April 25, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
It’s a modest proposal: Doing away with the standing board committees that too often merely add layers of bureaucracy to nonprofit governance, an idea pitched on the new blog Blue Avocado.
“The reality is that very few committees need to exist in perpetuity,” states Blue Avocado’s unsigned Board Cafe columnist. “Instead of a permanent personnel committee, for example, create a time-limited HR task force to oversee policy revision and then disband. In place of a standing program committee, form a time-limited library committee that tackles reviewing library usage—and then dissolve the group.”
Exceptions to this rule, the columnist writes, might include permanent finance and fund-raising committees.
The advantage of creating time-limited task committee, the columnist writes, is “the changing mix of team participants. Interaction among a variety of members on the board will result in having the right people ‘on the bus’ more often, and by board members getting to know more people on the board. And isn’t getting to work with more people in new settings one of the reasons we join boards in the first place?”
Would ditching most permanent board committees help nonprofit organizations govern itself more efficiently? Click on the “comments” link below to join the discussion.
