not now, when?” The problems weren't going to go away. We got that it was a complete package—governance, how we did business, everything. But we knew the first thing we had to do was change our governance.
Challenge: Loose Confederation Results in Anemic Performance
Smith recalled:
Previously we had about 26 independent moving parts (sections), a hybrid between franchises and a federation, each with its own board and staff. We all had the same intent, we were all using the same name and core services, but each had somewhat differing visions, missions, policies, and operations. We hung together very loosely and we weren't making an impact. The efficacy was anemic and this always kept us at a mediocre level of performance. Being a member in one part of the country didn't mean being a member in another part of the country—there were differences because of size, budget, geographic location, and so forth.
From the board seat, Sheets recalled: “With Peg's ‘call to action’ we realized we were simply not the association we wanted to be.”
Challenge: Board Elections Are a Popularity Contest
Smith described a key problem for the board was coming to terms with its own selection process:
The national board was elected by popular vote with only about 10 percent of our membership voting. For the most part, it was about those who were involved on a local level, who attended national conference, their name would become known, and then because they had a bit of national recognition, they were nominated. For some it was the culmination of their career.
We began to understand that if we really wanted the organization to make the difference we believed it could, the people sitting around the table today were probably not the people we needed to lead us. We had a very critical and brutal conversation about what needed to happen, with many sleepless nights and lots of uneasy conversations.
Strategy: Old Board Makes Way for New Board
Smith continued:
And then, at the end of the day, that board voted themselves out of office. From there we put a plan in place to transform the board and the entire association. Today, this is the most remarkable board I have worked with in 40 years. They are absolutely astounding. Some of this was serendipity, meaning the right people sitting there at the right time, but the rest is a credit to Ann's leadership.
Sheets recalled:
When we started, I don't think any of us realized how involved it would end up being. We were messing with norms, structures, and rituals that made up our culture—taking a hundred-year-old organization and trying to make it contemporary and relevant in our world today.
Strategy: Keep Focused on the Vision
Sheets also recalled:
People get caught up in the bureaucracy of stuff. We continuously brought people back to the vision, the moral obligation. We got people out of the weeds, out of personality and politics. We kept the vision as our centerpiece and constantly referred back to it. It became a matter of people accepting what we called the Brutal Truths (for example, “It's not about camp; it's about making people better”).
Strategy: Make Good Use of the Good Governance Tools
Smith described some of the tools ACA used:
We applied Jim Collins's Good to Great and Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer. Were the right people on our bus? You have to have a little of all of this: fear, brilliance, mistake, and luck. But again, the right leadership, the right timing in the history of the organization, the right background, and the right amount of education can make things happen. It was an amazing privilege to watch this creation.
Strategy: Come to Terms with Representational Governance
Sheets described a sequential combination of “understandings and strategies” that followed:
- Governance cannot be representational and must be broader based. As a result the board canceled the next election.
- Representation on the board should include half camp professionals and half professionals from other backgrounds (finance, marketing, youth development, education, psychology, etc.). It is no longer a popularity contest—it's now about what we need.
- We needed greater diversity to mirror our constituents and society (race, age, sexual orientation). We were aging out and whiting out. We had a moral obligation to change because kids needed the experiences we provided. So we had to live through the uncomfortableness with having a different kind of board.
Strategy: Make Use of Task Forces
ACA established a 20/20 Task Force that started as a review of governance processes but then this went association-wide. Their ultimate recommendation was that every single element of the association had to recalibrate. For example, with 26 independent sections, each with its own board, the Task Force found that the national association had no control over the sections. So the goal became to have one association, not 26. This took a lot of conversation.
Strategy: Integrate the Plan, but Break It into Manageable Parts
With some internal statements and communication pieces (a “20/20 Statement” and a “20/20 Puzzle”) the national board began to demonstrate to sections the case for integration. The heart of the process was a vision statement. The board used the process to demonstrate to change recipients that while the change was monumental, it could be broken into achievable stages. Thus ACA simplified a huge undertaking and reassured stakeholders.
Sheets explained:
We tried to give people a few things they could hang onto. We also had a roadmap: the logical steps we would have to take. It was ambiguous and people needed to see that, yes, there is a sequence and progress can be made little by little. We had to define that end vision. We also depended on our accountants and our lawyers—we needed the expertise that we were doing things that were right and would work and we were never outside the boundaries. They were available to us throughout the entire process.
Strategy: Exchange Leadership Roles When Necessary
Smith described the partnership ACA created to lead the change process:
Our attorney was as much a partner in this as Ann and I were—a triad. Also, Ann and I had very different skillsets and competencies and we worked off of each other to do this. One person takes the lead and the other drops back. It was an exchange of leadership without any thought of ego or positioning. At times we put the attorney in the lead position. We were able to use the talent we had around us continually. Who was the best? It can't be led by just one person because then it's just personality driven.
Mobilization and unification around the new mission and vision were facilitated by the legal unification of the organization as one association with one governing board. Strong local volunteer groups focused on operational elements of the plan. ACA employed several external consultants in the planning of the diversity goals, organizational changes, and human resources needs. They watched what the Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, and others were doing and examined what was working and where they were making mistakes.
Strategy: Take It at the Right Speed for Members
Smith explained that most of the major changes were accomplished by 2010, but the process was deliberately slowed:
There was much concern about how certain people would be affected. We had to make some concessions that we would not make dramatic changes in operations for an additional two years. The final transformation is happening now (although there is never a final transformation if you are a dynamic and evolving organization). You have to have the commitment to hang tough and stick with it. If you give up too soon, you leave the whole association vulnerable.
Smith explained how the changes reinvigorated the board nomination process:
Previously we barely had enough people to put up for election. After we made this change through an e-mail campaign, we were having 50 or more resumes submitted for consideration for the board, including from people we had never heard from before. We have a deliberate process of interviewing and matching up the skills for what we need. Since now, half of our board come from other professions, most of the “others” are actively recruited. The external board members we now have are recommending others. They love being on this board. They find it challenging and advantageous to their own thinking.
The nomination process also succeeded in diversifying the board. Today, as Sheets described:
The age range is different, much younger than before. We changed the color. We changed the orientation (not just camp people—education, business, marketing, etc.). This was very intentional. We couldn't just hope for diversity to happen. We are now out networking and actively looking for people to recruit.
In the transformation process, the key milestones have included:
- The national board voting itself out of office, resulting in a change in the bylaws and development process.
- The national board rescinding a policy manual made of 157 “corrective” operational policies, and developing a whole new set of policies to focus on governance. The new manual expresses only critical limitations on operations and leaves staff and volunteers to determine how to reach goals.
- The national board voting to legally unify the organization.
- The emergence of key board members who served as “champions,” providing critical ambassadorship to the local sections and others when emotions were high and discord erupted.
- Critical stakeholders emerging and transforming their club-like representative body into a leadership body.
- Members of the governing boards of the sections stepping forward and leading the way to eliminate their governing boards and thereby initiating new ways of work and interaction with the vision and purpose of the association.
In 2011, the ACA won a national award for its board transformation, BoardSource's Prudential Leadership Award for Outstanding Nonprofit Boards. Today, the ACA board, which for more than 100 years had been made up of mainly camp professionals, has been significantly diversified. New perspectives, demographics, geography, expertise, affiliations, skills, and competencies are in the boardroom. The board is focused on governing and strategic learning. The partnership between staff and volunteers working on operational issues is based upon a distributed leadership environment that shares ACA's vision for the future.
Now ACA describes itself as an organization whose capacity and impact has grown exponentially as a result of the governance and operational transformations. They are now “a movement with passion and purpose” where its collective voices and vision can make a better tomorrow for others.
The board's mantra has become “continual evolution”:
When you stop evolving, you become extinct—and that is not in the board's plan for the preferred future.
The board's mantra has become continual evolution: “When you stop evolving, you become extinct.”
Both Sheets and Smith observed that with a commitment to continual evolution comes a commitment to continue to manage the challenges of building a strong board. Sheets noted:
The tougher part of the process is that you have to have ambiguity-able people. Each of us will run into a situation at some point in time where you just can't find in a book. And every organization is unique. Having people who can tolerate ambiguity contributes to success: people who can handle winding the way through to find meaning. In chaos, commitment, control, and challenge become huge issues, so psychological hardiness is critical—being able to understand that the only control you have is over your own actions.
You have to have ambiguity-able people. Each of us will run into a point of time you just can't find in a book.
Smith added:
There is always a danger with any board that things become so familiar and so much is “this is the way we do it” that they miss one opportunity after another. Boards who try to lead that way, well, their organizations will not be around in the future.
As final words of advice, Sheets cautioned: “Don't underestimate the time it takes. Things are not going to happen overnight.” Smith added: “Keep asking, ‘What is the right thing to do?’ Do it all with a sense of humor, a level of humility, and humanity.” Sheets concluded: “And don't step into it without a good partner.”
