PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE | september 21, 2020

 

I’m a diver – I love scuba and try to find an opportunity to get underwater when I can.  

I’m also a non-profit leader – I work with Boards of Directors in my professional and personal life (as a volunteer on other boards).  

What do they have in common?

Good boards of directors are like a buoyancy control device in diving. They help you maintain equilibrium, balance and enable the organization to maintain direction even under extreme pressure (so many fathoms!).

What’s a bad board? They are the BCD without any air to lift you up.  In diving, those are the lead weights that drag you down – and they can be dysfunctional or non-functioning. Boards can do the same for any organization. 

That may seem a little extreme – but you get my drift.  Board of Directors can be great assets to any organization – and they can also be a tremendous burden.

We’ll be talking about what it takes to Build Better Boards later this month as part of our Stay at Home Workshop series – and I hope you’ll join us.  We’ll talk with organizations that have built their boards over time to help their work succeed – and we’ll talk about principles for success as your organization goes about building better.  

Register today and we’ll see you on September 30!   

I’d love to know your plans for Community Media Day on October 20.  It’s the fifth year we’ve been encouraging community media organizations and channels across the country to celebrate their work on 10/20 – and I think there’s a lot to celebrate this year.  Send us your thoughts and ideas this week to info@allcommunitymedia.org and we’ll share them with other members next week. 

Looking for ideas? Go to www.communitymediaday.org to find out more and check out our toolkit at https://www.communitymediaday.org/toolkit.
Mike Wassenaar

President & CEO
The Alliance for Community Media