SPEAKER_04 3:49

Well, welcome to the ProLife Team podcast. Today I'm with Peggy, and today we're going to be learning about boards, executive directors, and the relationship between the two. Peggy, I know most people know who you are, but would you give us a short uh backstory on it on your connection with Heartbeat and boards? And then we'll just dive right into the board executive director uh topic.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Jacob. Well, I'm my name is Peggy Harchhorn, and I am now the president emeritus of Heartbeat International. They've given me that very wonderful title because I am no longer president, CEO, or what you might call an executive director anymore, although I did have that role with Heartbeat for I think about 15 years. And I was also chair of the board. I just recently retired from nine years, three three-year terms as chair of the board. But I was also chair of the board before I became the president. So uh I think I've been chair of the board for about 15 years and president for more than 15 years. So anyway, I've I've had both roles as the chief staff person and the head of the board. And so this is a very, very special topic to me, the relationship between the chief staff person, the CEO or executive director, whatever you happen to call that person, or perhaps president, and the board and the chair of the board particularly. So anyway, but I I came into the pregnancy help movement, really. Uh the first thing my husband and I started to do uh after we became uh involved in Right to Life after 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision, was starting to house pregnant girls. And uh we didn't even know there were pregnancy centers existing at that point, but there were. The first pregnancy center started forming around 1969, 1970, and then Heartbeat was founded in 1971, called Alternatives to Abortion International. We finally found out about that wonderful organization when we were housing pregnant girls and seeing what their needs were. So my husband and I started the first pregnancy help organization, center focused on crisis intervention in Columbus, Ohio, when and opened our doors on January 22nd, 1981. So at that point, I was kind of founder, chair of the board. I never became executive director of that particular center. I stayed as a board chair and board member until, gosh, I was I think maybe 13 or 14, 15 years there uh in that role. But uh I had learned on the job what it was like to be uh a board member and a board chair and how to work with executive directors, and then became an executive director myself when I became the president of Heartbeat in 93. So anyway, there's the kind of the short story.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

That's great. Yes, so Peggy, tell us uh in your from your viewpoint or from what you know, what makes you know how how do you define the role of the board and then how do you define the role of the executive director or president?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

The role of the board, I actually wrote the board manual for Heartbeat International. I think the first edition was 2008, and and I just finished revising it. Uh and the basics have remained the same. What is a board? Uh what are the responsibilities of the board, and what are the jobs of board members? And and I came to realize in working with many pregnancy centers when I became president of Heartbeat, because Heartbeat, of course, was talking to pregnancy centers and board members and and trying to provide the teaching and training that they needed to do their jobs in an even better way. And I came to realize that I I thought board members, all the boards that I met and the board members that I worked with just wonderful, wonderful people who had a passion for the mission. But generally, uh it was almost universally true that they did not understand what the role of the board was as compared to the role of the executive director. And uh, you know, they they really didn't know what jobs they were supposed to be doing. So there was a lot of dysfunction, a lot of relationship problems sometimes between executive directors and board members and boards. So writing a good board member, a good board manual, I should say, and actually before this one that now Heartbeat uses called Governing Essentials that I wrote in 2008, I did an earlier board manual. I think probably I wrote it in about 1994. The 10 responsibilities of a governing board. So the responsibilities are are different than the jobs. And the and so you can have a responsibility, for instance, a responsibility to set the goals for the organization. That's one of the important responsibilities of a board. But that's going to look different at different times in your development as an organization. Usually when when nonprofits start, at pregnancy centers particularly, they don't start with a paid staff, they start with a group of volunteers who who have the call, believe that God's calling them to open a pregnancy center. And uh but they don't necessarily immediately have an executive director or a president or a CEO. They're they are the people that have founded the organization and they're doing all the jobs. That's the founding working board. So yes, they have the responsibility of setting the goals, which would be the mission and the vision of the organization, but that's going to look a lot different if they are doing it at a stage of development other than the very beginning, at the founding working board. There, those members are going to be doing that, but they're also going to be doing the jobs that later a paid staff would do. For instance, if one of your goals, your mission is to reach as many women as possible in in your community and provide the resources they need so that they can always choose life in their pregnancy. All right, let's say that's your mission. Yes, a founding working board will decide that this is our mission. All right, they've established that as the goal. But are they going to be the ones opening the actual center doors and and walking with the women who come in? Are they going to be the ones answering the phones, uh setting the appointments, you know, learning how to work with these women, providing the resources they need. In the beginning, they probably will be. So they're doing jobs of what later will become staff members, as well as having their board roll. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah. And then as they grow and develop, of course, they realize that we gonna we're going to need a paid person, you know, to to manage all of the the blessings that the Lord is bringing, all the women that the Lord is is bringing to us. And we need to uh have a different type of office, perhaps, a different kind of hotline system. We're we're getting too big for uh just an all-volunteer group. We need a paid staff and someone to be in charge of that staff. All right, but the board member still has the governing role. The board member still is uh in their responsibility, but they need to look at the goal. All right. They develop the goal, but they also have to evaluate are we achieving the goal? Are we seeing as many women as possible in this community and providing them, are we really providing them the resources they need so that they can always choose life for their baby? Are we doing that? You know, they're assessing as well as uh setting the goal, but they may not be doing the actual job anymore of meeting and talking to the women. So, but at either stage, at the working board stage or at the governing board stage later on, when they've got a staff, they still have to work as a team together. And the very best and most effective pregnancy help organizations, when we see them at Heartbeat International, it's clear that they've got a board that understands their role, their responsibility, and they've got a staff that understands their role and responsibility. And and they're respecting that of each other, you know, and expecting that everybody's gonna be doing the jobs that that they need to do. And when they work together as a great team, that's when you really have a lot of power in that organization. But it will look different at different stages of development. When it first opens up that pregnancy center will look very different than what it may look like in terms of its structure, its board and its staff ten years later or twenty years later. We have affiliates, Jacob, who have been there fifty years. They they've had their 50th anniversary already. So uh you can imagine too, for organizations that are have that kind of longevity, they don't just have one trajectory of growth and development. They may need to regroup and reform at some place in their history. You know, things have changed a lot. Maybe they see that our original goal is needs to be moderated in some way, needs to be revised. We need to revamp what we're doing. That happened in our movement in the 90s in a dramatic way when ultrasound first came in. All right, so using the ultrasound as a way to help a mom bond with her baby and understand if she does have a viable ute in pregnancy, that really changed things uh in the way that that pregnancy centers were structured, st uh structured, and they had to really have a medical director at that point, which we hadn't had necessarily before. And so you you reform and revise along the way, and uh and sometimes you even restart an organization. You may need to change names. Harvey did, by the way. We were called Alternatives to Abortion International when we were first formed. And then the board decided that at some point in our history, it was 1993, we were getting feedback from uh when we were setting up a conference sometimes in a city. Uh a hotel would say to us, Well, alternatives to abortion. I hope we're not gonna have demonstrators in front of the hotel when you're here. And and we began to get people wondering, you know, it was a little confusing to them. And they were a little afraid of having that name abortion in our in our in our our name, having that title. So I reluctantly realized, you know, we need to change our name. We changed it to Heartbeat International. That changed that changed a lot about uh who we were and how we marketed ourselves and so forth and so on. So you'll need to your your trajectory of growth is not always going to be without some major changes along the way. So the board needs to be uh aware of that. The staff, you have to be working together through those difficult periods and get your feet on the ground again, and then you begin growing and developing in the direction that the Lord's leading you to. So but teamwork is absolutely essential.

SPEAKER_04 14:44

Wow. Such a good backstory and connection to this this topic. This is really good, Peggy. So so you wrote a book about governing essentials. And so what inspired you to write a book for boards? Was it did you see did you see the need in the prixyclinic space? And you know, the need was so great that a book was needed, or was it because you were doing so much work that you realized, well, I should write a book because I'm doing I've got all this life experience, or was it what what's what inspired you?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Well, Heartbeat has always had a mission to teach and train and and help all of us in the movement do our jobs better. So as we learn, as we continue to learn, you know, in the old days you wrote manuals, you know. Now you can have podcasts too, right? And videos and so forth. But I I actually was was my job before I came into Heartbeat full-time in '93. I was a college English professor. And so I I love to write and I love books, I love manuals, I like teaching materials. So naturally I just wanted to create a teaching material that we could use at Heartbeat when we go into centers to help them with board issues, to teach and train, to we have it now an online academy where we uh teach different webinars and we actually have a course on boardsmanship as well, the governing essentials. So it was it was something that we saw a need for. And and and I I realized that hey, God had called me into this role with some skills that he wanted me to use, one of which was teaching and writing. So I was able to do that. I was really thrilled that God would use me that way. And I I love boards, I really do, because like I said, wonderful, wonderful people that God's calling them into this mission, but they don't totally understand what they're supposed to do. You know, and sometimes they don't understand their relationship with the ED or their CEO. Let me tell you, give you kind of a theoretical and people will hear this kind of teaching, Jacob. Now, when when I first wrote uh started writing board materials, there was there really was very little written in the in the secular world about board governance. Now there are organizations that work with that, there's lots of material. But there was very little at the time that that I started. I kind of had to learn on the job. But one of the things that I picked up, and I'm not even sure where I found this, but it's it's a theoretical explanation of the role of a board compared to the role of the staff. All right. And it's shaped a little bit like a what do I want to say? A funnel. No, not exactly a funnel. A timer. Timers, yeah. What are those timers called? That's it. That's it. Thank you, Jacob. Shaped a little bit like an hourglass. And up at the top of the hourglass, part of the hourglass, is the board and the board members. And at the bottom of that little triangle is the board chair. And then the the next part, the bottom part of that hourglass is the the staff. And at the top of that staff is the executive. The top of that pyramid is the executive director or the CEO. So the board chair and that first part, and the and the executive director have have a touch point. They it it's the job of the board chair, particularly. Remember, I said responsibility and jobs uh are somewhat different sometimes. But one of the jobs of the board chair is to be the chief staff person for the board and the chief relationship person in relationship with the executive director at the bottom part. So they're kind of touching there in that diagram. And then under the executive director, the rest of that part of the hourglass are the are the people that work under him or her in the staff. So the executive director's in charge of that part, sphere of authority we call it, and the board chair in charge of this sphere of authority. They're touching each other. And then above, describing that top part of the triangle. Let me look, I've got it here right beside me, and I want to tell you what the what the names or the the titles are in that top part to describe what that board is responsible for. The board is responsible for developing policy. All right, these are the big things. A policy might your mission statement might be described as a policy. All right. Policies that kind of govern how the organization does things. All right. These are the big issues that relate to the pregnancy center. Uh the ends, another term for ends is results. What is the end for which we are formed? The result that we want to achieve, that our mission is supposed to help us to to to identify the end. You know the difference between the end and the means. All right. The means is how we do it. That's below the line. That's the staff. Okay. So the board, the board focuses on the ends, and the staff under that focuses on the means. Where the board focuses on policy, I mentioned, under that, the staff, the pol staff focuses on implementing the policy. Okay. So another term at the top that describes the board is what? What do we do? What do we do? All right. And for the staff under that, their focus is how do we do it? All right. For instance, what? Are we going to provide medical services? Yes. The board says yes. We decide that as a policy. Medical services. All right. Ultrasound particularly. And then we also want to add others as we go along. The board decides that at the top. Under that, the staff says, how are we going to do that? Well, we need to have a medical director first. All right. We need to have people who understand and know how to operate ultrasounds and are qualified to do that. We need those people as well. We need to focus on what type of ultrasound are we going to purchase, all right? At what hours are we going to provide these services every day or certain times of the week? Okay. So the staff is figuring out the how. The board has determined the what. Okay. Board, another term up there, is discerning. The boy the board is discerning. Okay, we've got some difficult issues here. We're we're discerning how we should go. We're discerning the direction. We're we're praying about where the Lord is leading us. Now I'm not say that the staff is not doing that too, but the board, the board is really the it looking at the bigger, bigger issues here. And then the staff underneath that acts, okay, when the discernment has been made, the decision has been made, the staff will act on that. Another one term at the top for boards is thinking. The board's thinking through all of this. The board is, in a sense, the head. And and the staff underneath that are the doers. Thinkers at the top with the board, the doers with a staff. And finally, you might say the board is the head and the staff are the hands accomplishing it. Now, does that mean though that Your chief staff person who has the the direct relationship, of course, with the board chair, right, and with the board is also having to be discerning and thinking and doing many of the same jobs that the board is doing. Okay. So that leads us to the point that's so important that we teach at heartbeat that once you have an executive director or CEO or president that has the full responsibility of managing your staff and carrying out the policies of the board and carrying out the ends that the board has decided and being the hands for the head of what the board has decided. Once you have that person, that person not only needs to be treated as a peer of the board, but we suggest that person, ex officio, be considered a board member. Okay. So that person is intimately involved with the rest of the board in all of those board big picture activities. Okay, that executive director is not just someone that the board says, you do this, you do that, you know. It's someone who's intimately involved in all of those big board decisions. And to make that clear, we think that person ought to have the title of board member. Ex officio meaning by virtue of being our executive director, or by virtue of being, just by having that office, ex officio, the office of executive director or CEO or president, by virtue of us giving you that title, we're expecting you also to be a board member as well as our chief staff person. And that, when boards and executive directors get that and see, hey, we are part of the same team, that is a powerful, powerful thing for the pregnancy center. And they're treating each other as equals. You know, yes, the executive director, president, uh CEO is hired by the board and could conceivably uh be let go by the board, um, but still as has to be treated as a peer and an equal with the board members. Does that make sense? That it does.

SPEAKER_04 24:18

Yeah, so does the with with the you know, being that the ED is a you know, has that board member title, would that be a non-voting role or a voting role?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

That that can be decided by that particular organization. We see that see that that's somewhat a secondary issue. I tend to think that, I mean, you you're a board member, you have a vote, but that sometimes for some organizations seems to muddy up the waters. Another thing that Heartbeat teaches, Jacob, that helps with this building of a real team that respects each other is that in a sense, the votes become somewhat insignificant because you don't win an issue by a seven to six vote or an eight to two vote. Those kinds of votes on issues, policies, movement ahead, or whatever create a lot of division on boards. So what Heartbeat teaches is when you've got an important decision to make, you know, you try to come to agreement, you try to come to consensus. Consensus doesn't mean that everybody is equally passionate about the decision, you know, but they're equally respectable to say, okay, if the rest of my teammates really feel this strongly that we need to go in this direction, I've got some reservations about it, but I'll go with you. You know, I'll I'll go with you. You know, so so you're really coming to unity rather than saying, okay, we decided on this nine to one or seven to six, you know, and so does the executive director's vote, is it really important that that person has a vote? Probably not, because if you're operating with the way Heartbeat suggests, with total mutual respect for each other and trying to arrive at unity, then one vote, you know, either way is not that important. Yeah, yeah. It's it's, and you can imagine with a group of strong leaders who are board members in their and leaders in their own right from different fields, perhaps, and and a leader, a strong leader as your executive director or CEO or president, you know, coming to agreement on these things and mutual respect is can be a challenge, you know, but it's it's a beautiful challenge. You learn so much from each other as you as you sometimes wrestle with difficult decisions and grow in respect for each other. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 26:42

So earlier on, you mentioned um founding or working board, and I think you mentioned a governing board. What types of boards are there in different, you know, nonprofit, you know, lifespans?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Well, the way, a good way of thinking of it is, and and you'll see this in all board literature. Boards have to govern. Every board has to have the responsibility of governing. And I'll I'll tell you what, how I divide up those responsibilities of governing. First is G, the goals, setting the goals for the organization. O is ownership, thinking of themselves as owners, even though we know that the Lord is really the owner, it's a ministry, right? The Lord is really the owner. But we are, we are in his stead, you know, with the responsibility of thinking of ourselves as owners. And those kinds of those are also legal responsibilities. When a nonprofit gets its nonprofit status from the state and then its 501c3 tax status from the federal government, you have to have a board. That's required in all your documents. Nothing, nothing requires you to have a paid staff. You know, you have to have a board. So they are legally responsible for carrying out your bylaws, your mission, and so forth as set forth in your articles of incorporation. Okay, so they are, in a sense, the owners. All right. And they have to think of themselves as the owners with certain legal responsibilities, even. So that's O G O V are the values. What are the values of the organization? What are your uh values? Could be the principles of affiliation you have, for instance, by being a member of Heartbeat International. We have affiliation principles that you don't provide or refer for abortion, abortifacients, or contraceptives. All right. So uh that's uh a value. Or uh we have the commitment of care and competence in our movement. You've probably seen that, Jacob, that all of the affiliation organizations sign on to. I think there are 20-some principles in that value statement. Your values as a Christian organization. Do you have a creed? Do you have a statement of uh religious beliefs? Those are so important to have now in this day and age, uh, with all the legal attacks that our centers and and clinics and maternity homes are being challenged legally. You know, we have to have our religious principles to uh to be able to protect our our right, for instance, to uh to hire to to hire Christians in our organization. You know, we have to have those Christian principles to assert that right. And our freedom of speech, you know, has to be protected as well. So all of all of those are values, and there are other values that the organization needs to establish. So G-O-V and then E is to effect, to carry out the values, to carry out, to, to make it happen, to carry out the mission, to carry out the goals. We and how does a board usually effect and carry out things? Sometimes they do it as volunteers themselves, but eventually they hire an executive director and a staff. All right. And then G-O-V-E-R is regulate, a lot of laws that they have to follow: federal, state, county, zoning, you know, you name it, charitable solicitation laws and all kinds of regulations that the center has to follow. And then N is nurture, govern, nurture. The last is nurture. The board is responsible for nurturing the organization. You know, when Jesus said, feed my sheep, you know, do you love me? Feed my lambs, he says this to Peter. You know, nurturing, growing, feeding the organization. It it's it's a parenting type of role that the board also has. Okay, so that those are the govern responsibilities. And um, I'm seeing I hope I haven't gone on rabbit trail here, Ribbon. For what you said, Jacob. Okay, but as you grow, there are different now that the govern responsibilities are the same, no matter what other type of board. I'm gonna give you some other names sometimes of types of boards that we have. I mentioned a founding board. Okay, that's the board that was established right when you were founded. All right. Often that's before you've hired anybody and you're an executive director at all. And then sometimes that founding board is a working board, worker bees, they're doing everything, you know, designing the website. You've got somebody that's a marketing person developing your marketing, you've got a social worker or a counselor who's who's working at some of your programs. Um, you've got just you may have a lawyer on that who's working at your bylaws and so forth and so on. So you've got the working, working founding board, and then there's also a founding board called a follow-the leader board. Those board members, you've got a really strong founder here. And the founder, she herself, or he himself, almost does everything on their own. And the board members are just patting that person on the back and saying, Great job, keep going. That's a little bit of a dangerous structure because you've only got one person who's doing almost everything. That's a found, that's a that's a follow-the-leader board. Okay, then you've got a board, it could be called a managing board, where uh board members, you haven't yet hired an executive director who can handle everything that a that a well-developed staff would do. So, board members, you've got somebody though, maybe you're calling that person a director, who's at least in charge of the office and the volunteers that are coming in to work with the clients. And so that person's a director, but board members are coming in as well and taking different jobs, working under that director. A board member is coming in and managing part of the organization. Maybe all the material aid is managed by a board member. Or a board member has some particular skills in accounting and comes in and as a volunteer is managing, in a sense, all of the finances of the organization that sometime at a later date would be done by a paid staff person. So that's kind of called a managing board, where board members are also managing as well as having all their governed responsibilities. Then you've got what we generally call a governing board. All the boards govern remember, but when they get to the governing board stage, that's when you've got more of this funnel or of this Hourglass.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

What's it say?

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Hourglass, hourglass, yes, the hourglass shape, where you've got a lot of board members up here. They know what their jobs are, they they have a good board chair, they're in relationship with the staff down below, a great president or CEO, and everybody knows their jobs. So the board is doing primarily governing. Then they're no longer putting on a different hat and working in the center, let's say. Okay? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 33:48

That does.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Then there are failing boards. And we'll just call these failing boards. All of those that I gave you in our board manual, I call those healthy boards. That is, those are three different stages of a healthy board founding, managing, and governing. But then you've got unhealthy boards. And sometimes we would even say failing boards, where people no longer are doing their jobs. You've got a weak board chair, let's say, or weak board members who don't know what their jobs are, and a strong executive director is handling almost all the job, all the responsibilities of the board, as well as leading the staff. That's a very dangerous situation, you know. Or you've got a board that doesn't understand their role, and you've got a board member or different members who are coming down into the staff and uh taking over some staff responsibilities. All right, you're going to lose a good executive director if you have one, if board members start doing that. Sometimes we call that a meddling board. All right. They don't know what their board governing responsibilities are. So because they want to be useful, they or or they maybe they're interfering for other reasons. You know, they're down trying to meddle in staff business. So those are failing boards, and those are dangerous. So uh we try to help board members find out what stage of development they're in. Do they have a healthy board structure at this point in their history, or do they have a failing board? And hey, hey, nobody wants, nobody wants a failing board. They really don't. So let's learn how to how to get our responsibilities set and get into our good job descriptions. By the way, board members need job descriptions, and so do staff members to know what their jobs really are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:39

That's really good. What is there um I I think I've heard about like an executive board that's meant for like attack, you know, maybe for attracting uh maybe big donors or name recognition. Is that how does that fit into this as well?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

That's not exactly what we usually mean by the term executive board.

SPEAKER_04 35:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

We do have, we use a term executive board, and that you'll find it in all kinds of governing materials, as well, heartbeats, as well as others. An executive, usually it's called an executive committee, an executive committee of the board. And that usually is your chair of the board, vice chair, secretary, treasurer, and executive director. And these are the main the people with the main job descriptions, you know, in the whole, in the whole process. So they usually, most bylaws will give that group the responsibility, if a big decision has to be made for the organization, in between board meetings. Let's say your board only meets every other month or once a quarter. And how often you meet usually depends on your your history, I mean your your stage of development, how big are you, and so forth. So, but if it's if a decision has to be made between meetings, the executive committee can make it for the board. All right, they're making a board decision, all right. But usually the bylaws indicate that that decision has to be ratified at the next board meeting, but they do have the authority to make a decision in between. And usually the executive committee kind of operates as a as a sometimes, and it does for Heartbeat at least, our Heartbeat Executive Committee is kind of a manages, manages the board. And so the executive committee discusses the the agenda. You know, what are going to be our main topics at the next board meeting? What are the major issues facing us right now? And if we need, let's say, let's say we've lost our executive director, maybe the person retires, resigns. The executive committee would probably be discussing, we need to appoint a search committee, you know, and who on our board, and maybe getting some people from off the board need to be on our search committee. So they're kind of managing the operations of the board. The executive committee usually does. Yeah. I'm trying to think. Did what what were you thinking in terms of the executive committee?

SPEAKER_04 37:59

You started saying Yeah, I thought there was a certain type of position that was designed for attracting large donors.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Well, that that term may be used in some board materials. I don't use it and I haven't seen that. But I think what you're saying is that at a certain level of organization, sometimes organizations ask people to serve on their board because they want the board to reflect kind of a level of giving, let's say, people who give it a very high level themselves and may know other people who give it a very high level. And so that kind of a board, uh, I would call a fundraising board. I don't think it's a healthy board overall, because if they don't also know and understand and want to accept all of the governing responsibilities, if they think their only job is to bring big donors in, then who's really doing the governing? And um actually, I think you may be referring to what I call in the board material an institutionalized board. Boards, for instance, of let's say in a big city, a public library board, a hospital board. These kinds of boards are often filled with the major donors, you know, and and they're raising multi-million dollar budgets. And so those institutionalized boards, what they also usually have then are subcommittees that handle other parts of the organizational governance. So they're they're structured very differently than what we have in the pregnancy help movement. Even our very, very large pregnancy help centers and medical clinics and so forth would not have an institutionalized type structure. However, I think the larger they get, and and this has happened with Heartbeat Too, it's wonderful that we have some wonderful donors who do want to bring other friends of theirs, colleagues, business associates. They want to bring them into the mission. And that's great to have people like that on your board. They can be also wonderful governing board members. You know, it's not that they only bring a financial or or development piece. That's great. But they the the way I look at it is they're really ideal board members when they carry out other governing responsibilities. You know, maybe, maybe, like I said, the goals, the sense of ownership, the values, the affecting or getting, you know, jobs accomplished through the staff, uh, the regulation part and the nurturing. You know, I have never, this is a praise, praise for God. Thank you for bringing the people that he has brought onto the Heartbeat Board. We've never had any major donor board members. And we know, yes, we do have them, but we've never had any that didn't also understand and be very active in all the governing responsibilities. Yeah, nobody sat back and said, well, my only job is, you know, bringing my friends to a fundraising dinner. No. But it is good to have credibility, you know, for an organization. And I think a good way to do that, have a have a wonderful governing board, but you can also have different advisory boards. You could have a medical advisory board. For instance, we've had doctors on our board at Heartbeat International, our governing board, but they are so busy and sometimes on call and coming to board meetings and serving on board committees is often not their thing, you know? But having a medical advisory board where their name can go on your website or on your state, used to be, we'd say on your stationary. Most people don't have stationary anymore, right? Not the old-fashioned kind. But you could also have, you have can have a uh a prestigious board, prestigious advisory boards, where, and we wouldn't call it prestigious advisory board, of course, but your advisory board that could have people on it that bring a lot of credibility. One time at our pregnancy center in Columbus, actually, on our advisory board, we had one of the uh general directors at one of the local hospitals, you know, on our advisory board. That was a that was a great entree for us, you know, in the medical community in those days. So people who are passionate about your mission and have a lot of credibility in the community, sometimes the governing board is not the right spot for them. But having other kinds of boards, now, usually your advisory boards, Jacob, don't actually meet. You know, you use them for advice. But at our pregnancy center, we did once a year have a dinner for our advisory board members. And uh, they loved it. We bring in some clients and help them understand our mission even better. But they don't have a governing role. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:57

Oh, that's so good. So, what are some example job titles that would be covered in a healthy board body?

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Oh, that's a good question. Well, you've got great questions. You understand the the issues we're talking about here. Well, in a good board body, usually you've got your executive committee, which we are already talked about who's on that executive committee. You almost, well, you definitely need a finance committee. And the finance committee, uh you so you need someone on your board who really understands accounting finances. Usually that person will end up also being the treasurer of your organization. And and and that's a very important job. So the treasurer is usually the head of the finance committee on the board. And uh this group is is really helps the works with the executive director. I don't want to say helps, works with the executive director. And depending on the skills of the executive director, the executive director may bring a draft budget, for instance, to the board finance committee. And uh then the finance committee. Works with the executive director, understands what the executive director is projecting for income from various sources and expenditures in various areas. And really is again kind of an oversight. A good word for governing board is oversight to make sure that that seems reasonable. They may ask questions of the executive director. You know, they may have concerns that maybe this projection, okay, can we really raise our our our monthly donor group by 20% this year? Can we really uh what makes you think we can grow it that quickly? They may ask questions like that. You know, they want they want to make sure that uh that they're that we're being realistic, but at the same time also because of the val because of our values and because of our goals, are we stretching? Are we trying to do more? You know, are we doing everything we can? You know. So the finance committee then also looks at your monthly reports, looks at your quarterly reports, makes sure that uh your they uh look at your 990. They may even have more expertise in the executive director in some of those areas, depending on their stage of development. And so they they probably know accounting firms that they can recommend for your for your audit. So you've got you know a group of board members who are working with the executive director to make sure that your finances are handled properly. And that you're transparent with your donors. All right. So you always want a finance committee. You've uh often have a development committee which works with your executive director and perhaps the development director also on the on the team to depending on the stage of development, what the board uh would be doing is is is uh coordinating with that staff team how they can bring more donors into the organization or how they can be helpful. All right, if the if for instance at our pregnancy center, one of the board committees this has just evolved through the years, uh through their development committee, they have a subcommittee that does a golf outing. A lot of the board members bring their friends to this golf event. It's it's pretty much I mean, the the staff does a lot of the detail work of the outing, but the board members are the ones who know the golfers, right? They're bringing in the golfers and they know where we can get prizes, and so depending on the stage of development, your board development of the of the organization depends on what the uh board committee will do. Also on the board, you'll generally have well, you have your board secretary who's taking the minutes, that's very important, and reporting the minutes. You've got uh sometimes you've got a nominating committee on a board, which is always looking to new board members, you know, who do we need to bring into the board? Um, and and once we've decided on bringing a board member in, that committee would be kind of their onboarding contact. How do we help them understand what we do, what our policies are, you know, answer questions that they have in mind. So those are some of the kinds of committees, you know, that a governing board would have. And and some depend you might have a medical committee, particularly if you have medical services at your pregnancy center that are going to help your medical director or the staff nurses with issues and problems, make sure they're overseeing that things are appropriate in your in your medical policies. So again, depending on your your stage of development and what type of organization you have.

SPEAKER_04 47:30

So this is so good. I'm only sad about we only have so much time. So I'd like to have you share how someone how an executive director and a board can get get equipped through Heartbeat International, such as connecting with your board training or through the annual conference, or what materials and suggestions would you suggest when it comes to helping a board who's interested in you know, improving, growing, uh sharpening their iron. What might that look like?

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Thank you for asking that, Jacob. Well, I'd have the the new manual right in front of me. I'm gonna because I wanted that diagram, but this is our governing manual. You can just order this manual, of course, but we suggest that every board member have a copy because uh in each of the tabs, for instance, let's say the tabs with the goals. Remember, I said your mission statement is one of the goals that a board has to set. You've got vision, you've also got other kinds of goals that board set. All right. Well, once you've accomplished those things on your board, in the back of that tab, you want to put your your mission statement, okay? And your vision statement, and any other goals that you've set for the following year so that you know what your particular goals are. When it comes to the values, remember we talked about a statement of faith and all those things. Once the board has all of that together, put it in there under that tab. You've got your own manual, you know what the goals are. If anybody says, Well, does that one or one of our values, does that fit with our value statement? You've got it right there in your manual. So we do on-site training. We love to do on-site training for boards, and each one has a manual. We go over some of the issues, what stage of development are they in. You know, it it's a great full day that we do with centers and they love it. So that's an on-site training. We also have have board tracks at our Heartbeat conferences, specifically for board members with uh with workshops on all kinds of different board topics. One of the ones I love to teach is the the 10 dysfunctions of a board. Some of them are pretty funny, you know, and and it's uh you can all chuckle and relate to it, even if you're you know exactly you know where you want to go and how you want to operate, somehow you can fall into these dysfunctions. Some of them can be kind of tragic, however. So but we do lots of workshops, we have webinars on online, and and we actually have a whole course on governing. You can take a governing course online on our academy, the Heartbeat Academy. So, and we answer questions, you know, we have free consultation on the phone for our affiliates. So if a board chair wants to call us or an executive director about board issues or problems, we'll be glad to talk about those issues over the phone and recommend something particularly to you.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

That's so good. And it looks like that uh that workbook is it's a three-ring binder, so people people can just put their pages right in there. I love that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

Every section, for every section, first of all when we get to the laws, the regulations, all the laws that you have to follow, you know, for every section of each chapter you stop along the way and there are board exercises. So, you know, does your board want to discuss this? You know, how are you doing in that area? What problems do you think you need to focus on? So it's it is really a workbook. You know, you can use it at board meetings. Some organizations have said to me that every board meeting, they try to take one little segment and do the exercise there. And it really helps their board to keep in memory how can we do better? You know, yes, this is something we we say we do, but do we do it? And how can we do it better? So it really is a it is a workbook, you know, as well as uh I guess a manual should be a workbook, right?

SPEAKER_04 51:16

Yeah, uh well thank you so much, Peggy, for for being on here and sharing your wisdom and knowledge and just really pouring out on well, an area that you've championed. And uh would you would you uh as we r close out this podcast, would you uh pray for all the Prince Clinics and their boards and you know and the great needs that they may have?

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Absolutely. And there's one thing we didn't talk about, which I wish we had time and maybe we can later even a whole topic of a a whole webinar on the end step and nurturing, because you know, learning to be in relationship with each other and nurture each other is the way we can accomplish this. It's not all done through the head and writing down goals and lists. It's it's and it's the grace of God, you know, to help us to help us respect each other and it it's hard to work together as a team where you've got strong leaders and uh and and the issues are sometimes difficult. So we need God's grace, we need to nurture, and that's something I'll pray for. How's that, Jay?

SPEAKER_04 52:24

Yeah, and I will uh make a note to invite you to be on our webinar Wednesdays that we do and we can do we'll do it with live audience, and it's in honor of Sister Paula. We used to do webinar Wednesdays with Sister Paula and her NLS ATIs in the year 2020 when we couldn't do the in-person, and so we've kept you going by doing those once-a-month webinars. But I'll invite you to that, it'll probably be about eight months. We're somewhat booked out for a bit. But in eight months, we'll start to get it.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Thank you. But we need God's grace because relationships can be messy. And the devil is in it, you know, trying to disrupt our pregnancy centers organizations and uh and defeat us. And we need God's grace, and uh so that's the important prayer that this is not something we can just decide to do. We have to to pray for the grace, you know, to be able to do it. So I'll I'll pray for that. Thank you. Okay. Lord, thank you for this time for us all to be together. Thank you for the calling you've placed on our lives to uh to serve those that we know that you love, that you've performed in the womb, Lord, and their mothers and their fathers that uh you love everyone and uh you you uh you have a purpose for each life. And Lord, thank you for for calling us to help work in this vineyard, uh, this mission field created by abortion. And uh Lord, we just ask your grace, we ask your help to to guide and direct us and give us the courage and the strength and the wisdom, you know, to to be who you want us to be, Lord, as leaders in the pregnancy help movement, as board members, as executive directors, presidents, CEOs, and staff members. That you've called us into these roles, Lord. Just be with us, give us the grace, uh give us the nudge, to put people in our lives, our truth tellers who will show us when we're not acting in a humble way, when we're not being a team player, when somehow our pride is getting in the way. Let us be that for each other, Lord, so that we can be the best. So that we can be the best that you've created us to be, to be leaders in this movement. Lord, we turn it over to you. We we thank you for the call on our lives, we thank you for your grace, and uh Lord, just be with us every step of the way, and we ask this all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Amen the position for the king committee, the king committee, let's see up the morse around. Comfort surround them who will you surround.