Smorgasboard: October Message from the Board

As I noted in the prior column, one of the Board goals for this church year, based on input from the congregational survey, is to “strengthen Board governance practices to enhance trust.” Which naturally begs the question, what do we mean by governance, particularly in the church context?

Unitarian Universalism comes from the congregationalist tradition, in which authority lies not with a denominational hierarchy, but is vested in the individual congregation, with the members being the ultimate source of authority. According to the UUA’s Governance for Unitarian Universalist Congregations, governance is the system by which a congregation exercises its authority. As we’ll see, there are several ways to go about this, but in the end it’s about how authority flows.

As a non-profit organization, we also operate in a legal context that holds a board of trustees ultimately accountable for the success of the organization, and requires us to act on behalf of an organization’s constituents: members, staff, funders, and the community it serves. Our core functions include ensuring that the mission and purposes are defined, that there is effective planning for carrying those out, that the resources of the organization are stewarded for its long-term benefit, and that it complies with legal and ethical requirements.

So if governance is the process of a congregation, through its elected board, exercising its authority and carrying out its core functions, the governance model describes how that is done. There are many different frameworks that have been described, and the terminology gets frankly confusing. A basic framework I like is one based on what is delegated by the board and to whom. The board cannot delegate its ultimate accountability for the success and well-being of the church, but it can delegate authority and responsibility for different aspects of the work to be done. (There are variations with each of these depending on the details.)

1. Operational board. The board retains essentially all authority and responsibility for all decisions, including strategic, operational, and programmatic.
2. Managing board. The board retains authority for strategic decisions, and delegates some operational and programmatic authority and responsibility to paid or volunteer staff (e.g., individual members or committees), holding those staff accountable for results.
3. Strategic board. The board retains authority for strategic decisions, and delegates essentially all operational and programmatic authority and responsibility to paid or volunteer staff, holding those staff accountable for results.

In general, as churches increase in size and complexity, the governance model moves toward more strategic modes. For one thing, the sheer number of decisions and factors to take into account are too great for a group of part-time volunteers. This is compounded by the normal turn-over of board and committee members. Paradoxically, in a large and diverse organization, decision-making is typically more equitable and inclusive when delegated to an individual who can be charged with incorporating a broad range of perspectives; research supports the idea that operational and managing boards, particularly when they have a “minimization” orientation to cultural differences, can overlook important perspectives when making operational and programmatic decisions.

As a large congregation, First Universalist has adopted a strategic approach to board governance, with authority and responsibility for operational and programmatic decisions being delegated to the senior minister. The particular model we have operated under, described by John Carver, is often referred to as policy governance. (While I would say we have not stuck to the letter of that, it is by and large how we govern.)

First we have the bylaws, which is essentially our constitution, describing in broad strokes how the church is organized. It describes the purpose of the church, the requirements for membership, congregational meetings, how ministers are called, how the board of trustees is elected, and the process for amendment. It also states that the congregation retains authority for the annual budget: the staff and board draft and propose it, but ultimately it must be approved by a vote of the congregation.

Then we have a set of Board policies, the Governing Policies Handbook. These describe how the board will function, how and what authority is delegated to the senior minister, and how the board will hold the senior minister accountable. A clarification here is important. In most non-profits, the executive leader responsible for operations and programming, is accountable to the board. That is, the board has the authority to hire and remove that person. In a UU church, however, the senior minister does not report to the board; they can only be called or removed by the congregation. Rather than a typical hierarchy, in this case the board’s role in holding the minister accountable is to collaborate with the minister to advance the mission of the church – our Visionary Goals – and to collectively be accountable to you, the members.

All of this is to provide the context for what we hope to do this year to strengthen our governance practices. We believe that the basic framework of strategic governance is the right one for our church. In the interest of doing so even more effectively, our specific goals around governance and trust for this year are:

1. Develop and practice a Board covenant, to allow us as a board to use our time together to develop our own beloved community and deliver maximal benefit for all of you
2. Review and update the Governing Policies Handbook. While some minor revisions have been made, this has not been comprehensively reviewed and updated since 2015, and does not well reflect much of our current practice.
3. Expand communications with the congregation through a regular Board column in the Liberal.
4. Implement and model a decision-making framework for key Board decisions. We believe that greater clarity about how decisions are made, by whom, and with what input, is important in our accountability to the congregation. (More on this last goal in the next column.)

Marc Gorelick, Board President