When the Rutherford Green Team dreamed up the radical plan to create a community garden in the overgrown, littered vacant lot along the railroad tracks, most people thought it was crazy. The neighbors feared the garden would attract loiterers and thieves.

After over two years of hard work, that’s exactly what happened. Almost every day, people are loitering in the garden: members of the Scouts, the Garden Club, the Woman’s Club, the Green Team, the Shade Tree Committee and several sports teams are taking care of the garden. And as for thieves, the beautiful dahlia garden is too tempting, and a beautiful flower will sometimes go missing.

Sustainable Jersey Small Grants Now Available

On May 3, Sustainable Jersey joined officials from the public and private sector and local residents to celebrate the Rutherford Community Teaching Garden and to highlight new grant money available for similar municipal sustainability projects. With $200,000 from the PSEG Foundation, Sustainable Jersey will provide municipalities with grants for thirty-two projects that will help towns make communities more livable, environmentally friendly and prosperous.

Learn more about the 2012 Sustainable Jersey grants program and download an application here.

Rutherford was awarded a 2010 Sustainable Jersey Small Grant in the amount of $25,000 that allowed the town to complete Phase Two of its Community Teaching Garden Project. The garden provides the Rutherford Green Team and Sustainable Jersey with an impressive, functional and beautiful example of sustainable living in the Bergen County area as well as a multitude of sustainable growth and education opportunities for older adults, those with special needs and all of its residents.

5 Tips from the Rutherford Community Garden

1. Ask and Deliver What the Community Wants

In the planning stages, the Rutherford Green Team took the time to ask the community what they wanted in a community garden. Older adults asked for accessible raised planting tables to allow sit-down gardening. The Green Team used volunteers to build four dedicated raised garden beds using treecycled (wood from fallen trees) and purchased wood. The garden now supports a program of horticultural therapy that the older adults have embraced.

2. Collaborate

The Green Team collaborated with the Shade Tree Committee in the early planning stages. This resulted in the Shade Tree Committee planting a shade tree nursery adjacent to the garden. Over two hundred shade trees are in the ground and will be ready for Rutherford’s streets in a few years. Also, a ten session lecture and demonstration series on Sustainable Gardening Practices was done in the outdoor classroom in cooperation with the Bergen County Gardeners.

3. Dare to Be Innovative

Using the Sustainable Jersey grant, the Green Team installed ADA compliant recycled rubber sidewalks along the 140 foot length of the garden to allow wheelchair access to the entire site as well as to the four special raised garden beds dedicated for use by older adults and others with special needs. The municipality now provides transportation to the garden from the Senior Activity Center. The interlocking modular sidewalk paving system is a showcase for residential and municipal use of the recycled alternative paving material. It is tree friendly because it rises with tree roots, allowing for maintenance and care of the tree under the sidewalk. Due to the garden, Rutherford modified its construction code to allow the use of this new sidewalk product.

4. Demonstrate Sustainable Practices Like Water Conservation

A battery operated drip irrigation system was installed by volunteers. The drip irrigation, along with rain garden style planting and thick layers of treecycled mulch help to demonstrate methods of water conservation in a sustainable garden. The drip irrigation also sustains the shade tree nursery through dry weather periods.

5. Engage Volunteers and Don’t Waste their Time.

Since its beginning, the garden has enjoyed the good efforts of fifteen to twenty-five volunteers almost every Saturday. The garden has united several different community groups and organizations. The Scouts, the Garden Club, the Woman’s Club, the Green Team, Shade Tree Committee and several sports teams have all contributed. Rutherford has created a community center where people now gather to learn about gardening and composting and residents stop by on Saturdays with garden questions. Garden leaders try to give everyone who comes by an important job to do. The Green Team has learned that it is very important never to waste a volunteer’s time. Rutherford’s use of volunteer labor from the community multiplied the value of the Sustainable Jersey Small Grant, allowing the majority of funds to be expended on materials as most of the installations were completed by volunteers.

John Hughes, the Vice Chair of the Rutherford Green Team, is a founder and tireless champion of the garden. He said, “The Green Team began the Erie Street garden project as a way to make a difference in the lives of our residents. We wanted to demonstrate how volunteers, working together, can create a lovely new space that adds value to the community and enriches our lives.” Mission accomplished.

To date, $595,000 has been awarded through the 2009-2011 Sustainable Jersey Small Grants program. Eighty grants have been given to New Jersey municipalities representing 20 counties for sustainability projects. Rutherford is a shining example of the positive change that these grants can inspire across New Jersey.

Applications for the 2012 Sustainable Jersey Small Grants are due July 15, 2012.

For more about Sustainable Jersey®:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

Images courtesy Sustainable Jersey

Sustainable Jersey staff and partners are regular contributors to the Dodge blog

If you missed Arts Day in Trenton on Thursday, you missed a great opportunity to get inspired and prepared to advocate the arts in ways you may not have thought about before. Not only did ArtPride NJ honor two exceptional New Jersey legislators for their outstanding efforts on behalf of the state’s non-profit arts industry, but we all learned that being citizen activists on the local level isn’t as intimidating as it appears.

Senator Tom Kean, Jr. And Assemblyman Matthew Milam accepted ArtPride’s 2012 Distinguished Arts Advocate Awards. Senator Kean noted, “I support the arts in New Jersey because they enrich every aspect of our communities: educationally, economically, and culturally.” Assemblyman Milam spoke about how much he learned about the arts by visiting a host of cultural venues throughout the state as Chairman of the Assembly Tourism and Arts Committee.

The Citizens Campaign offered Arts Day attendees simple ways to become more civically engaged on the local level, including tips to get appointed to local commissions, acting as a citizen legislator who can jump start action by proposing resolutions and ordinances, and reporting back to the community about that action or lack of action as a citizen journalist.

Finally, Janet Brown, Executive Director of Grantmakers in the Arts, inspired nearly 200 Arts Day attendees with her own personal insight into the values of government and how the arts need to address them—efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and equity with a simple direct and bold message to legislators and policy makers.

Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, noting how simple advocacy steps can help us reach our “big picture” goals, and realize change in measurable ways.

To stay informed about how YOU can assure the arts have a seat at the table, contact ArtPride New Jersey and become an active arts advocate today!

Related reading:

1. N.J. student participation in art and music declines, even as programs become more common
2. N.J. artists, advocates lobby for more arts “at the public policy table”
3. The Arts and Civic Engagement
4. “Why Should I Care About the Arts?”

Ann Marie Miller is the Executive Director of ArtPride, the premier arts advocacy organization in New Jersey, and a regular contributor to the Dodge blog

The energy was high from the first moments of the day, and this enthusiasm was brought to sessions led by Dodge Poets on a wide variety of topics. The featured poet for the day was Gregory Orr. A gracious and generous reader, Orr told the audience that a powerful teacher had saved his life, and immediately acknowledged the gathering of educators as “his ideal audience.” (Psst…Orr will also be a Main Stage Festival Poet at the 2012 Festival if you weren’t able to see him last Saturday!)

Here are some highlights from the day (all photography by Lauren Rutten Photography):

Teachers are given a varied packet of poems for reading aloud in Giving Voice groups.

In small discussion groups, teachers shared their feelings about poems
from the packet, or poems that they have brought to share.

Participants took part in small group sessions in the form of conversations or writing activities. Here we see teachers incorporating yoga into writing about travel and place.

Featured reader Gregory Orr connects with the audience
in his first reading of two, in which he read his own work.

Orr’s second reading is of poems by others that matter to him.

Books by Gregory Orr and Dodge Poets were on sale at a discounted price so that teachers could add to their collections.

Next month, members of New Jersey’s social sector will gather for a conversation that some might think an unusual topic for nonprofits and foundations – civility. It is, however, a critical discussion for our sector.

Over the years, the loss of civility in our society has been spreading like a slow-moving cancer. Growing undetected and weakening our communities, our relationships, our democracy. For the social sector – mission-driven organizations — the implications of this sickness are profound and debilitating.

Consider those working to improve education outcomes for our children. If students are trying to learn and mature in an environment with hostility and bullying, then the cards are stacked against them in a very real and tangible sense. How can one explore, imagine or participate when fearing ridicule? And now, with the explosion of social media, bullying has expanded from the schoolyard to the home.

Consider the service provider suddenly caught in the buzz saw of slanderous rhetoric used by media pundits who manufacture a “wedge issue” to gain attention and feed the 24-hour news cycle. The nonprofit, with limited capacity and a client base who depends on them for services, now scrambles to respond. Donors flee. And the critical services and the clients who need them suffer.

Consider the need to solve the serious problems – the wicked problems — our communities and country face. To address these issues, it means policymakers have to come together. They must negotiate and compromise. Without civility, without an appreciation of other points of view and a commitment to find the shared path – change at the policy level becomes impossible. The polarization of our government leaders means a paralyzed democracy.

On June 15th, the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers’ Spring Colloquium will explore this issue during our 3rd Biennial Conversation on the Social Sector – From Schoolyard Bullying and Culture Wars to a Polarized Democracy: What Role Can Philanthropy Play in Restoring Civility to our Society?

A vibrant group of participants will bring diverse perspectives on this topic for what promises to be a dynamic conversation. Chris Satullo, Vice President of News and Civil Dialogue at WHYY will moderate the discussion between Cathy Raphael, Chair of the Ms. Foundation for Women; K. Anthony Appiah Ph.D., Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University; and David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. The range of our panelists’ varied experiences, backgrounds and professional vocations is sure to stimulate and inspire our conversation.

Thoughtful discussion and civil discourse is how we as a nation problem-solve and reach conclusions. When conversations are skewed by “my-way-or-the highway” mentalities, or an unwillingness to hear what another is saying, our civil discourse evaporates and collectively we suffer.

I invite you to join the conversation at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick for what is sure to be a fascinating and much needed discussion. The event is open to the public and details can be found at www.cnjg.org.

Nina Stack is the President of Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, the statewide association for corporate, family, independent, and community foundations. She is a regular contributor to the Dodge blog.

Image courtesy CNJG

Through Kickstarter, ARTWORKS is hoping to bring back their Iron Pour for the 2012 Art All Night event. With 13 days left to fund it, they are 62% of the way to their $4,000 goal. Want to help them cross the finish line? Read more about the campaign below, and visit their Kickstarter page for a video of their 2010 iron pour and to pledge your support.

“The Art All Night-Trenton 2012 Iron Pour once again reunites the forces of Art All Night – Trenton with the AbOmInOg Intl. Arts Collective, who first worked with Art All Night in 2010. That year, the crew from AbOmInOg Intl. amazed spectators by forging steel live throughout the night,  as one-story-high orange flames enveloped Trenton’s urban backdrop. This year’s Art All Night-Trenton festival marks the second historic collaboration between these two dynamic art  forces as they once again bring the mesmerizing art of a live iron pour to inner-city Trenton.

Your donation to this Kickstarter campaign will ensure AbOmInOg Intl. can once again thrill onlookers with their unique craft at Art All Night-Trenton 2012. Those who pledge, will walk away with an incredible, newly-forged and fresh-from-the-flames commemorative medallion that will actually be created at Art All Night – Trenton as you, and thousands of onlookers, watch it all happen right before your eyes.”

To support the campaign or learn more about Art All Night and ARTWORKS:

• ARTWORKS on Kickstarter
• ARTWORKS website

Art All Night is June 16 and 17 (3pm to 3pm) at the historic Roebling Wireworks in Trenton.

See Dodge’s curated Kickstarter page here.

I’m often asked what happens during a High School Poet Visit or during one of our High School Mini Festival.  There are some quick, simple answers that come to mind.  1) Poets read their work. 2) Poets read the work of other poets that matter to them. 3) Poets discuss poetry.  Pretty straightforward, right?  This spring I’ve been sitting in on our High School events and have come to realize that a few things are happening that go way beyond that simple description.

Christine Salvatore was recently at East Brunswick High School.  Many of her poems are persona poems, and this fascinated the students.  They wanted to know why she wrote that way; why she didn’t just write about her own experience from her own perspective.  “There are times when I can’t write directly about my experience in my poems—it’s too recent or I’m still a bit vulnerable about what happened.  I write persona poems so that I can shape my experience into something manageable, and so that my reader can connect with some aspect of what I’m grappling with.  Do I know what it’s like to be a middle aged man and to doubt my marriage? No, but I do know what it’s like to feel a little trapped, to feel like maybe you made the wrong choice or that you have no choices.”

Peter Murphy, also at East Brunswick’s Poetry Festival, played a game of “Truth or “Fact?” with students after reading his poem “The Stubborn Child,” based on a Grimm’s tale about a child too stubborn to lay peacefully even in his death. The poem explores Peter’s own experiences as a child and then a parent.  After reading it to the students, he asked students “Do you think this is factual? Did these things really happen?”  Most students thought not.  And then he asked “But is it true?”  Yes, they thought it did ring true and that the sentiments and images in the poem were palpable and real.  “Poets sacrifice the facts in order to get to the truth,” Peter stated. “I may not have had these exact experiences, but I had the experience of being a stubborn child, and I had the experience of wanting something better for my own daughter.  If I wrote the poem just like that, it wouldn’t be a very good poem. I used the images and metaphors to make this part of my life experience into something more true than the facts.”

Michael Cirelli (pictured above), who recently visited every High School in East Orange, shared with students his fascination with the innovative language that hip hop artists, rappers and particularly teenagers use. At UrbanWordNYC, he works with teenagers constantly, and told the students in East Orange that he often hears things he can’t get out of his head, and that make their way into his poems, which often explore and expand what a simple word, or phrase can mean.  At Voorhees High School, he recited a new poem devoted to the potato—the many ways we eat potatoes, the things that are made out of potatoes, and the ways potatoes have figured into history.  His reading was so charged and energetic, and the poem was unlike what most students might think of as a poem.  Michael shares such curiosity and wonder about language that it will be hard for any student to think of a potato, or a poem, in the same way.

Crystal Bacon recently visited Seneca High School in Tabernacle, and shared with students that when she was a teenager, she couldn’t make sense of her family. It wasn’t a traditional family like everyone else had, and at the same time, she felt decidedly un-girly for a teenage girl, most confident in a hand-me-down men’s suit.  “It was my writing that helped me see my family and piece together what we were all about and to deal with the realization that I just simply wasn’t a traditional girl.”  In her poems, you hear some of this story come through.  But just as important as the poems is Crystal’s capacity for self-reflection, openness and self-acceptance which guides her writing and her life.

Which gets to the heart of this blog.  Our poets open a door to poetry for High School Students, but they also present the possibility of a rich inner life.  They share not only their craft and their art, but the capacities that make them poets.  They share themselves as compassionate, striving, curious, self-reflective and honest human beings.  They show students that there is a way to contain and express difficult emotions, without having to completely expose oneself.  They show them the joy that can come from following one’s curiosity and wonder.  They are models of individuality and the confidence that comes from knowing who you are, and who you aren’t.  During the tumultuous teen years where emotions are intense and big life decisions need to be made, they offer a way to live, an option for how to face the challenges of being a teenager.

Are you a New Jersey high school teacher who would like to arrange for a Dodge Poet to visit your school?  Write to us at poetryprogram@grdodge.org.

Photos by Lauren Rutten Photography.

Here’s a small sneak peek at the excellent new exhibit “disconnected.” This is a juried exhibit of New Jersey artists, curated by Jonathan Greene at the Gallery at 14 Maple; the show runs through September 5, 2012.

Want to see more? Come for the free opening reception on Wednesday, May 2, 6:00 – 8:00 pm and meet the artists and the curator. All are welcome.

If you can’t make it to the opening reception, stop by the Gallery during exhibit hours:

Monday – Thursday, 10am – 4pm
Friday, 10am – 1pm

Or you can call the Arts Council of the Morris Area for an appointment and for more information: (973) 285-5115.

Artwork:
“Hello Box” by Robert Barth
“Breakout11mashup” by Jill Cliffer Baratta

This year for the Festival we’re excited to team up with NJTransit and the Greater Newark Convention & Visitors Bureau to green the Festival and help you get to Newark easily. Thanks to their help, we are excited to offer $10 NJ Transit rail round-trip tickets from anywhere in New Jersey or New York Penn Station to Downtown Newark. And once you’re in town, your ticket will be honored on Newark Light Rail and Downtown Newark buses. NJTransit will take you from your hometown station–wherever your hometown may be– right to the Festival village.

Please join us in our commitment to sustainability by “greening” your trip this October. The Poetry Festival venues are within a 12-minute walk or a quick light rail ride to Newark’s two major bus/rail stops: Newark Penn Station and Newark Broad Street Station. The Light Rail runs from both train stations and stops directly at NJPAC, making travel quick and easy for any Festival-goer.

You can buy your $10 round trip tickets when you purchase your Festival tickets on the NJPAC Box Office page. Planning your trip is easy with NJTransit’s Advanced Trip Planner which you can find on our Transportation page, as well as a list of other transit options.

Over the past year and a half, Dodge has developed a focus on Media, particularly with respect to improving the quality and access of New Jersey-focused news and information for people throughout the state.

We’re exploring a lot of the same questions that others are grappling with: how do we engage and encourage participation in our communities around New Jersey’s issues? How is technology redefining the way people access news? What does the future of journalism look like?

This blog post by Eric Newton from the Knight Foundation on Arts journalism (“Why We Need New Models for Arts Journalism“) caught our attention. In it, he asks:

1. Is Arts journalism in trouble?
2. Does it matter?
3. Can anything be done to help?

You could take out the “arts” in the first question, and all of those questions would still be relevant. Indeed, Newton notes:

Journalism in America does not need to be saved, the Knight Commission says, so much as it needs to be invented. Rather than embark on the search for the past, for a golden age that may not have really existed, the commission urges us to look ahead…This means being agnostic about the delivery mechanisms of news.

He also notes that as arts journalism, and its parallel investigative reporting, have been cut, nonprofit news sites have been cropping up in nearly every state – and that they have fared better as startups than the average business startup, according to the Investigative News Network.

This is good news for New Jersey, as Dodge is helping to launch a similar venture that will help establish a strong network of news organizations, hyper local websites, citizen journalists and others who are focused on coverage of meaningful, relevant, New Jersey-focused news. We will be talking more about this venture over the coming months as it develops.

The Knight Foundation has also funded many of these startups, and we look to their example, particularly as they note that, “the ones who seem strongest have what could be called the ‘four c’s’ – content, connectivity, community and cash. Each of these elements involves engagement. Is the content compelling and engaging? Is the technological connectivity engaging people how, when and where they want to use news? Is the community engaged in the news and information flow not just as consumer but as provider? Are the business practices professional and aimed at developing multiple revenue streams by engaging the entire community?”

All good, important questions that we will be asking as well.

We want to know: how do you get your New Jersey news? How would you like to see it improved? Please leave us a comment below, or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

You can read Eric Newton’s full blog post here.
To read our Media guidelines and why we fund Media, please visit our website.

There is, perhaps, no more important relationship in a nonprofit than that between the executive director and the board.  When that relationship is working well, everyone can easily go about his or her business, the mission gets fulfilled and the organization “sings”.  When that relationship is not working well, more time, energy and attention goes to the relationship—venting, railing, wringing of hands, etc.—and not to fulfilling the mission.  Thus, there is great value in understanding the theory of a strong executive director-board partnership, the actual execution of that partnership and identifying where and what, if any, work needs to take place.

As has been mentioned frequently throughout the Dodge Foundation Board Leadership Training Series, the relationship between executive director and board is, ideally, a partnership, albeit a partnership of slight unequals as, at the end of the day, the board is the boss of the executive director.  As such, the board does have “ultimate” power over the executive director in its prerogative to fire the executive director (and not the other way around).  Thus, there is all too frequently a delicate balancing act that an executive director must execute in being part of this partnership and it is important that a board recognizes that and does not abuse that imbalance.  The mutual goal of both halves of this relationship should be to have the best, strongest partnership possible.

Watch this short video clip:

To do this, both sides must be aware of what a strong, healthy partnership looks like.  As has been pointed out repeatedly throughout this series, it does not take a rocket scientist to be a good board member; it simply takes knowing what it is you are supposed to do, what that looks like in a best practices framework, designing a course of action to move you towards that best practices performance and carrying it out.

9 Characteristics of a Strong Board/Executive Director Partnership

Strong partnerships of any nature, from personal partnerships to professional ones, are recognized as having nine characteristics.

1. Balance: such that at times one half of the partnership may be more dominant than the other, while at other times it is the reverse; but there is an equilibrium in the distribution of and exercise of power, suggesting that at times it may swing further in one corner than another and then back in the opposite direction, while not infrequently coming to rest in the middle.
2. Mutual respect: each half of the partnership must hold in high regard the abilities and capabilities of the other.
3. Mutual trust: each half must trust that the other will act, at all times, with integrity and do what is in the best interests of the whole of the organization and the fulfillment of mission.
   
4. Clear understanding of roles and responsibilities, of what is mine and what is theirs: rather self-explanatory, but I will come back to this.
   
5. Accountability: important in and of itself, but also as a contributor to engendering mutual respect and trust, players in a partnership must be accountable to the other half and demand and get accountability in return.  While it is impossible to single out any one of the nine characteristics as more or less important to a successful partnership as all are necessary, it is possible to say that without active accountability, there is no basis for moving forward.
   
6. Shared ownership, which implies shared goals: we create a partnership because we want to create/be/do something more than any one of us can do on our own.  To be successful, both halves of a partnership must have the same vision for the partnership and shared goals for achieving that vision (all found in a nonprofit’s strategic plan) and have an equal stake in seeing its successful implementation.
   
7. Shared leadership: Harkening back to the idea of balance, each partner must be willing to share the leadership of the partnership and be willing to recognize when the strengths of the other half surpasses its own and step back when needed, while also being willing and able to step forward when that is warranted.
   
8. Open communication: decades ago, there was a period when it seemed all of my parents’ friends were in marriage counseling and all of these “good” Jewish couples were going to the same marriage counselor—a Jesuit priest.  When I asked one of these couples what they did in marriage counseling, I was told “We talk.  He [the counselor] makes us communicate.  We talk during our session; we make dates to talk between our sessions.  We talk.”  This Jesuit priest saved many a Jewish partnership by teaching them the importance of open and regular communication.
   
9. Appreciation: how do you appreciate your partner– from simple thank yous to opportunities for public recognition and expression of gratitude to a positive work environment and compensation–let you count the ways!

Just how good is your executive director-board partnership?  An honest, frank assessment, done with the goal of moving it further along the good-better-best continuum, and not in an atmosphere of blame and recrimination, can be an invaluable use of a board’s and executive director’s time.  Here is a tool that can help guide this process (clicking on the link will download a Word doc). If you are mindful of where you are strong and where there is work to be done, and you have arrived at these conclusions in a collaborative manner, you are on the path to improving the partnership.  And an improved partnership is what is best for maximizing return on mission!

More on the evaluating and improving the board/executive director relationship in this video clip:

“Whose Job Is This?”

Frequently, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to achieving a high-performing partnership is actually easily rectified:  a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities. While abundantly clear to those of us who make a profession of instructing boards and executive directors on what is theirs and what is not theirs, it is not always so clear to those filling those functions.  In fact, one of the most frequent questions I get is, “Is this the board’s job or the executive director’s?”

To understand this, it is yet again well worth the time to have another conversation.  For starters, identify the major components of running a nonprofit, from mission identification and stewardship, to finances to revenue development to decision making to marketing, etc.  Then look at the particular actions that need to happen in each area and ask and answer “Whose job is this?”  If I may bastardize the German philosopher Hegel’s master-slave dialectic ( with apologies to all philosophers and Hegelians out there), and bring it down to my level, Hegel argued that we define ourselves, in part, by understanding what we are not.  Thus, a master understands who/what he is by understanding what he is not, i.e., a slave. Conversely, the slave understands who/what he is by understanding what he is not, i.e., a master.  In the same vein, we can better understand what is ours and what is theirs by understanding what is an executive director’s role in organizational decision making and what is not, and what is the board’s and what is not.  Many a release of long-held breaths and tensions have resulted from sitting down and having this frank and honest conversation.  The executive director does not make organizational decisions and policies and the board rubber stamps them; rather the executive director provides vital information to the board that informs the board’s and executive director’s collaborative discussion, ending ultimately with the board making the decision and the executive director managing (the execution) of that decision.

Identifying those areas where there is clarity about and agreement on who does what when is important, and can become a vital part of orientation for new board members; discussing those areas where clarity and agreement are still lacking in order to achieve that clarity and agreement and designing a course of corrective action is crucial. This tool (Word doc) may help organize your discussion and thinking.

Reciprocal Agreements

Let me be clear: to have a strong partnership, it is all nine elements or nothing.  Clarifying the roles and responsibilities so that you know what is whose in a partnership is a very important first step, but it is not sufficient. Without clarification of roles, attainment of the other eight elements will be hard to achieve and sustain. Likewise, the same can be said of accountability: if you cannot depend upon the other half of the partnership delivering on what it should do and also what it says it will do, and then depend on how it will do what it says it will do, the partnership is doomed to failure.  One way of addressing this challenge head on is to create very specific and pointed reciprocal agreements.

Reciprocal agreements (a sample, and a template, can be found here) allow the members of a partnership to spell out the rules of engagement, if you will, and accountability.  They spell out the quid pro quo between the executive director and the board (or executive director and board president, executive director and committee chair, board member and board members, etc.).

For example:  the executive director will provide an executive director report to all board members in a timely manner in advance of each board meeting; in turn, every board member will read the executive director’s report in advance of the board meeting.  Or:  each board member will agree to be the relationship steward for five major donors; in turn, the executive director will make sure that each board member has the necessary information and support needed to steward those relationships.  In so crafting these reciprocal agreements, both parties to the partnership have a clear set of expectations and instructions for moving forward, and can point to them when things don’t go right and readily identify the source of the failure and correct the situation.

I suggest that in all of this recognizing, it involves a lot of time, energy, good will and, yes, work. But there are some things that are so integral to achieving success that failure to invest in those things the requisite time, energy, good will, and work is a decision made only by a fool.  Such is the relationship of the executive director and board.  To not invest in its health and strength is to doom a nonprofit to being less than the public has a right to expect and its clients deserve.

You can find these three exercises, plus much more in the Resource Library on the Dodge Foundation website.