Boards Boundaries and Burnout: Say Yes to the Right Nonprofit and No to the Rest

Welcome to Your Business, Accelerated! Digitally remastered with AI, Your Business, Accelerated! is the go-to podcast for entrepreneurs ready to scale smart. Hosted by Attorney Shaune B. Arnold, it delivers strategic business insights, legal frameworks, and real-world solutions to help you operate with clarity and confidence. Get actionable guidance to protect, grow, and optimize your business…one smart move at a time.

Professionals are often invited to join nonprofit boards—but is it always a good idea? In this eye-opening episode, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold shares real-world advice on protecting your time, energy, and reputation while serving. Learn when to say yes, how to say no, and why boundaries are essential. 

Transcript

Hello, everyone …and welcome once again to your business accelerated. I am your host. Attorney Shaune B Arnold, I'm excited to be with you.

I want to make sure that you're aware I'm a business attorney, in Los Angeles, California, transactions only. I don't do any litigation. I just do transactions.

Because I am a California business attorney, that means the legal issues we discuss on your business accelerated are discussed from the point of view of a California business attorney. If you live somewhere else, you need to take this discussion to an attorney in your jurisdiction, so that attorney can tell you if there is a difference in the law where you live and where I live.

I also have another podcast that I’d love for you to hear, called LegalBiz Café. Here, on your business accelerated, we talk about serious business issues that can tank your business overnight. Over there, on LegalBiz Cafe we deal with your mindset as the entrepreneur. I comfort you about things that make your business go “bump” in the night and make you want to suck your thumb, rather than build your business. When you listen to LegalBiz Café and Your Business Accelerated, you have what you need to build your business and your confidence.

So, tonight we are going to tonight talk about that board of directors question. Every successful professional gets asked probably a couple of times a year to join the board of a nonprofit. And I know you probably feel real squeamish when it happens, or even worse, you always say yes, and you wind up running from pillar to post, not knowing how to serve everybody.

In the worst case scenario, maybe you have kind of become a board member in absentia and maybe you slid away but didn't quite know how to end the relationship the right way, or didn't know how to say no in the first place.

We’re going to talk about all these issues tonight. We are going to talk about volunteering our services as professionals. And you know, I want to make a distinction right up front in this subject matter, that I'm really not talking about throwing your shoulder to the wheel at, say, an American Cancer Society Relay for Life, where you're helping to set up tables, or you're helping with registration or something like that. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about when you are giving your professional services, your insight, your time, your wisdom, things that you normally get paid for. When you give away your professional services to a nonprofit, in the name of your company, they should be consulting services.

When do you run from being on a Board? You call it quits when you get the sense that maybe they're asking too much, or you just don't have the time or the resources to give what they really need. Of course, you must leave if you sense regulatory compliance issues. If bad things have already happened, consider whether you need to report the situation to the authorities. You may want to consult with an attorney with expertise in your industry if you have questions.

So, just as a threshold matter, you want to be really careful about the boards that you join. You want to be really careful about what services and resources you give to them and what potential liability you may be opening yourself up to.

You also want to make sure that you are able to under-promise and over-deliver when you do say yes to being on a nonprofit board. Unlike your regular client relationship, when you are giving your professional services to a nonprofit organization, you want to make sure that you are being recognized and highly regarded for what you're doing because, well, for a lot of reasons…

Number one, because of the potential liability issue, you want to get the accolades for what you're throwing in, but you also want to make sure that they're not sucking you dry. Some nonprofits will do that.

I have some tips and guidelines for you. If you're taking notes, this would be a great time to start. These are some things that I have found useful in considering whether or not to actually join the board of a nonprofit organization and/or enter into a pro bono relationship with them, because that really is what you're doing when you're joining that board.

The first thing that I want you to consider is whether you can really commit the total amount of time that's required by the promise that you made and by the expectations of the organization. If they know that you have a particular expertise and you join that board in order to provide that expertise to them, then you need to be able to provide the full breadth of the expertise to that organization. It's very important.

You want to make sure that you have the time and that you're able to treat them just like a normal client. Because, you know, there are people on that board of directors, and that the entity will come in contact with, that are going to find out who you are, and so you're going to need to do a stellar job, even if it's free. Just be sure you understand what you're getting into.

Remember, you don't want to work with an entity that is an energy vampire, attaching itself to you as a professional. You want to be watchful for organizations that say to you, oh, it's just going to be a few quarterly meetings, you don't really have to do anything. And then all of a sudden they want you to get on this committee. They want you to get on that committee. They need your professional expertise, to do blah, blah, blah. And the next thing you know, you have a part-time job.

You need to be able to discern when to cut it off, when to say no, when to say you don't have the time, when to say, “You know, I would love to be able to provide everything you need for free, but I just can't.

And so these things that are extra, you're going to need to pay for, and I'm willing to actually step out of the circle and let all of you discuss it alone, so that it's not a question of my trying to railroad my services through a nonprofit, which, of course, is very questionable.”

You want to make sure that you recuse yourself from any conversations about you providing professional goods or services to a nonprofit on which you are a participant. When you sit on the board, be very careful about that.

The next tip for you this evening is to be aware whether the group asking you to participate is really involved in a public good, or whether that group winds up, either in its mission, vision or deed, …working against your morals and standards. It does happen.

I'm aware of a nonprofit organization here in Los Angeles that, when it started, its purpose was to provide people who had been disenfranchised traditionally, opportunities to participate in loans that would get them houses. Well, this company was actually steering people into high interest loans. Even if the organization's clients actually had good credit, they were still being funneled into high interest loans.

To me, that was part of that whole mortgage scandal that went on a few years back that finally the bubble burst, and we all went down the tube. I found that I couldn't work with that organization, because these things were going on, and it wasn't in their mission, it wasn't in their vision statement, it was in their deeds. It was in how they actually carried out the plan for the company, in their day to day dealings with the public. The public was being steered into high interest loans, and I just couldn't I couldn't stomach that, so I had to step off that board.

So, ask yourself, is something happening within the organization that makes you feel uncomfortable? The word no is something that we typically learn when we're two. Boy oh, boy do we learn it when we're two!

The challenge is so many of us unlearn it because we want to please people, because we want to be liked by people, because we want to get along so that we can get our larger picture fulfilled, but we cannot sell the farm. Basically, that means you cannot run yourself into the ground or compromise your ,morals in order to get that client or to fulfill whatever that reason that had you get into bed with that organization in the first place.

If you find that things go south, get out. I would love for you to ask yourself if there is an impact or an outcome that's to be made with your professional involvement on this board of directors, and whether there is some way of thwarting that contribution. In other words, is there some political bent to this organization that's going to wind up frustrating your desires and your intentions such that you wind up spinning your wheels and working on an organization for 1-2 or 3, years, and this organization never goes anywhere and never gets anything done?

You want to avoid those kinds of organizations. You want to avoid being brought into 29 different committees when you join because you're giving away all of your expertise for nothing, and you're exhausting yourself.

So, you really want to compare or contrast all of these various stresses against the potential benefits that are available to you for being part of that board of directors. In other words, who else is on that board of directors, or who else does that organization touch that could really benefit you in a professional sense, or even in a personal sense?

Will you be sitting on the board with presidents of banks or someone like that? Or will you be giving reports to the Governor at a quarterly progress meeting? When I say boards, I mean, Reach up, reach high, reach into the public spectrum. There are probably not a lot of people like you on those boards, and they are probably looking for people like you.

Large organizations have committees at large. They have a public presence, and they're looking for people to participate. And quite often, they're so very myopic that they will actually have the nerve to say out loud, oh, we can't find anybody.

But there you are. The challenge is they really can't find you, because they really are so myopic. So if you find that this is an organization to which you can give the total time necessary in order to carry out the promises that you're making to them, and that you can participate in a way that's going to be able to let your contribution shine, ...and you're not dealing with politics that stymie you year after year after year, …and the group itself is really involved in a public good that warms your heart. Then I would say, definitely look into who else that organization can get you in front of.

There's no shame in that definitely look at the networking opportunities, because that's your benefit for giving away all of that service. I mean there is existential benefit, of course, but in terms of just marketplace benefits, that's your real benefit that you're going to get by participating on the board of a nonprofit.

Finally, folks, I want you to ask yourself whether the nature of that particular pro bono opportunity will appeal to a prospect or a client of yours, somebody that you're already doing business with, or somebody that you might want to do business with that might be impressed by the fact that you are participating in a project that's near and dear to their heart.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me today on this week’s episode of Your Business, Accelerated! I’m attorney Shaune B. Arnold. I invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. In all of those places, I’m known as S.H.A.U.N.E dot Arnold.

In the meantime, and in between time, I am, …as always, reminding you to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED to succeed.

I’ll see you right back here next week, on Your Business, Accelerated! ...Bye-bye, friends.