Roberts rule of order: should Nonprofits use it?

In this short episode, I give my thoughts and opinions on a question we receive all the time: should we use Robert's Rules of Order?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Navigating Nonprofits with Lightboard Accounting. My name is Amity, and I'll be your captain today as we discuss hot topics around accounting for nonprofits. Lifeboat Accounting is an accounting firm that works exclusively with helping nonprofits stay afloat. We cover everything from accounting to tech stacks, to strategic planning, 990s, grants, board development, and staff training. When I speak at conferences or board meetings, folks have always suggested to me that I needed my own podcast to tell my stories and share my experience. So I'm excited to dive right in and to get to some of my favorite topics and share some special guests with you. Today we're going to be talking about running board meetings for nonprofits. Now, a lot of organizations ask me the question of how do you govern meetings for boards? And the thing is, is that there's not one size fits all. And part of it is the type of organization you have, the size, what specific items are you covering in the board meeting, and what is the original intent and feeling and core values of the organization. Those really do play a role into how you set up your board meetings. And a lot of organizations feel like they have to follow Robert's rule of order. And the thing is, is that the Robert's Rules of Order was made for actually legislative practices and not necessarily running a nonprofit. And this rule of order was created by a gentleman named Henry Martin Robert in 1876. And it kind of built a booklet or a handbook or a set of rules for conducting meetings. And the core principles to that was the fact that, you know, there needs to be a majority rule, a majority vote, and making sure that everyone has a chance to be heard and ensuring orderly discussion. It tends to use like formal motions, seconding, time for debate, and then voting to meet to meet specific decisions and to keep everyone kind of on time. But the reality is for a lot of nonprofits, there are some kind of problematic issues with Robert's rules of order. A lot of the times the rules are really extensive. If you look at the original text, it's hundreds of pages of long of just information. And it's difficult to master, and it tends to slow down meetings, and it's especially confusing for new board members that don't technically live in this space all the time. The really interesting thing is that you actually have to go state by state on how board minutes are supposed to be kept because sometimes Roberts' rules of order conflicts with the local state laws for non-for-profits. So sometimes adopting them can actually open up legal risks and challenges on board actions for nonprofit organizations. The thing that I find the hardest is that it does stifle participation. For the board members that are tend to be a little bit more quiet, they tend to get their voices overridden or they just don't speak up as much as they would as if it was just a general informal conversation. And so for those who are good at speaking up or making motions, they tend to focus too much on procedure instead of mission. The other challenge is that they were written in 1876. They're kind of outdated and they don't really allow for creativity and collaborative discussions. And especially right now, I'm sure we're all sick of hearing the word resilience, but I also feel like if you're not able to have those open conversations, it can hinder creativity and a little bit of agility for a lot of organizations. And a lot of times, you know, it'll require, for example, emotion before discussing things. And so it's like pushing for solutions before anyone can fully understand what's actually happening or the problem that's trying to be addressed. And that itself can lead to disputes over little technicalities and frustrate a lot of board members that aren't willing to speak up as much as others. So my recommendation, if you're going to use Robert's rules of order, you can use them as a guideline, but really follow the what's required for the state regulations for nonprofits in your specific state. And you can also adopt your own rules. Like you can choose how to add additional speaking times. You can add motions and just vote at the end of each item. And then there's also other alternatives out there for nonprofits. But you can look this up online and you can see a ton of different examples of why folks are kind of fraying away from Robert's rules of orders. There's tons of blogs and articles out there, and you can kind of see all the feedback. But yeah, I feel like it's something that we should probably retire in the nonprofit space and just come up with a more simplified, easier parliamentary procedure instead of something that was built in 1876 that no longer exists. So, examples that you could do, there are a lot of online tracking systems now for boards. There's a bunch of different software packages and apps that can log in attendance, send out reminders, keep minutes. Folks can check up boxing that they were there or that they missed the meeting. There's a lot of new agenda items and discussions. There's lots of dashboards being created. And so I think it's just sitting down as a group and looking at your mission, again, core values, and figuring out what types of things are really helpful for you to maintain order in a meeting and what items may just be specifically just kind of administrative that can be removed from the process. And if you've never worked with a board development person, I really recommend at least having one meeting, even if you just hire one of them for an hour and just have them come in and listen and kind of be that intermediary or that mediator if this is something that you want to change in the future. Because it is a process and it is also, you know, aligning your conversations with your mission. And so hopefully this is a helpful kind of big picture because this is a question that I get often is do we have to follow Robert's rule of order? And the answer is no. You just have to follow the state regulations, and then from there you can expand or contract as needed for what's best for your organization.