We can do better than Boards

Following my collaboration on AICSA’s Rethinking Arts Governance event last year, I articulated some issues arts organisations have with arts Boards and shared examples of Boards making the best of the current situation.

In doing so, it became depressingly clear that our sector has learned how to bend without breaking when it comes to arts governance. But if the cause of most of our Arts Boards’ dysfunction is the governance model itself, perhaps a break is what we need – to throw the model out and start again.

Loads of people are taking up this challenge in a range of different ways, such as the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) in Canada, and Vu Le, Alan Harrison, Michael J Bobbitt and the Non Profit Association of Washington in the US. I zoomed into a recent Nonprofit Innovation Summit on Reinventing Boards, where ONN encouraged us to learn from children’s playground designers, whose industry went from trying to design better or more accessible play equipment, to designing better ‘circumstances for play.’ How can we this approach to create better ‘circumstances for governance,’ they asked, without assuming that governance should be done a certain way?

Not with tweaks. Not by squishing ourselves inside a model we don’t fit. But by allowing ourselves to ask big, foundational questions about how to do things differently, particularly in terms of: how decisions are made; who makes them; who we need to be accountable to (when, how and what for); and how we can be better allies for the organisations we love by finding out what they need and giving it to them.

We’re used to a governance model that tasks unpaid or low-paid Boards with oversight AND compliance AND strategic direction AND stewardship AND duty of care AND financial sustainability AND fundraising AND risk AND capacity building AND emergency response AND being ambassadors (AND more).

This is not only unreasonable (in expecting Board members to have the skills and time to meet such disparate obligations), but unfair (in setting their Boards up to fail), and unnecessary (in that most are self-imposed expectations that are not required by law).

Of course we still need to meet legislative requirements, but we don’t need to do so in a single or identical way. If one size really doesn’t fit all, surely we can use combinations of models to meet our obligations and ambitions.

I ‘triple dog dared’ Rethinking Arts Governance participants to imagine what this could look like, starting with a focus on what we need and how we could achieve it (without assuming the answer must be Boards-as-we-know-them). For example:

• A macro or Super Board model could maximise resources by combining oversight of multiple organisations into one board to rule them all. Often of interest to government or commercial Boards wanting to streamline their sitting fees, this unfortunately increases Board member responsibilities, puts a lot of power in the hands of the few, and can lead to insufficient oversight and corruption.
• A micro or Minimally Viable Board model identifies the minimum structure and remit needed to satisfy legislation and other requirements. This usually involves fewer Board members, fewer office holders, fewer responsibilities and fewer meetings than we currently ask of our organisations.
• An Integrity Board, Cultural Council or Grassroots Governance model embeds community-led or community-engaged practice by appointing artists and/or community members as guardians of purpose to help keep us on track.
• Ongoing Advisory Groups, Subcommittees or Brains Trusts allow us to form single or multiple specialist groups around the skills or representation we need.
• One-off Consultations or Consensus Conferences borrow from peer assessment or Annual General Meeting models by taking big decisions to panels of constituents as required – which may draw on different people each time.
• Specific Working Groups or Action Boards delegate ongoing or temporary projects to groups convened for that purpose (such as Fundraising Committees or Recruitment Working Groups).
• So far, most of us have used technology to transfer our analogue arts governance processes online, but E-Governance or Digital Boards could use polls, surveys, social media and more to govern differently or more democratically.
• We’re used to Executives made up of Chairs, Deputy Chairs, Treasurers and Secretaries (and often struggle with constitutional compliance when we don’t have people in those roles), but our legislation usually only requires a single office holder (often Public Officers for Incorporated Associations or Secretaries for Companies Limited by Guarantee). There’s nothing to stop us inventing New Office Holders based on whatever our organisations need (like a Fundraising Director or Director of Duty of Care).
• In the small-to-medium (S2M) sector, it’s not unusual for Board members to outnumber staff. Allocating Board Mentors to individual staff members or teams could provide a different way to address development or duty of care (ideally without creating additional duty of care issues of their own).
• Paid Boards or Executive Chairs are controversial provocations for S2M orgs, who usually prefer to resource underpaid staff teams to allocating limited capital to (technically) volunteer roles. I’m also yet to find convincing evidence that corporate or statutory authority Boards perform any better in spite of being paid.
• Outsourcing Professional Services is likely to be more successful (paid or pro-bono). Our organisations spend a lot of time looking for legal, financial, fundraising or communications experts interested in volunteering in the arts, but one CEO reminded me recently that this is a choice, not a requirement (albeit one influenced by finances): “We don’t use skills as the basis for nominating Board members. If we need an accountant, we hire one. If we need a lawyer, we hire one.” We already outsource our financial governance to auditors. Professional company secretary services already exist too. It is possible to entirely outsource our Boards?
• Similarly, First Nations Elders and artists are being asked to share their wisdom more often and by more organisations. Subsidising a centralised Paid Cultural Knowledge Hub or First Nations Advisory Resource could make sure they’re paid appropriately for this work and avoid cultural guidance becoming something only well-resourced orgs can afford.
• Arts strategist and producer Pippa Bailey reminds us that our current Board hierarchy is based on industrial, patriarchal and military structures imported from overseas as part of ongoing colonisation. Its focus on efficiency, productivity, competition and chains of command are part of a growth agenda that doesn’t value artistic labour or practices. A post-colonial / post-patriarchal / Decolonised Board could embed access, equity and anti-oppression into its structure, composition and fabric instead. Now, that’s something I’d really like to see.

Thanks to Replay Creative, you can also find a summary video of our Rethinking Arts Governance conversation below.

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