I've sat in enough board rooms to know the moment it happens. Someone says "we've always done it this way," and you can watch the air go out of the room. Nobody argues. Nobody even really agrees. The conversation just quietly ends, and the organization goes back to running on a model built for a different decade, a different donor base, and a different world.
That phrase, more than any other, is how some nonprofits become what my friend Kim Wilt calls zombie nonprofits. Still moving, still putting out newsletters and hosting the same gala, technically alive. But not really growing, not really adapting, just shuffling forward on momentum that ran out years ago.
Here's my thesis, and I'll say it plainly: getting a seat on the board is the easy part. The real work, the work that actually matters, starts after you sit down. And too many board members treat the seat itself as the achievement, when it's supposed to be the starting line.
The Giving Has Changed. The Boards Haven't.
This isn't the era of "make a few calls and the giving follows." That world ended somewhere between our grandparents and us. The way people give has fundamentally changed. Our grandparents' generation wrote a check because a neighbor asked, because the organization had been around for forty years, because that's just what you did. That relationship between institution and donor ran on trust built over decades and a patience with process that doesn't exist the same way anymore. Now, if you handed someone $10,000 to give away and told them they had ten minutes, they'd be on their phone before you finished the sentence, researching the cause, reading the reviews, finding the org that matches what they already believe in. The giving is still there. The mechanism is completely different. A board that's still operating on the old assumptions, the ones that worked when a few well-placed phone calls could fill a budget gap, isn't being prudent. It's being stagnant, and calling it tradition.
Both Sides of the Table
I've watched this play out from both sides of the table. Boards that genuinely want to help but won't put in the work to understand what the organization actually needs today, not what it needed when most of them joined. Members who show up to meetings, vote the way they're expected to vote, and consider that their contribution. Strong giving and a familiar name on the letterhead used to be enough to coast on. It isn't anymore, and the organizations that haven't figured that out yet are the ones quietly turning into zombies while everyone in the room nods along.
What the Actual Work Looks Like
What does the actual work look like? It looks like asking hard questions about whether the org's model still fits the community it serves. It looks like being willing to say "maybe we're wrong about this" out loud, in front of people who've sat on that board longer than you have. It looks like showing up with more than your name and your check, and treating the seat as a responsibility instead of a credential. If you're not willing to do that, you're not really on the board. You're just in the room.
None of this requires reinventing the organization overnight or chasing every new trend that comes through a conference session. It requires something simpler and harder: staying curious about whether the way things have always been done is still the way they should be done, and having the spine to say so when it isn't.
So if you're on a board, or thinking about joining one, ask yourself which kind of member you actually want to be. The kind who shows up, nods, and lets "we've always done it this way" carry the room. Or the kind who's willing to be the one who asks why.
