TIME FOR A CHILDREN'S MOVEMENT
Wingspread Journal, Winter 1997

GETTING YOUTH ON BOARD

by Tim Burke

Young people want a greater voice in their communities, yet traditional board membership can be stifling. A Wingspread conference develops ground rules for recruiting and using youth on boards.

Andre Olton lays it on the line.

"I'm a strong advocate of using young people as service providers. But my experience with youth on boards of directors is not good."

Olton directs Walkers Point Youth and Family Center in Milwaukee, Wis., and is probably fairly typical of many youth workers when it comes to youth participation in management. They are keen to apply the energies of youth but believe that forcing the pace of their involvement with what can be boring stuff is inappropriate.

Indeed, a May 1994 survey of 1,200 nonprofits by the Center for Non-Profit Boards failed to turn up any board members under the age of 21.

But there are those who feel that, done correctly, not only do youth gain leadership skills and experience from sitting on boards, but boards benefit from their creative thinking, direct questions, and healthy lack of reverence for tradition.

Anne Hoover, director of Community Partnerships with Youth, (CPY), in Fort Wayne, Ind., sees a growing ambition among young people that reminds her of the women's movement. "Maybe what's happening is what happened to women. They looked around and said 'Wait a minute. I'm a part of this country. I should have a say in how it is run.'"

With funding from the Lilly Endowment, CPY has produced two extensive training packages intended to prepare young people for board membership. Lilly, the nation's fourth largest philanthropic fund, has been increasingly concerned about the lack of committed volunteers coming forward to sit on the boards of the non-profit organizations it finances.

The key message from CPY is that, as Andre Olton and others have learned, young people cannot be plopped on a board and expected to perform. So the training packages concentrate on the notion of trusteeship ... and practical training skills: how boards operate, rules of meetings, how motions are tabled, fundraising, public relations and so on.

"I believe we do young people no favors if we don't expose them to the way things are done," says Hoover. "Some of these things are going to have to change and these kids are going to change them, but for now they need to know the routine."

Training young people is only part of a complicated equation for creating successful governance. If an organization doesn't really want to empower young people, youth board members will always be cosmetic. "Just because a person serves on committees or attends meetings does not mean that he or she influences decision making," says Barry Checkoway of the University of Michigan in a recent paper on involving young people in neighborhood development.

Boards need to change if youth involvement is to become widespread. Those who promote youth governance agree that done badly it is a waste of everyone's time. To address this problem, 40 young activists and advocates met at Wingspread to develop policy and practice leading to successful youth membership on boards.

The conference developed groundrules for a youth-friendly board, which more or less follow the 14 points developed by Youth on Board, a Massachusetts-based group which supports young board members. Many of these points suggest significant changes in current practice as well as resource allocation. Thus, Youth on Board's first priority is to check motivation and ensure commitment to the notion of youth as decision makers.

Youth involvement should be institutionalized through written policies clarifying ground rules, job descriptions, voting rights, and procedural measures. This should imply a thorough recruitment process, with interviews and letters of appointment, feeding into an orientation and training program that applies to adults as well as young people. Exit interviews for those leaving the board should also be standard.

Ongoing support to help youth members prepare and evaluate meetings is seen as a key to retention. "Board buddies," mentors, and local and regional networks of young board members are all recommended.

"Igniting Youth Governance" was sponsored by Youth on Board of YouthBuild USA, Community Partnerships with Youth, and The Johnson Foundation.

This article was excerpted from Youth Today, Vol. 5, No. 4, July/August 1996, page 32, a publication of the America Youth Work Center, 1200 17th St., 4th Floor, NW, Washington D.C.