Bad, better and beyond best practice

In October 2022, the Arts Industry Council of South Australia invited me to lead a full day of discussions at their Bad, Better and Beyond Best Practice: Rethinking Arts Governance event.

Arts leaders and Board members from all over Australia joined us in Tarndanya/Adelaide and online to talk through the failings of our not-for-profit governance models, find out who’s making the best of a bad situation (and how), and start to reimagine a future with different sorts of Boards (or a future without them entirely).

The opening session continued my criticism of Australia’s governance models, drawing on research from Australia Council for the Arts and my own survey earlier this year.

As usual, this put me in the awkward position of critiquing a system while trying not to dismiss the generosity of the people within it, and trying to get that system to change while – as a consultant – relying on it for my livelihood.

To do this, I asked participants to engage with two opposite but equal truths:

• That Boards and Board members can – and do – good work. I am perpetually in awe of the sector’s volunteer Board members – many of whom do an extraordinary job within the parameters they’ve got; and
• That Boards and Board members can – and do – damage their organisations, teams or each other (though I genuinely believe that if Boards and board members are failing, it’s because they’re being set up to do so).

It’s also true that we can’t have a genuine conversation about change if we keep having to return to #NotAllBoards or #NotAllBoardMembers. We need to take as read our respect for those doing good work within the current system, and assume we all want the best for our organisations – even if that (eventually) does us all out of a job.

Bad news boards

I’ve already written extensively about some of the issues with arts and not-for-profit governance, including in:

• The art of governance (originally published by Meanjin, 2020)
• Changing the culture of arts governance (originally published by Overland, 2020)
• Resetting our Arts Boards (originally published by Artshub, 2021)
• Bad news Boards (originally published by Artshub, 2022)
• Post-COVID or post-burnout: less is necessary (originally published by Artshub, 2022)
• What does ‘less is necessary’ look like? (originally published by Artshub, 2022)

This is a subject that’s close to many of our hearts – even though we’d rather it wasn’t. Intrinsically linked to our work and wellbeing, it’s built-in power dynamics make it difficult for many to speak out about our past or current experiences, in fear of our current or future work, Board roles or relationships.

However, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 continues to sharpen and evolve the dialogue around for-purpose governance (in spite of the current global gaslighting about the pandemic being over, and the matching expectation that we should somehow be over it too).

Boards failure to meet their duty of care has been a particularly heavy issue over the past few years, and highlighted decades of poor practice in a sector that – even in better times – relied on the personal commitment of dedicated and passionate individuals who often prioritise our work over our financial stability or health.

Combined with ‘post’-COVID exhaustion and sector-wide burnout, this makes duty of care and self-care the pointiest parts of our sector right now – and the thing we’ll need to address before we can think about solutions longer-term.

Running our organisations is hard enough right now, without trying find the space or opportunity to work out if Boards are what we need. Which is fair enough, given 63% of all Australian not-for-profits are small organisations with annual revenues of $250,000 or less. Which means we simply don’t have the time, capacity or resources to address the problems bad boards cause.

That said (broad generalisations incoming), it’s becoming increasingly clear that the validity of maternalistic charity governance in which well-meaning, (mostly) middle-class white women ‘serve’ communities or groups we don’t personally belong to has gone. As has the appetite for paternalistic corporate governance where well-meaning, (mostly) middle-class white men ‘educate’ not-for-profits on how things should be done.

Which leaves us with a need for strong, skilled, community-led practice (and *GASP*, the realisation that those things aren’t mutually exclusive) from people with direct, relevant experience and an understanding of the context and value of our work based on its merits – not measured against inapplicable (and, in some cases, inexplicable) legislative or funder requirements.

In most cases, our organisations have Boards because we’re required to have Boards. They are set up as a requirement of their respective pieces of legislation to: provide oversight and compliance (to make sure we’re doing what we say that we’re doing); strategic direction; to make major decisions and oversee their implementation; take on the stewardship of the organisation for a time (hopefully leaving it better than they found it); and to recruit, manage and support their CEO or equivalent. Also, ideally (though not necessarily) to: provide free access to relevant sector skills and experience; represent the organisation in a public-facing, ambassadorial capacity; and directly support the organisation’s financial sustainability through fundraising, soliciting donations, sharing personal contacts or making donations themselves.

But they do these things in this way because it’s best practice? Maybe, though that doesn’t hold up under much interrogation. Because it’s the best way to meet their organisations’ needs? Debatable. Or because it’s compulsory? Yep, when it really comes down to it, we have Boards because our legislation and funders say we can’t operate without them.

In the not-for-profit world, the work of these Boards is almost exclusively done on a volunteer basis, which means two things:

• Arts governance in Australia is an extraordinary act of generosity; and
• Arts governance in Australia is incredibly precarious.

This is just one part of a bigger conversation. Unpicking the massive, messy issue of Australian arts governance is going to take all of us, and time. Which means we need to keep returning to how we support ourselves and each other while we chip away at this work. So we’re not only allies for the change that needs to come, but also maintain focus on the challenges of working within an imperfect system until then – not just focused on the finish line, but on getting us there as safe and well as possible.

Read Part 2 of my Bad, Better and Beyond report on how Boards can do better within the current model.

Then watch this space for Part 3, which will explore the idea that we can do better than Boards.

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