not all non-profit "agencies" are equal and alike...

think about it - pick a non-profit like the heart association ... it's pretty clear that there's a staff and it manages the day to day activities towards achieving annual and longer range organizational goals and there's a board of directors and its pretty clear what their roles are ... and there are pretty clear guidelines on who does what for the most part ... or even what the relationship is between the board and the executive director ...

but what about teeny-tiny issue-based non-profits like a tcask?

i mean, it's just not that easy because, well, in human resource terms we are so few and so are our fiscal and material resources ...

and issue based non-profits, particularly in their youth, almost always have activist board members and here's where the confusion can really creep in - transitional growth periods ...

consider, in the early days an organization like tcask can be (was) an all volunteer organization ... if the board (or in tcask's case steering committee) members didn't also do the work of the organization then, well, nothing would get done! job roles are irrelevant in that context - division of labor amongst board members is what matters ...

but if you are fortunate enough to survive this lean period and hire staff then the role of board members should begin to narrow and if your staff grows to 2 and beyond the necessity to shift into more traditional roles becomes yet another survival imperative ...

but is that easy??? heck no - just ask the american male who thirty years ago in his 40's received the word from his wife that a joint checking account was an idea whose time had come!

change is hard ... letting go of learned behaviors is hard ... growth and success are, paradoxically to some, hard to manage...

where at one moment you may have been wearing carmen miranda's fruit basket as a hat you may need to wear something more sensible, more focused, more traditional in order to get er' done in a way that creates the most opportunity for success...

knowing not only what hats there are but when to wear each one and to what end is quite a challenge ... but with an approach embracing flexibility and honest communication change can open doors to realizing the art of the impossible ...

like abolishing the death penalty in tennessee ...

<3