This 20-year-old board training program just discovered what it does best

Good golly, it’s hard out there for small nonprofit boards.

Tapping into large networks and accessing high caliber talent is no easy feat — nor is getting your entire board of directors aligned with your strategy.

The Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia has been tackling the dilemma for 20 years by offering Business on Board, a board training and leadership development program for folks in business. But after two decades, Business and Technology Services Director Eileen Cunniffe said the program is just discovering how to maximize its impact.

The program was developed to serve as a bridge between arts and culture nonprofits and the business world by training corporate employees in governance and leadership by placing them on small nonprofit boards as observers. Cunniffe said the program has churned out 700 graduates, most of whom have gone on to join the boards they observed.

“If you work for a big company, or any kind of a company really, you know your silo, your function and your area of expertise, but you don’t necessarily get to sit in the room with the management team when all the decisions and trade-offs are being made,” Cunniffe said. “You don’t get to understand how the pieces are put together and what the ripple effects of a decision are across an entire organization.”

That’s the kind of experience the program wants graduates to bring back to the companies they work for — and in turn, those companies can choose to use the program as a form of corporate social responsibility.

But the program, as it turns out, can offer more than that.

Business on Board started corralling current board members at nonprofits into the program five years ago. It was one small tweak in programming that has made a world of difference.

“What those folks have brought to the program, as well as what they’ve taken from it, has had an exponential impact on the sector and on the community,” Cunniffe said. “Current board members have not had the benefit of board governance training — but they have wisdom, they have questions, they have examples, they challenge our faculty and they encourage new people in the class.”

The magic really happens, though, when someone from the business world observes a board that also has a current board member in the same class. It’s the perfect bridge, Cunniffe said, and it allows the two to work together to put what they’ve learned into action.

A few years ago, Cunniffe said Business on Board struggled to enroll 30 members. Last year’s program enrolled 58. Not all members will sit on boards. Cunniffe said it’s not a failure — the graduates just aren’t ready to take on the job just yet.

“I used to think that was a failure, but I don’t think that anymore,” she said. “What we do see over time is a lot of those people come back to us in a year or two and say, ‘OK, I’m ready now,’ and we’re happy to place them on a board later.”

As polarized as they are perceived to be, Cunniffe said there’s not much difference between leading a nonprofit and leading a business — and Business on Board is leveraging that similarity to bridge the divide between the two sectors.

“You really get to understand the big picture of what it takes,” she said. “You have to think about a lot of the same pieces.”