Dear Marilyn and Listers,

Most small and medium-sized museum boards with whom I work have rotating terms for board members.  Ideally, you would want about 1/3 of your members to rotate off at a time so that the majority of the board are "old" members who have an idea about what is expected and how to accomplish things.    Usually a term of 3 years is best.   Members of the Executive Committee, however, may have a different term length, (e.g., 4 years) or be required to serve in a series of offices such as holding a term as Vice President prior to being elected President.  Also it may be a good idea to have the outgoing President serve on the Executive Committee (ex officio -- non-voting) for a year until the new president gets his/her wings).

Even "good" board members should rotate on and off due to the fact that people's personalities change and power corrupts!   You also want to have policies and procedures that are fair and consistent so that people will want to serve on your board and so that you attract community-minded, actualizing board members (as opposed to attracting self-promoting, opportunistic, or laissez-faire types who only care about resume building).

The "good" board members can be retained as committee chairs, as volunteer fund-raisers on the development committee, or they can serve a series of terms (2 at most before they rotate off to do something else).

The reason rotation is a good idea is that it theoretically keeps the board working as a whole, rather than having it be dominated by one or two extremely powerful people who may not act in the interests of the museum.

You may wish to take AAM's seminar for CEO's on governance.  I did and it was well worth the tuition and time.   Also, the Nonprofit Center in Washington D.C. prints good publications
on the "how-to" of nonprofit governance.

Cordially,

Pamela Sezgin

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