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July 20, 2023 Opinion

Viewpoint: Raising businesses and communities higher: The value of nonprofit board service

By Katherine Garrahan

When businesses are looking for new ways to grow, an effective – and often overlooked – strategy is to help a local nonprofit organization. Empowering nonprofits to rise enables a whole community to do the same. According to the National Council of Nonprofits, these organizations not only spend almost $2 trillion annually, but they ignite further economic expansion.

Photo | Courtesy of Bowditch & Dewey
Katherine Garrahan, a partner at Worcester law firm Bowditch & Dewey, is a real estate attorney focused on helping nonprofit, commercial, and institutional clients in Central and MetroWest Massachusetts. Contact her at kgarrahan@bowditch.com.

Just think about the local youth sports leagues, museums, performing arts, and educational organizations that attract visitors, bring together families, spur spending on restaurants and other attractions, improve everyone’s quality of life, and entice people to rent, purchase a home, or start a new business here. Nonprofit support floats all boats.

But in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, nonprofits don’t just need sponsors. Some literally need a restart they can only achieve with new board members. That’s because many nonprofits – especially smaller ones – depend on working boards to advance their missions. Beginning with incorporation, they require help with oversight, governance, fundraising, and a myriad of other critical initiatives. During the pandemic, their pipeline of potential board members shrank, and they’re still catching up. Local professionals are a vital source of expertise.

My law firm, Bowditch & Dewey, feels so strongly about this issue the firm helped launch a Nonprofit Board Matching Program for the Foundation for MetroWest. Through surveys, the foundation had discovered its nonprofit partners’ No. 1 need – outside of money – was board members. Bowditch, too, had found many of our attorneys were eager to join nonprofit boards, but didn’t know how to find the ones aligning with their values and skills. As long-time foundation sponsors, this launch was the most impactful chapter in the relationship thus far.

What has this experience confirmed? Businesses benefit from board roles at least as much as nonprofits do for several reasons:

  • Recruitment and retention: When organizations encourage meaningful nonprofit involvement, they demonstrate they care about employees’ growth and fulfillment. That is a powerful way to draw and keep talent.
  • Professional development: Rolling up their sleeves on a board not only exposes team members to the importance of nonprofits, it introduces them to new approaches and ideas from others.
  • Expanding networks: There is no better way for rising stars to build their book of business than to grow their professional networks. Board memberships enable them to demonstrate their expertise and build trust, both of which are important for referral generation.
  • Capstone on a distinguished career: Successful leaders, too, gain satisfaction from giving back.
  • Exposure to a diversity of backgrounds and ideas: Creativity is central to effective business problem solving, and teaming with people with diverse backgrounds fosters that quality. Companies benefit from it when their colleagues return to the office.
  • Opportunities to enlarge their communities, and make friends, with others who want to have an impact.

Indeed, board membership is a quadruple win, for the individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and communities they collectively raise up. 

Katherine Garrahan, a partner at Worcester law firm Bowditch & Dewey, is a real estate attorney focused on helping nonprofit, commercial, and institutional clients in Central and MetroWest Massachusetts. Contact her at kgarrahan@bowditch.com.
 

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