Boards can do better

In the first part of my Bad, Better and Beyond Best Practice report from AICSA’s Rethinking Arts Governance event in October 2022, I identified the main reason organisations have Boards as that we’re required to do so.

While I’d dearly like our sector to imagine a radically different future for arts governance, the truth is – in the meantime – we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

While we can bemoan the failings of the current model, until we decide on a better way forward and campaign for the legislative change that will need, Australia’s arts organisations must abide by the Corporations Act or their State or Territory’s Incorporated Associations Act.

For the time being, Australian arts governance is the ultimate expression of ‘one size fits all’ (even though it clearly doesn’t). Yes, the model is broken. No, we can’t really fix it yet. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make the best of a bad situation.

Never-ending training

The main way we build our governance skills, understanding and confidence is currently through training, of which Australian arts leaders have a lot of options, opportunities and resources to draw from. For example:

• David Fishell’s The Book of the Board has been helping organisations make the most of the current model for more than 20 years.
• Here in South Australia, we have the work of Professor Ruth Rentschler.
• Australia Council for the Arts has just announced another round of governance opportunities.
• Our Community and the Institute of Company Directors Australia provide training and a useful online policy bank.
• And Theatre Network Australia hosts a database of policies from Australian performing arts companies.

There are also loads of informal and accredited governance training options from not-for-profit and commercial providers. But while these (more or less successfully) give Boards what they need, research shows that Board members tend to take this learning with them with them when they leave – which is usually much sooner than we’d hoped.

For the small-to-medium (S2M) arts sector, this means governance training organisations make their living from not-for-profits that can’t afford to invest again and again for each new generation of Board members – while turning over millions of dollars themselves.

With volunteerism decreasing, Board burnout on the rise, and those who see Board stints as easy CV stuffers, this never-ending investment is a fantastic business model – for the training providers, but not the organisations they train.

Examples of Boards doing better

As we search for urgent alternatives, there is some great emergent practice to get excited about – including different ways of governing that still technically work within the rules.

BlakDance is the national industry and producing organisation for contemporary First Nations dance. A Company Limited by Guarantee based in Meanjin/Brisbane, its Rules require a Board of 3-7 volunteer Directors. Since 2017, it has also been supported by a Cultural Council of up to 9 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts practitioners (who receive sitting fees).

The previous Council’s term has recently ended, which means BlakDance is currently updating its terms of reference as part of a constantly evolving and iterative process that will clarify governance and reporting relationships, and respective roles of the two groups. The Council meets at least twice per year before BlakDance Board meetings to: provide respected cultural guidance and advice to the BlakDance Board about policy and strategy, and to the BlakDance leadership team about program and operational matters.

Formerly known for its biennial festival, Next Wave is an “engine room for art making and experimentation” with a year-round national program. An Incorporated Association based in Naarm/Melbourne, its Rules require a Board of 2-7 volunteer Directors (about which they’ve made the strategic decision not to appoint independent Board members until they can work out how to compensate them appropriately).

In order to be as artist-led and centered as possible, the organisation has moved from the familiar, top-down approach to governance to a more collaborative and relationship-focused way of working together as a Board. This is supported by a paid Artistic Directorate – an ensemble of mid-career and established artists from around Australia who offer local perspectives and decentralise delivery by generating ideas and connections where they live and work.

Next Wave has also thought a lot about how their governance reflects their values and philosophy, and how compliance and risk management can be seen as acts of care. So far, this includes: curating a diverse, national board; introducing Board terms; reducing the number of Board meetings; adding more social and topical meet ups; and introducing a yearly rotating Chair, with each stepping back to Deputy to maintain continuity after their term.

Next Wave’s ED/CEO Jamie Lewis articulates the Board’s clearer, refined role and relationships with her reminder that: “I’m not here to prove my job to [Directors]. I’m not here to pitch for your approval. I’m here for you to add your expertise to help problematise what this might look like, so I can refine it.”

Also based in Naarm, Theatre Network Australia (TNA) is the leading industry development and advocacy organisation for S2M and independent performing arts nationally. An Incorporated Association, it has a Committee of 10-14 Committee Members, some of whom receive sitting fees.

Leading by example, the TNA committee approved an Independent Artist/Producer Board Member Sitting Fee Policy in 2021 in order to budget for sitting fees for independent members not covered by ongoing salaries, who now receive an honorarium between $150-$400 for each meeting they attend (not for hours worked).

“There are many people who cannot afford the time to serve properly as a board member but would otherwise be excellent additions to an arts and cultural organisation’s board,” TNA states. “TNA advocates for a diversity of arts workers on arts boards, including First Nations people, people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds, Deaf or Disabled people and other under-represented groups. There is a higher representation of these groups working as independents in the performing arts.” 

TNA putting independent artists and producers in decision-making roles ensures the organisation’s work is guided by the full breadth and depth of the sector. Independent committee members sign a letter of agreement to confirm they’re volunteers (and cannot claim employee rights), and their sitting fees are paid from earned income (not donations or public funding). The policy has not raised any concerns with their legal advisors or funders.

TNA reports that the response has been amazing and the initiative costs the organisation surprisingly little, with those claiming the honorarium feeling deeply valued. “As an independent with irregular and strange income, this sitting fee is a real boost that makes me and my work on the board feel valued,” one said. “Thanks again for being a leader in the field and showing our industry how boards should be done!”

In the US, ACT Theatre is a contemporary theatre company and venue based in Seattle, Washington. In August this year, the entire Board stepped down (except for the three positions required by law – the chair, secretary and treasurer), while they set up a committee and process “to create a more equitable non-profit leadership model” and “re-evaluate their hierarchal structure and dissect inequalities within the board.”

“The question we asked most pointedly was: ‘If you can do this all over again, what would you have done differently?’,” Artistic Director John Langs said. “From there, we prepared a roadmap through a committee of governance and a couple other key board members and staff members collectively to talk about what we could do. And the outcome of that meeting was: We have to disrupt the status quo.”

So far, so interesting. However, in spite of the opportunity to radically rethink their governance structure, it looks like ACT Theatre has landed on one that looks remarkably familiar, just without its former subcommittees – with 10-15 Trustees expected to be “fully steeped in all aspects of the organisation.”

But there are still things we can learn from their example, including the model that they didn’t quite implement – the idea of the minimally viable board (which I’ll talk more about in Part 3 of this report).

The governance double-dog dare

ACT Theatre were partly inspired by an article in American Theatre, Boards Are Broken, So Let’s Break and Remake Them by Michael J Bobbitt, who was Artistic Director of the New Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts at the time.

Bobbitt identified that nonprofit theatre boards were unrepresentative, out of touch, and more often oppressive than supportive, and called on fellow creative folk to do better. “I honestly think we can come up with a better way to do the accountability, cheerleading, support, and advising that boards at their best should and could be doing,” he wrote. “The way we are currently operating isn’t working. I triple dog dare us all to use our imaginative skills to redesign it.”

This could, Bobbit suggests, start with recognising the breadth of the entire governance ‘ecology’ by involving every part of an organisation in governance decision-making – particularly staff and artists, who are often kept out of strategic conversations but in whom the organisation’s expertise primarily lies. “We should think about boards as key players in an ecology or partnership, not necessarily as the ones in charge,” he wrote.

He also recommends we reconsider what we call that group of decision-makers, as “the terms ‘board’ and ‘director’ are marred with the implication that the board is the ‘boss’… perhaps something like ‘accountability advisors’ instead.”

He calls on us to overthrow Robert’s Rules of Order, which determine the structure and format of most Board and Committee meetings but which are “archaic, pointless, and extremely white.”

And he asks us to investigate new forms of decision-making: emergent strategies, consensus voting, or decision-making processes as they have long been practiced non-white cultures. For which we need to make sure that there is enough diversity among decision makers to be effective.

Artists, young people and BIPOC folks have the answers, Bobbitt says, but “if only a few are in ‘the room’ then the decision makers are wholly unqualified to make decisions that consider all people… Which is why we need to let Board members be vetted, elected, and evaluated by the diverse people who carry out the organisation’s mission: the artists and staff.”

Less is more necessary

The current maelstrom of continual, multiple crises continues to deliver a sort of emotional whiplash. I swing wildly between being overwhelmed by this single micro issue to being so overwhelmed by a macro that it plunges arts governance back into insignificance.

It’s hard to imagine when – as a sector – we’ll have the energy and allies we need to dedicate to this issue, when there is so much else being demanded of us, and when none of us are our best selves.

For many, however, the problems of arts governance are not a theoretical exercise, nor something we can separate from our wellbeing (or lack thereof). Our work is in service to a community, to art, to the artists and arts workers who make it, the people who enjoy it, and the lives and minds it can change. We put ourselves into this space because we care – but we also need to take care of ourselves.

This is the pointiest end of arts governance right now. Meeting our duty of care to ourselves and each other is an issue for everyone I speak to right now, and the thing we’ll need to address before we can even think about having the capacity to implement bigger change. More than ever, #LessIsNecessary.

Read Part 3 of my Bad, Better and Beyond report, which explores the idea that we can do better than Boards.

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