 Thank you everyone that has decided to join us today on your monyei if you joined us for the chitty chat chat you learned that you know fry a gets all the excitement but we've also coined Thursday and then money so today is a brand new start to the week it is an exciting one because it is the final week of the year so you've heard me say time and time again about the marathon that we're all running we literally are in the dash this is the dash to you know most people will sprint to the marathon so excited to have you join us today Julia back in the hot seat as you talk to us about one of the topics that is truly one of your key elements in the philanthropy world and you've served on many boards so thank you again for sharing your expertise and your valuable time as we talk about today's topic Julia Patrick of course is here and she's in the hot seat today Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American nonprofit academy I'm Jared Ransom your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group and again we continue to be amazed and fully in all of all of our sponsors you can see right in front of you we ask that you do check them out if you're considering any changes upgrades um evolutions into your new year please do take a look at our generous sponsors that have supported us and they are here to support you to drive your mission forward and to help you achieve this year's goal and to reach next year's goals so please do check out our sponsors Julia Patrick again thrilled to have you CEO and founder of the American nonprofit academy you know that these episodes truly are your brainchild and we are so grateful to have you um have this bizarre thought that the pandemic would last two weeks therefore the show would last two weeks and here we are two years strong truly going on 450 episodes and we have talked about just about anything and everything but truly truly it all continues to change right so even as we talk about an emeritus board topic perhaps we talked about this you know a year and a half ago as this topic continues to change you know as does the structure and our thought process so welcome Julia and thank you for being in today's hot seat hey you know it's so funny we um and thank you Jared thank you for for picking up the phone when I called and said I have this wackadoo idea and you would be perfect for it um so it's been a lot of fun really quickly before we jump into the emeritus board concept yes we are on pace for our front 450th episode but you know Kevin Pace our executive producer he takes pieces of what I like to call wisdom out and re-edits those for our 62nd lessons and those are populated every place from our twitter feeds to other social media things on our websites and in a staff meeting last week Jared he was telling us that he has hit 750 you know production episodes 750 that is phenomenal is that crazy so I mean it's it's really a tremendous amount of information and at the beginning we thought oh my gosh we're going to run out of things to say and we're not going to have we're going to blow through this and then we're going to be like well what else is there to talk about and I think one of the most interesting things is exactly what you said and that is is that things have changed so dramatically and they are changing that it's actually creating a lot of new ideas and sometimes a revisit of old ideas and so the emeritus board is one of those things we really want to talk about especially right now because it is in the next 30 days that a lot of boards will turn maybe they they have their their boards turn at that beginning of the year they're voting people off or trying to vote people in and we see too many too many too many great board members or board champions walk away they don't want to walk away maybe they don't want to participate as much maybe they've aged out or termed out but we just let them go and that's a big mistake so that's what we want to talk about today and that's the process of the emeritus board emeritus is Latin for old soldier hence the green army men it's really important these old soldiers they have institutional knowledge they have the sense of history they have the sense of purpose and a lot of times they have been at with the organization at the dawn of its inception so they know the players you know they know the mission vision and values from the beginning and too often we're letting that knowledge go away and it's a big big big mistake you know I love Julia how you're bringing this up now because as you said within the next 30 days many organizations per their bylaws will have that annual meeting in which they call to order new leadership executive leadership for the board they vote in new members they term off those members that have met their their term limits and so if an organization has not considered an emeritus board this is a topic in which you will want to consider especially as your annual meeting perhaps is coming up and you want to continue to champion the champions that have served for you and your organization so I love this talk tell us more about the old soldier well the old soldier is it's really in an interesting concept because basically emeritus was that movement of that person who no longer could maybe physically do the work they couldn't be the physical they couldn't physically be on the battlefield but mentally they were far more they had far more capacity than they ever did physically meaning they knew the battle strategies they knew the player they knew the terrain right think of all these things going back into your history books it's about the old generals and the way you know we would navigate conflict for good or for bad and so this emeritus piece takes that into consideration and it allows those folks who really have the ability to be a sounding board the ability to be there not to cut their links to the organization that they obviously loved and supported but maybe they just don't have the physical capacity to be in the grind right to be in the grind day in and day out so let's talk about some of those structures so the really interesting thing about the emeritus board is sometimes it's also used and I don't like this word but to warehouse leadership or founding leadership we've talked about this before founder syndrome and sometimes it's tough sometimes it's really tough to take those originators of an organization and to navigate them to a different level and so instead of cutting them loose and letting them go and then you know having no link to them this is a way to keep those people close to you and to keep them connected in such a way so that they're still able to participate they're able to fundraise they're able to share wisdom and they're able to bring in new and different types of folks into your organization so a couple of the structures are this you can actually have an emeritus board that's formed it's in your bylaws and I've worked with organizations where they actually vote in who who's on the emeritus board and sometimes that is the executive committee or the full board and they have terms and you could be like you could be on the emeritus board for six years and then you have to be re-voted in I mean it can be that structured or it can just be something that is a little bit less structured I've also seen emeritus boards have people like maybe the you know the founder and they can have they can also be deceased you know they would have an asterisk by their name but they would be perpetually on that board and I've also seen it where it might be luminary so perhaps you have an organization that has a health orientation and maybe you have a physician who is really instrumental in discoveries that pertain to your cause you might have them I've also seen it where it's been maybe governors I've even seen us sitting presidents or excuse me retired presidents and I've also seen us senators and congressmen stuff like that now you use the word warehouse and I I also heard you say that you don't like to use that word or to use the emeritus board kind of in that same phrase but I'm curious because you did go on to mention Julia that you know oftentimes these individuals are voted on are all emeritus board members voted on because when I hear the word warehouse I think that's where you know all of the board members when they term off go into the next maybe you know during that that pause of a term limit so it's really amazing Jane just asked the question not all board members are suitable for the emeritus board a small percentage or more likely good riddance or even worse how do you recommend choosing who to invite without appearing to insult the others and that's a really really great question Jane and and it dovetails to what you're saying Jared you know this is where the structure becomes really important the more organized and structure structured that you have this and it goes into your bylaws or as a policy or as a separate you know segment of your of your your operational structure then you can detail that and you can say well not everybody's voted on and you have these many term limits and all that but absolutely you don't have to put everyone on because if you have some dissension or you have some issues you don't want to just put that into a different part of your organization where it's going to continue to create problems so you're right I mean Jane that that can be a little dicey and you can say yeah this isn't going to be something that we we move forward on having said that again depending on your structure this isn't a group that's going necessarily neat right you're going to communicate to them you're going to send them information but you're going to take them off of your board portal because you that you are not going to have them have access to your fiduciary information interesting well I'm glad you mentioned that because I would have not again when you have you know a series of structure policies to make sure you include that because they're not privy now to all of the inner workings and as you said they no longer have fiduciary oversight well you're keeping the change strong we're keeping them engaged and involved with us now do you recommend that we have events with them do we engage with absolutely our members regularly absolutely so I've seen and worked with organizations where maybe it's the Christmas party or a holiday party I've even seen it where it's like the organization's anniversary date that they always include the the emeritus board and even they can add stakeholders or whatever so let's say you have a founder's day where you're an older organization and you you celebrate that you can bring those people together I've also seen for more serious topics where there's like a state of the state address where they will bring all the emeritus board together with the current board and sometimes even prospective board members to come in and say okay this is where things are going this is what we see this is where we need help these are successes these are challenges so it kind of depends upon that the other thing that I've seen more and more and I think this is really cool is kind of a mentoring situation where they will pair an emeritus board member with a new board member and then do some sort of a mentoring program and sometimes that can be super structured I mean they're like meeting for coffee once a month or you know they're they're really making sure they're they're consulting one another and sometimes it's not that at all but you know so I have a disruptive train of thought when it comes to that so as we all continue to shift in shape moving forward and we navigate the multiple pandemics there there's this phrase we've all heard it is well that's the way we've always done it so if we pair an emeritus board member with let's say you know a recently onboarded member I'm foreseeing that will come up more and more well we don't do it that way we've never done it that way and therefore it might kind of I'm thinking of a candle snuffer right it'll snuff the thought of the new board member how does that impact the trajectory of the organization have you I'm just curious again a disruptive thought but I'm curious how you've seen that work well and where in fact you might see it not work so well so it's really a great question I was with a bunch of board board chairs and CEOs of financial organizations actually in my state several months ago and that was a question that came up and it had to do with age it really had to do with age because it was older board members that had opinions ideas vocabulary behaviors that the younger folks were like oh my god you're not supposed to say that oh my gosh you don't think like that anymore and what we came out with was that it's somewhat helped the younger members and I'm talking about 40 and 50 year olds to 70 and 80 year olds okay so an interesting combination here and it really helped those younger leaders to almost witness what was systemically wrong and I know that sounds weird but they were like wow I get it we need to make sure that we are advancing this new behavior or we need to make sure that we're putting this policy in or we need to make sure that we are being more diverse when it goes out to nominating other board members and so I took that as a win yeah well that's right you know right when you this opportunity and you make an intentional decision to change the trajectory and to bring in new policies perhaps that address something that has been there and never had the light you know to shine on it so thank you for that example because again in my head and you know me I'm always like well wait how would this work in this scenario uh you know the good bad the ugly of boards now talk to me about managing the emeritus who manages the emeritus I know that you are a huge proponent of having a board liaison now is that person also the manager of the emeritus boards yeah so very very much I am like super passionate about the concept of the board liaison and that's something that you know we haven't really addressed maybe we should pull that back into January is a new best practice to re-engage with but anyway long story short yes because this is going to have in the end of the day some type of event management whether it be a cocktail party a lunch you know a meeting in your boardroom or on your campus a tour it's going to have some sort of management piece and so that person that's doing this for the regular full board and committees that this should be added to their to their piece the other thing is and this sounds harsh but you know things happen we're oftentimes dealing with an aging population and maybe people become ill or they pass away or they disengage um from their social um in community roles this is going to be the person that tracks that right and so you want to make sure that it's professionally managed again this is a group you don't want to let go of you might need to hold their hand a little bit more but you want to keep them apprised of what's going on you want to send them communications again you don't want them on your board portal unless you have a system where you could have just a board portal piece for emeritus board members which you can look into that but you see what I'm saying this does take some management um and again you're going to need to think about what this engagement looks like so are you having a tour are you having a speaker are you communicating back out hey everybody we're applying for this grant or for this award or we're having this event can you help us I love that and I would imagine these individuals Julia are also a pivotal role in maintaining and deepening relationships within the community you said something that uh really just spoke to me earlier uh you know last week or a couple of weeks ago about how to engage major donors into your programming and to see the programming in action and in particular with arts and culture to invite these major donors to the dress rehearsal or to the rehearsals that truly is a behind the scene you know really limited opportunity I can see the emeritus board playing a role in this do you have you seen that done absolutely I think one of the coolest things I ever got to do I was a trustee of a major opera company and I was able to sit in the bull ring um during Carmen and uh for any of you who know opera and they know you know the bull ring scenes it's it's a really interesting thing it's an audience looking back onto the audience and so um we took some of our very large donors and people that we wanted to engage and we put them on that stage in the bull ring and in it was structured professional opera singers and so when there were certain things that were going on we would stand and we would sit down and we would look interested but we didn't sing obviously the professional singers were singing the chorus but the power if you've ever been around music the power that comes out of an instrument whether it be physical or you know mechanical it impacts your body you can feel the the pressure of that sound and and everybody that came on and participated in that way ended up being a donor and they it really glued them to our company because it was so powerful it physically powerful and you talk about programming and action when you hear a baritone sing and you could feel it come through your thoracic cavity it's like holy moly you know and it I could go on and on and on about it but again yeah if you can get somebody into the practice sessions or to see what's going on um it's why we give tours of our nonprofits hello you touched on something that I wanted to ask and I was waiting to to see if it came up is there a financial commitment or responsibility of the emeritus boards because I know that we want all of our governing boards uh board members rather to not only give up their time but also of their financial resources at some level what does that mean for our emeritus board you know I've seen uh this done a couple of ways I've seen it where you um take that emeritus board member and you put them into a planned giving commitment um and and um I was uh on a board where there was a planned giving society started and they started with the emeritus board they kind of did it both ways and so they said we're going to start this emeritus board and it was the right time and with these it was a logical thing but at the same time we're going to have these people sign into our you know planned giving society and then I've also seen it where um you call it um like a board dues where you can say okay look it's a hundred dollars or five hundred dollars and that will help support the the administration of this board you know but again you you're hoping that you do have a deeper commitment financially with these folks you know so maybe they're they're even maybe you're part of your giving society you know no I love that and again this is a great opportunity because within the next 30 days most of our leadership will be meeting across the nation again all 1.8 million nonprofits across the nation will probably be reconvening to talk about board terms and uh to set the strategic plan for the new year and that includes perhaps your emeritus board so perfect timing to think about this because we really don't want to let our board champions go um after they've served on the board now question for you Julia this is a curve ball so get ready right we know our sports analogies here what if it's a board member that did not fulfill all of their term limits are they still available to serve as an emeritus board and it could be for any reason why here they were not you know able to to complete that term but would that allow them to continue as an emeritus if given that opportunity I don't see why not again you know this isn't a fiduciary board so this really is an honorary board or sometimes we hear that a word a term called showboard it's a showboard you know you would market this you would put this up on your website so when people want to come to your organization say well how deep do they run in the community you would see who's supporting that and it's an endorsement you know when when you put your name on a board's masthead you're supporting them you know and you're telling your community that you support them so yeah it's a big deal um I would say absolutely if you have somebody that's had to leave um for many many reasons other than something that's negative um yeah I would say you know move them over to that because again the concept here is really not letting those champions go as you said Jared tying them back to your organization so that they can support you in the manner which they can support you right and it it's not going to be the same for everyone so good so good now I I'm curious you have the american nonprofit academy there are plenty of additional educational tools on that platform again americannonprofitacademy.com I'm sure there's ameritus board resources on there can you can you talk to us about what might we find you know thank you I I that's thank you for saying it yeah we do um we have a couple different courses on the different types of boards everything from like youth boards to young professional emeritus we even have things to talk about the show boards um and so yeah absolutely because there there are many ways to go about this many many ways and so the key is that you structure it and that you get everybody on the same page so everybody's rowing in the same direction because that's when you have some problems um Jane writes back in um I do not recommend calling um this structure a past president's council since sometimes the problem folks have been presidents what do you think yeah the emeritus board is not just for one type of person that served right so it's not just for um you know the presidents or the executive officers or the founders or it can be a lot of everything so for example I was working with an organization and this was years ago and they had an employee like the first employed paid employee of an organization and that employee stayed for like 35 years and they were amazing they put that person on the emeritus board you know imagine all of that institutional knowledge yeah that's phenomenal yeah so I mean there are ways to go about this but again um it really is about not letting people go not yet letting people go um one last question why do we call it an emeritus board when it has no fiduciary decision-making responsibilities I use the word council instead yeah you could do that I mean it's a it to me it's a marketing issue um the the actual nuts and bolts of fiduciary management those are spelled out in your bylaws so if you want to call it a council absolutely that's fine but yeah but that's the concept of it is not letting these people go don't let them go Jared well we have to let our guests go our viewers but thank you so much Julia again perfect timing great topic as we finish up the final mile of this marathon and start another marathon here shortly so grateful Julia for you to again shine some light on today's topic if you want to go back and and see and hear today's topic this is where you can find us all of those you said um our executive producer has over 750 I believe um moments of gosh I don't even know what to call it but recorded uh moments of the nonprofit shows so thank you again to all of our viewers that continue to um tune in to us either live which many of you continue to do thank you so much and also on uh the variety of archives that we have we are also so extremely grateful to have the commitment and dedication from our longtime presenting sponsors that you see here now's a great time to check them out so if you're looking at you know changing the way that you are doing your work into next year many of these companies can help you do that so do check them out let them know that you saw them here on the nonprofit show um thank them for their support because they really are here in your corner and on your team to help you elevate your mission we always ask you to to tune in again we know this is a busy time of the year we all have a lot going on this is Q4 of 21 and Q1 of 22 is literally right around the corner so thank you for joining us and to you Julia again for today's topic so so very grateful I hope that all of you will tune in for the rest of the week and until then we ask you to please stay well so you can do well thanks everyone we'll see you back here tomorrow