smorgasBoard, BoardWalk's mostly monthly newsletter

In this issue:

BoardWalk's 5th birthday

5 lessons we've learned

INROADS names new SVP HR

New COO assignment at Global Impact, new CEO profile for Southeastern Guide Dogs

Ongoing assignments

smorgasBoard - bits and bites about nonprofit boards and leadership

October highlights: BoardWalk's 5th birthday, lessons learned over the past five years, a new search, a new placement and an update on active engagements.

October 1, 2007

BoardWalk's birthday:
5 years of compelling causes & extraordinary people

Five years ago today, we founded BoardWalk Consulting on the premise that compelling missions are best served by strong leaders working in strategic unity with strong boards. In pursuing our focus on leadership and governance, we have been privileged to serve a wonderful array of causes and the extraordinary people who champion them.

The journey along the BoardWalk has exceeded our wildest dreams. It is exciting, challenging and soul-satisfying to work with many of the finest leaders in the sector. It is rewarding and renewing to help advance the causes they hold dear.

We celebrate our anniversary with gratitude and humility for the opportunity to contribute our part to progress in the human, artistic, spiritual, institutional and educational causes being supported by such extraordinary people.

So on our 5th birthday, we celebrate and salute our clients, partners, colleagues, friends and supporters. We are grateful to be a part of your world.

Click here to see the full array of clients we've been privileged to serve »

Five lessons we've learned...

If you looked through even a partial list of the clients referenced above, you may have been struck by how little they seem to have in common, beyond their commitment to making the world a better place.

Our clients are headquartered in disparate states. They share almost no board members. Their causes are as varied as the stakeholders who embrace them--their leaders, their volunteers, their funders and their constituents. In fact, one of the few obvious traits they share is their choice of BoardWalk Consulting!

The variety, of course, is part of what makes our work so rewarding. It has also contributed to some terrific lessons for us over the years, among them these:

There are no bad causes. True, there are some causes that resonate more than others, but both "community" and "service" have many definitions, and we remain amazed by the enormous variety of outlets that folks pursue in making a difference.
The sector is a jerk-free zone. With very few exceptions, we continue to be impressed by how authentic and well behaved most people are in the nonprofit sector. Our partners are hugely ambitious for their causes, but they rarely display ambition for themselves.
Greed is almost nonexistent. Call us naive, but in our five years on the BoardWalk we have yet to experience a nonprofit leader acting out of personal greed. Egos are secure, to be sure, and subtlety is note every player's chief asset, but we have yet to experience the blatant economic self-interest that captures so many newspaper headlines in the for-profit sector.
Interest in encore careers is strong and growing. Literally every day, we hear from successful professionals interested in pursuing possibilities for service to the nonprofit sector. We're not referring to jobseekers, though we hear from them too, but rather to the lawyers and accountants and business executives of all stripes who are beginning the journey from success to significance.
Time, not money, is the sector's scarce commodity. Good ideas rarely fail for lack of money, but they often fail for lack of leadership, time and focus.

There's more, of course, but we'll save further items for a future issue of smorgasBoard. In the meantime, please share your experiences with us by dropping a line to info@boardwalkconsulting.com.