5 Questions, 5 Minutes:
Board service as you experience it
(a reader survey)

From time to time, we like to survey our readers on issues of nonprofit leadership and governance. In this month's short survey, we invite your opinions on board service as you actually experience it.

Our favorite question pertains to the elephant in the room, but responses to the others should prove provocative as well.

Your responses are both anonymous and confidential. We'll publish a summary of results in next month's smorgasBoard.

Ray G. White, Jr. is the Chairman of the Board of Prevent Child Abuse Georgia, Georgia's only statewide nonprofit committed to preventing child abuse and neglect in all forms.

Ray has served on the PCA Georgia board since 2003, but has been a supporter since the mid 1990s. Click the link below for more about a BoardChampion whose colleagues describe him as "indispensable."

New board assignment:
Goodwill Industries

Goodwill Industries of North Georgia, among the largest such organizations in the South, has one goal: The development and operation of high-impact social services that change lives by putting people to work.

Goodwill Industries of North Georgia has a broad impact. In 2005, for example, the organization

• Served over 1.6 million shoppers in its 16 stores
• Served nearly a million donors in its 42 donation centers and stores
• Provided job-training and placement assistance to over 10,000 people
• Placed almost 2500 individuals in jobs with an average hourly wage of $8.86.

Committed to having the strongest board possible, Goodwill Industries has retained BoardWalk Consulting to assist in a board enrichment project focused on building the next generation of Goodwill's leaders from the community.

New planning assignment:
Atlanta Habitat for Humanity

The Atlanta affiliate of Habitat for Humanity leverages the efforts of 35 staffers and over 15,000 volunteers in its mission to help low-income Atlanta families achieve the American dream of homeownership.

Atlanta Habitat has retained BoardWalk Consulting to conduct a strategic planning assignment with its board, staff and principal stakeholders to address and evaluate several significant opportunities available to Habitat's mission in the greater Metropolitan Atlanta area.

BoardWalk is pleased to be partnering with Jennifer Bush of Level Smart Consulting in the planning and execution of this engagement.

In hindsight, this casting call seems obvious: Theater of the Stars, a nonprofit now in its 55th season as a leading producer of regional theater, wanted to appoint its first-ever Director of Development.

Melaine Bennett, a lifelong theater-lover now based at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California, had developed an affinity for the cultural opportunities in the South while studying for her MFA degree with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. After a short rehearsal season, this show is ready to go on the road!

New placement
Harvest Foundation names
Rich Killingsworth
as Executive Director

A nationally known proponent of "placemaking" (that is, creating communities that encourage healthy lifestyles) has been named Executive Director of The Harvest Foundation, a $200-million foundation based in Martinsville, Virginia.

Rich Killingsworth, program director of the Ruth Mott Foundation, a similar-sized foundation in Flint, Michigan, is best known for his tenure as National Director of Active Living by Design, a North Carolina-based program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focused on innovative approaches to increase physical activity through community design, public policies and communications strategies.

New placement:
Connie Steward selected as first
VP for Organizational Development at
Habitat for Humanity International

Habitat for Humanity, the world's largest ecumenical Christian housing ministry, has named Connie Steward its global head of Organizational Learning and Development.

Connie has worked for over 25 years in the areas of leadership, learning and organizational change with organizations in Latin America, Asia, Europe, Canada and the U.S., all major Habitat markets. A native of Minnesota who was residing in Boston when BoardWalk called, Connie is not accustomed to daffodils blooming in February!

New placement:
Tom Taylor approved as
Deputy Executive Director for Mission for
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

The General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has unanimously confirmed the appointment of the Rev. Tom Taylor as the church's Deputy Executive Director for Mission. Since 2002, Tom has been the pastor of the 1,400-member Glenkirk Presbyterian Church in Glendora, CA. He and his family are relocating to the church's corporate offices in Louisville.

Tom will serve as a key deputy to Linda Valentine, the recently elected Executive Director of the General Assembly Council and herself the result of a BoardWalk search. Linda praised Tom as “intelligent, creative and deeply committed to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” noting that he "really stood out [during the search] as someone who would articulate a theology of mission service that matches the realities in the church and world today.”

Families First
Search Mandate: Vice President for Resource Development
Status: Formal offer extended & accepted; announcement pending.
(view Leadership Profile))

Presbyterian Church
Search Mandate: Deputy E.D. for Communications and Funds Development
Status: Client has met full slate of candidates; decision pending.
(view Leadership Profile)

R. Howard Dobbs, Jr. Foundation
Search Mandate: President
Status: Client has met full slate of candidates; decision pending.
(view Leadership Profile)

Time Warner
Mandate:Board Matching
Status: Initial interviews conducted or scheduled with ~25 Time Warner executives and managers; board opportunities currently being assessed.

United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta
Search Mandate: President
Status: Client has met full slate of candidates; decision pending.
(view Leadership Profile)

Mandate: Board enrichment project
Status: Ongoing

About smorgasBoard

smorgasBoard ^SM is the mostly-monthly newsletter of BoardWalk Consulting. Contents © 2006 by BoardWalk Consulting LLC. Dissemination and reproduction permitted with attribution to BoardWalk Consulting; all other rights reserved.

E-mail: sam@boardwalkconsulting.com
Telephone: 404-BoardWalk (404-262-7392)
On the Web: http://www.BoardWalkConsulting.com