Shouldn’t a good organization provide a committee chair with a graceful way to exit within a reasonable time frame?

Most of our organizations are highly dependent on the contributions of skilled and passionate individuals, and our lives would be much poorer without this. The surveys of giving and volunteering show that a high percentage of volunteer hours is contributed by a relatively small percentage of Canadians. Also, these people are often among the best donors. Making it easy for them to change how they volunteer, to take time outs, and to maintain good relationships with their organizations, should just be common sense.

The UK standards are more than I could find in Canadian codes for managers of volunteer resources.

To perform to the standard you need to:

1. Ensure volunteers understand what they need to do if they wish to change their role and contribution to your organization.
2. Invite volunteers to discuss their contribution to the organization, whenever there are indications that their current role is no longer appropriate.
3. Find appropriate alternative placements for volunteers whose current role is no longer appropriate wherever possible.
4. Invite volunteers who are concluding their volunteering agreement to provide feedback on their experience of volunteering.
5. Thank volunteers for their contribution to your organization and agree the nature of the relationship they wish to have with your organization after their agreement is concluded.

While the concept of grace is not explicit, it is clearly a responsibility of the organization to help volunteers depart either when they wish or when their continued service is no longer needed or appropriate.

However, such standards are written primarily for specialists in volunteer management. Often, board and committee volunteering is not within the scope of their work, and in small organizations there may be no such professional. Unfortunately, there may not even be a single person with overall responsibility for volunteer management.

Nonprofit board of directors and committee term limits

Many bylaws are explicit about one type of volunteer – the board members. There are usually both term limits and a maximum number of terms or maximum length of continuous service. This allows directors to exit gracefully when they reach their maximum length of service, and leaves an opening for them to stay involved in other ways.

For committee members who are not also board members, term limits are rare. Organizations do not want to lose hardworking committee members, even if that sometimes means a lack of new ideas and resentment from others that they cannot get on the committee of their choice. Sometimes committee members feel stuck on a committee without a chance to grow and develop new skills. Ask anyone with financial expertise how hard it can be to move off the finance or audit committee into marketing or special events instead!

If the committee reports to the board, usually the board appoints the committee chair, or lets the committee members choose their own chair. The members may also be appointed by the board or by organizations they represent on the committee, or may be recruited by the committee chair. You can see how this makes a difference to who is responsible for succession planning. If the board makes the appointment, the board is clearly responsible for finding a replacement, though most boards hope that departing committee chairs recommend a replacement. If the members elect their own chair, the chair can simply declare a desire to step down and ask that a new election be scheduled. Again, the members will hope the outgoing chair has found a successor. And the committee chair is responsible for identifying potential future chairs among the members, or recruiting new ones with such potential, and getting them involved enough that they feel ready to step in.

If the committee reports to a staff member, as operational committees usually should if there are senior staff, then the staff member, and ultimately the executive director, is responsible for a replacement. Again, the departing chair should make a recommendation if at all possible.

In both cases, it is desirable to have the departing and incoming chair coordinate the transition and share information so results are not adversely affected.

The bigger picture: The entire board of directors, not the individual

While I have no details about the situation you inquire about, I suspect a long-time valuable volunteer has become burnt out. Often, for lack of others to do the work, they stay on after feeling burnt out but are no longer as effective. They may no longer meet all commitments, or make positive contributions in the meetings. So they can go from highly valued to being perceived as a negative force needing to be removed.

However, the problem may be much, much larger than one individual. The organization may not be sure what it is trying to accomplish, or what values to model, or how to incorporate volunteers into their work. That makes attracting and retaining volunteers very difficult. An outdated committee structure won’t help either. The board and senior staff members would need to look at the big picture; perhaps you can encourage them to do that.

Since 1992, Jane Garthson has dedicated her consulting and training business to creating better futures for our communities and organizations through values-based leadership. She is a respected international voice on governance, strategic thinking and ethics. Jane can be reached at jane@garthsonleadership.ca.

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