 Let me start off by saying welcome. We are so glad you're here for another episode of The Non-Profit Show. It seems like I haven't had any coffee today, but I promise I have. I'm glad you're here, Katie. Katie Cordell is going to share with us about board liaisons and sharing some secrets to our success, and Katie joins us from Boardable, and we're so thrilled to have you with us. Before we jump into the conversation, we of course want to make sure that you know who we are. Julia Patrick is here, the CEO of the American Non-Profit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. Julie and I are both extremely blessed and honored to have the continued support and investment from our presenting sponsors. Thank you to Bloomerang, American Non-Profit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Non-Profit Nerd, your part-time controller, the Non-Profit Atlas, Non-Profit Thought Leader, as well as Staffing Boutique. These organizations are here to help you do more good. Yes, you, whoever's listening and watching, they're here to help you drive your mission forward. So please do check them out. And if you've missed any of our 504 episodes, because today, Katie, you are 505, you can catch any of these episodes and elements of the episodes on Roku, YouTube, Fire TV, as well as Bimeo. And if you haven't heard the great news, we're also streaming on podcasts. So wherever you get your podcast, go ahead and queue up the Non-Profit show and Julie and I will be in your ears. And we hope that you like what you hear. Thrilled to have these platforms and availability to you. And Katie, you will go into the queue with all of these. So we're excited to have you here, excited to have boardable back in presentation. And Katie, you serve as the Senior Customer Service Manager at Boardable. What the heck does that mean? Great question. It kind of depends on the day. Let's start there, yes. Typically what that means is I work with a lot of non-profit organizations. So I work with organizations that are coming to Boardable looking to streamline their communications. They're looking to have a more engaged board and they're looking to have better board meetings. So I work with a roster of our customers, helping them to get onboarded with our platform but also sharing tips and tricks about board management along the way. Wow, OK. So Katie, you're my soul sister, even though what's the matter. Yes, yes. Come to Indianapolis. I have a spare bedroom. Oh, the great place. Be careful. Oh, you should know. You're going to be the blame to get now. I'm going to get hell. I'm jumping in my car. That's more immediate. No, I think that we're really excited to have you on. We talk about board liaison so much on this show. And also, we've spoken about this title, this issue, the structure, this concept as a way to make your organization flow better, to get more out of all the interactions that board members bring to the table. And so we're really excited about this. Now, if I recall correctly and help me if I'm wrong, Jared, Steven Shattuck told us about boardable because Bloomerang is also based in Indianapolis. Our name is, yes. Yeah. And we were chit chatting. Now, this is like going on three years ago. And we were complaining about something, probably boards or something. And he's like, well, they need this product called boardable. Isn't that true, Jared? Oh, yeah. Steven's been a great boarder, of course, with Bloomerang. And once we learned of this platform, especially Julia, all over it. I was like, all over it. I mean, super all over it. So just briefly, before we start peppering you with all these questions, boardable is a platform. It's a subscription model, right? Yes. We primarily work with organizations. So we are a board portal. So that means you can log in to our website, boardable.com. If you sign up with boardable, you'll have a central location for all your documents, all your board communications between meetings, and a way to have that historic record of anything that you've done. So if you're looking to onboard new members quickly, a board portal might be a good option for you. So in essence, let's say you are working with your board from board liaison, hopefully, to CEO, whatever. And let's say you have minutes, or you have a CEO dashboard. Any and all of these things, they're put on your platform so that then your board members can access them. Absolutely. It's an overall concept. Yes, you got it. You nailed it. It's a secure login. So you'll only be able to grant folks access who you actually want to have that access to log in to your portal, much more secure than email attachments, much more organized. If you're looking for past meeting minutes, if you're looking for new agendas for upcoming minutes, or upcoming meetings, but then we also have resources to help you around collaboration tools. So if you are between meetings or maybe only meeting quarterly to keep your board members, committee members engaged. Wow. And I love so much the ability to hold that institutional knowledge and that transference of knowledge that is so, so important. Yes. And you're not spending valuable meeting time getting people caught up. They can go in if they're at night owl, in the middle of the night without pestering their board liaison. Absolutely. We often talk about our cadence. I'm the early bird. She's the night owl. So between us, you have 24-hour support. So I love that, that you built that in honestly, because I think we do really need to pay attention to so many of our board members their time and their availability, right? Because what works for one person is not going to be the same for the others. So really to have that availability on the system is a huge win-win and a little bit of a no-brainer, right? Like, perfect. I think that one thing that comes up in my role so often is you have nonprofit staff members who might be working a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday role. But then there are board members or their committee members, their key supporters, their volunteers. Like, I'm checking my board communication probably around 8 PM after I've had dinner and I've debriefed from the day. And that's not necessarily when someone's working. So having a board portal, having a place where you can know, you can find that information, it's so critical for that ongoing support. Well, let's dive into what are some of the responsibilities. And I'm going to have to keep Julia from talking. But we'd love to hear from you. Like, what are the main responsibilities of the liaison? And where is their place in the organization? Yeah, great question. I think a lot of people think that a board liaison might just be another type of officer for the board. And I'm here to say that is not the case. Most typically, a board liaison is going to be a staff person or a non-voting board member. So they're going to be really responsible for preparing your board meetings, helping with some of those administrative tasks, whether that be scheduling or just keeping that ongoing record. Maybe you use a board management tool and you want to have a record of all your past communication. But I think one of the things that makes a board liaison so exciting is that they can really make or break your board member buy-in and that board engagement. If you have someone who is really well organized, it makes a difference for how your board is performing. Now, let me ask you this. Is this a paid position? And the question comes in a way if they're not staff, because I'm sure they're getting paid in a staff role. But if this is someone, as you said, a non-voting board member, is this a paid opportunity? Yeah, I think most of the time when I'm working with a board liaison, it is an organization that has the resources to pay a staff person. Now, it might not be full-time responsibilities. It might just be a portion of their job or of their role. But if you're not in that position, I think you really need to be identifying if you have a key volunteer who has some of those skills around organization who could really be an asset in that board management or in those board communications. Great. That's a good question. And this is going to be one of those things that's really hard to answer, Katie. But you seem up to the task. You're like, oh my god, what is she going to ask? What do you see as like that? I agree with you. It's not a full-time position. But what do you see as like a percent to total of somebody's job description? What does that look like? You know, I really think it depends on the complexity of the organization. We were talking a little bit earlier about organizations that have many committees. Maybe they have a board, but they also have a development committee. The board liaison role might expand beyond just the board. So you're also working with various committees, your YP group, your young professionals, for example. Maybe in that case, it is a full-time responsibility, but you're split across those organizations. I've seen other places where maybe you're a member of the executive office. You're part of that administrative staff. So the board governance, the board liaison, that's just a piece of your role, but it rolls in really nicely to your other duties. So now I have another question that you just brought. Just to make this come to light. For organizations that do have really robust committees, would a board portal be something that that can be used for as well, even though it's not traditionally the fiduciary role or whatever? But can that work in that scope? Absolutely. One of the things that I hear is that organizations I work with, they have a really good structure for their board. The board is built into the bylaws. We know what's happening at a board meeting. We have that run of show. The agenda's pretty much set from meeting to meeting. But then we have some committees where maybe it's less formal. So a board portal can be a really nice way to create that uniformity. And I always tell the folks that I work with, committees are a great way to vet future board members. You have someone who's highly engaged in your finance committee. They're gonna be a resource on your board. I agree. I just wanna double down on that. I think that's such a great opportunity. It gives everyone the opportunity to kind of date and experience the environment, what's asked of you, the expectations, the culture, things like that. And I think it's a really good opportunity to really do that. Who manages this board liaison? So we had said, typically it is a staff member that serves in this role, but not always. So who manages this person? Yeah, I think that can be a really delicate dance sometimes. If it is someone in a iteration, a delicate dance. Thank you. I like that you called committees dating. I will be stealing that. Oh, you're welcome. So with managing the board liaison, if they're reporting to the executive director, but then they're also in that liaison role, that can be challenging to be quite frank. It can be challenging because you have multiple bosses. You're in that kind of center of the band, then diagram between staff, but also having that relationship with the board. So if you're a volunteer, it's much more clear. You report to the board, you report to the board chair. So it's something you really need to be thinking about as you're structuring out this role in the organization. So I have an idea. You have to wait. I'm sorry. I told you, I was like, I know, you're all over this. Trains this person, like this person ready. Oh gosh, that is like the million dollar question right there. If you have someone who served in that role, I mean, obviously shadow that person, have some sort of an onboarding with responsibility handoff. But oftentimes it can be the board secretary if you're coming from more of that volunteer-based organization to more of a formalized structure. There's a lot of overlap in some of those duties. And so you might have that board secretary show how you've historically taken meeting minutes or planned for your meetings and then they can come on board lifting up some of those administrative tasks. So you have that continuity year after year. Okay, Julie. Yeah, your turn. Please, please, please let me go because I have a good question. Have you ever seen an, in essence, a job description for a board liaison that might list out some of these things that would be maybe used in addition to the CEO's administrative assistant or something like that? Or is that just that? I would say that there's kind of a gap in resources there. I think a board liaison role, especially that staff, you know, it's kind of being responsibilities that have been peeled off of other roles. And so we're kind of creating it sometimes. So I don't have a great job description. If you do, I'd love to see it. You might have to dust that off. I have a bunch for different clients that I've used, but you know, it's interesting because I was just curious because it is, like you said, it seems like we're still learning. It's relatively new. And then we're trying to figure out, well, who's gonna be doing what? And so I just wanted to ask that question because it just seems so, I guess because it is new. Because it is new. When did this position come about? I know yesterday we had a guest on, we were talking about interim executive succession planning and we kind of talked about the origin story of that. Do either of you know the origin story of a board liaison? I don't, I can't say I have seen an uptick in it and it's much older than pre-COVID. But in the past couple of years, it's become much more important because you have executive directors, you have CEOs, you have board chairs who are trying to run the conversation. They're trying to facilitate a meeting and they need that back end support which that board liaison role is so critical when you have folks typing in, emailing five minutes after the meeting starts saying, what's the Zoom link again? How do I log in? Yes. That board liaison can help with some of that meeting facilitation by taking off the non-mission critical work off the shoulders of the board chair or CEO. That's true. Well, you both have homework because I'd like to know the origin story of this. Yeah. You'll get one. You'll get totally delegated to Julia. She'll be more than happy to be with you. That would be like fun free time for me. It is. I know. It's gonna be how she spends her weekend. Yes. Let's talk about the power. So how much power does this person hold and what really exists in their role? I love this question. This is a question I get every week, every day, twice a day, all the time. I think if you're in that board liaison role, like I mentioned earlier, you're kind of in between staff, but you're also in between the board and your key stakeholders. So I think sometimes it can feel like, I don't have any power. I am stuck in this middle spot and I disagreed with that completely. I think the board liaison sets the tone for what your board meetings are going to be like and what it means to be a board member. Julia, you mentioned at the beginning that it can determine if someone even wants to join as a new board member. How organized are you? Is there a clear expectation around when things are going to be communicated? I know that I've joined organizations. I've been involved with committees where it became pretty clear pretty quickly that things were not super organized. And honestly, no matter how much I love the mission of an organization, how passionate I am, if I don't know when our meetings are, if I don't know the materials I need to review, if I don't get those materials and in time to review them, it doesn't make me want to participate in the board. So setting those expectations early can really determine your level of engagement for your board members. It's fascinating and I agree with you. I love the way you phrased that is that in essence, if you're struggling just to manage the process, how can you be a strategic thinker and leader for an organization? If you're not armed with the materials and it kind of goes back to what you said and I never had thought about this, Katie, that so many of our board members, they have all these other things that they do and then they don't get to their mission work until after their day is done, eight o'clock at night or whatever the weekend. It's really an interesting way to look at it. Yeah. And I think that's a good one. Katie and Julia, if you can talk a little bit about how we've seen this board liaison role change over the last three years. And I'm curious, this is a double-ended question here, I'm curious if we've seen an uptick of remote board liaison. So really providing this as a professional service in this virtual space now. Yes. Short answer, yes, the whole of that. So we've seen an increase, we've seen an uptick over these last couple of years and we've really seen this virtual space. Julia, what have you seen? Well, I've seen a lot of, now this is in my work, right? So this is different obviously than Katie's work but I know where I've been asked just to speak all over the country about this and that is it's kind of come from the executive assistant saying, I'm frustrated, I've been tasked to do this work and I observe what needs to go on and it is more than just putting on a little luncheon. I mean, sometimes it involves big time travel. I mean, especially if you're working with a national board and people come in and it is not just a super easy thing to do and therefore it requires more tools, more education and that seems to me where it's being driven, Jared. I mean, it's like we need to help how are we gonna get to this point? And then once you kind of get that structure it seems to me that part B is educating the board members on how to use this protocol, this technology, if you're using a board portal, it's kind of a reintroduction to, or an introduction I should say to a new way of operating as a board. Yeah, yes, definitely is. One of the things I've heard and maybe, Katie, you've heard this with some of your clients is, the board says they want this portal and then they don't actually use it, right? Let's just pull out that elephant that's been sitting in the room all day. How do you address that issue? Because I've heard it many times. Absolutely, I always start with why. Why did you originally think that you wanted a board portal? Were you missing information? Was it getting lost in email? Were people not showing up to your meetings? Were they showing up? But they hadn't read the agenda. So they weren't prepared for those conversations. I always start with the why. Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no, no, not the boards you work with, I'm sure. We're talking about other theoretical made-up boards. But I think really understanding why you wanted a board tool and then trying to figure out what's not working, is it a time commitment? People are afraid of the learning curve and I think that's common. I work with a lot of volunteer board members and they say, I have a full-time job. I don't have time to learn a new platform and I totally agree. Like, I don't want to learn something that's going to be challenging or feel like a second job. We want something that's easy, intuitive, I just need to log in. It's going to work with my existing systems. Jared, to piggyback off an earlier question, the things that I've seen as far as trends over the past couple of years, are we have more boards who are staying remote or maybe they're moving to hybrid? You know, the remote, I don't think folks were too sure about it to begin with. I wasn't quite sure how it was gonna work, but now it's a way that we can keep people engaged, right? It's easier to call into a board meeting between soccer games than it is to drive down to the community center and be there in person. So you can engage more people in a more meaningful way and meet them where they're at. And I think those two things really help you determine what direction you need to take. No, I think boardable last year, maybe even longer, created a video component, a video portal, is that right? Can you share about that? Yeah, so speaking of video meetings, we have our own spotlight video, which is a video conferencing tool that's included in all of our plans. So if you're wanting to have multiple meetings happening at once, maybe you don't have a Zoom subscription or it's a little expensive. Boardables built that all in to our portal already. So all of your tools, all of your systems are already in the same place. So you don't have to learn multiple things. You just need to know the one thing and guess what, we work with your email. So if you know how to email, you can use boardable. Oh, I know. So a lot of these words and the ladies seeing, I mean, it just seems so great. It's true. How long do you think it takes for an average board member to get comfortable with this? I mean, so many of our boards, they meet once a month, once a quarter. And then you're like, oh my God, what was the process? I mean, what did I sign up to do? So how does that, like how long was a realistic thing and not just for your product, but for other products that might be along those lines of a board portal, what do you think that we should plan on? Yeah, we have a really short onboarding period of boardable. So we recommend that most organizations, they can start using and start running really with boardable within 30 to 45 days. And that includes all the data input at the beginning, but then also part of that coaching and part of that training with your board members to get them excited about it as well. For a board member, I think you just need to go through a meeting. You just need to use it once for those light bulbs to go off and to click and say, oh, I see how this is gonna work. And I can see the value pretty quickly there. And I would say the majority of our members are pretty tech savvy. I don't wanna say all, but I just, I'm really saying that by way of technology advancements overall in the last two to three years, I also feel there's a lot of noise out there. I'm working with an organization that requires smart sheets, another one that requires like Monday, which is like a project management tool, right? And so there's all these different systems and platforms, but what I love about boardable and especially with Bloomerang and probably other CRMs is that integration piece that is so critical. And when systems can talk to one another and it has the seamless integration, it really seems like a no-brainer to use this to elevate your community. I think that's the biggest asset is that portable works with the tools you already have in place. So it's not about retraining people, it's really about helping them maximize what you're already doing. I love it. You know, it's been so interesting to talk to you and I'm, you know, for those of you watching the show, you might be, you might wonder, you know, do we pre-meet or do we pre-book and all these things? And we don't. I mean, our guests that come on are really brave because they don't know us for the most part. And then we jump all over them and in this case, we're like so excited and well, especially me. So, you know, Katie. Yeah, Katie, let's just put that out there, you know. I know, but it really, honest to goodness, it's such an important mentality to have, to talk about this. And I think that, you know, the board liaison piece, it really reverberates across the organization and I'm fascinated to tag this into committee work because I hadn't really thought of it this way, Katie, about how, you know, if you really can go back out to your community and garner the talent and the time of experts to serve on a mission or a task force or something, what an incredible tool to have this up and running and going. Because I would imagine you get better buy-in. People are like conscientious of their time and if they're not being treated with that respect, it's easy to walk away or be disengaged, as we call it. It's that first impression, it makes all the difference. Yeah, it's really, really interesting. Well, before we let you go, do you have anything that are coming down the pike that you see as, you know, the board liaison professionalism is moving forward? Can you give us some ideas of what you, what we might expect across the industry? I think we've touched on this briefly a little bit, but I am seeing this role being lifted up more and more in recent years. It's, I think I originally came to the understanding of a board liaison as being, you know, 15% of your role, 15% of your time was spent being an important liaison. And I think organizations are realizing that having someone dedicated to board standardization, that onboarding, meeting, meeting prep can be so critical for keeping your boarding gauge, but then also for keeping your staff members connected to the board and what they're doing. So I have seen more recently it move to more of a full-time position, which is exciting and more into that committee space as well, which that's where my heart is, so I like that. That's great. Katie, that's been fantastic. This conversation's been so worthwhile. We're extremely grateful to have your voice back on and the representation of boardable today. Thank you, of course, to Julia and myself. That's me up there too. But let's pull up Katie's contact because I feel that some people might wanna check out boardable, boardable.com. Again, Katie is fantastic, extremely knowledgeable as the Senior Customer Success Manager. They're lucky to have you, Katie, and we are lucky to have you in some of your time today. Thank you. Thank you, this was a ton of fun. Yeah, well, I hope you'll come back and get super nerdy with us again because it's been a joy and I know Julia's really gonna miss you. My new best friend, so I know, she's already, you know, booking her plans. Indiana's waiting for you. Go on down. We've gotta take this show to Indiana for sure. No, it's been great and honest to goodness. I know that I get so hyper about this topic but I really do believe in it. And so thank you for not thinking that we're too crazy into enjoying this with us because it's been a lot of fun, Katie. Hey, we wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors who are with us day in and day out, Blumerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller as a nonprofit nerd, Fundraising Academy, the nonprofit Atlas, nonprofit thought leader and staffing boutique. These are the companies that are with us every day. We are now in our third year of broadcasting which is mind-blowing in itself. I think, Jared, you and I need a board liaison. We need something, maybe therapy, but a board liaison we can start. Let's start there. I'm thinking that we need to do that. We could call him a show liaison. Yes, I love it. Katie, we're gonna call you. I love it. Well, this has been great. As we end every episode, we want to remind everyone and I think and ourselves and all those board liaisons out there, stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.