What We Do

Before governance, before planning, before oversight, your board must create a sense of vital engagement- a connectedness and commitment to your community.  We work with you to create a culture of belonging, unique to your organization, that enables your board to partner with the whole organization in critical and difficult conversations for equity, inclusion, strategy, and purpose.

We spend time discovering who you are with personal interviews, reviewing your public face, inner workings,  and then we pull your board and staff together to create your foundational community.  At this retreat we lead you through the Structure of Belonging developed by Peter Block to design agreements that inculcate trust, room for dissent, and space for your gifts. Your agreements  will evolve over time, but you can always be centered in your community.

Good governance also means governance that is connected to your values and your purpose.  Traditional nonprofit board governance is based in patriarchal assumptions and will bar a culture from inclusivity, trust, and equity.  We ask bold questions about how your governance system can innovate to move your purpose forward while maintaining the culture you have defined. Culture first, then systems.

Your board will also take the BoardSource Board Assessment which is benchmarked against hundreds of boards across the country.  This will give you annual feedback to determine if you are making impact in the areas of priority. 

If 2020 taught us anything about managing a nonprofit, it taught us that aspects of traditional strategic planning are not adequate to meet the changes and challenges that happen to organizations. The Hive Collective uses a strategic planning process with both direction and flexibility. We start with one assumption: nothing is certain. Planning for uncertainty means maintaining multiple, simultaneous, and continuous cycles of iteration. There is no static plan, there is only planning.

The Hive Collective’s Adaptive Business Planning will help your team and your organization make more impact by creating a system that keeps you connected, continually collecting information, and adjusting or adapting your plans to meet the emerging needs.  You will have a dynamic process that we help you design with financial modeling that so that you can forecast multiple futures. 

We know that aligning your policies and systems with your culture, in addition to the daily governance maintenance, is overwhelming. After interviewing over 50 nonprofit leaders, we know that implementation after a consultant exits is a big part of what is holding good governance back. To extend the arms of the executive team, we offer a project management model for keeping your board on track.    Outsourcing governance support can allow your executive team more time to focus on the pressing issues of programs, fundraising, and managing staff.

Here are a few things we would love to take off your plate:

• Create tools so your unique Board community and culture is maintained.
• Identify and provide drafts of the next policies you need
• Provide you with draft policies for the board to consider
• Co-design your agendas to ensure maximum benefit of your board’s time,
• Co-design and/or deliver your annual board orientation
• Create and review Committee Charters
• Coach Committee Chairs
• Provide guides and standards for board members as needed
• Manage and/or coach your board for maximum fundraising