BoardBridge Co-Founder Stephe McMahon on How to Join a Nonprofit Board, Why It Beats Traditional Leadership Development, and the Power of Your 'New Kid Card'
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What’s driving the million‑plus vacant nonprofit board seats?
Hey everyone, Dan here. Welcome to another episode of Forward Looking Leadership. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Steve McMahon. Steve is the co-founder and chief bridge builder at BoardBridge, which empowers corporate employees to serve on non-profit boards. Steve, thanks so much for joining us on Forward Looking Leadership.
Oh, thanks, Dan. I'm really excited to be here. As you know, I I shared with you that I'm pretty excited to follow your podcast. And as somebody who's been, you know, creeping over into the talent development world, uh, much more so than uh the corporate social responsibility world where I've been, that's been really helpful and insightful. And I've really appreciated several of the speakers who you've had in the past.
Well, we're really excited to have you and especially to get into this topic of serving on a nonprofit board, which I think is something that's really top of mind for a lot of listeners, a lot of job seekers, a lot of professionals. Uh a cool opportunity and also for people on the nonprofit side of how do we kind of fill these gaps on our boards with really qualified people? You say that there's over a million vacancies on nonprofit boards currently, and that that was shocking to me to hear, maybe not surprising, but what do you see as the cause of this? Like what's the what's at the root of this and where does board bridge come in?
I think there's several different pieces to it. I mean, I think the most prominent one though is that the on-ramp isn't very clear. If you want to join a nonprofit board, uh, you know, it where do you start? How do you how do you get from you know being interested to actually sitting on a board? Whereas if you wanna mentor a young person in your community, you can pull up Google, you can put in your zip code and mentoring, and you'll get a list of opportunities. And I think part of the reason that the on-ramp's not clear is because we have such a diversity of nonprofits in this country. There are one and a half million of them. They are not a monolith by any means. You'll hear me say that several times probably, but that lack of clarity around what the on-ramp is is a big piece of that.
Equally, I think, is a is the reality that so many people don't really recognize what they have to offer and what they bring. You know, we encounter folks all the time who say, I'm just uh X, whatever X is, I'm just a financial analyst. I am, you know, just a program manager. And within that, if we start to break that down, there are a ton of skills within that. And that couple coupled with people's life skills and their passion really do bring uh creates an opportunity for them to bring a great deal to the to the table as board members. So what we do here at Board Bridge is really we meet with individuals where they are and we we meet with nonprofits where they are as well. And our our role really is to create that on ramp, but to do it with two things in mind.
One is to lower the barrier of Of entry for both the nonprofit and the individual. And the other thing that we do that I'm really proud of that is unique about our program is we pair every individual who comes through our program one on one with what we call a bridge builder. And that's really somebody who has done this cross sector work in the past. Mostly there are people who've been on boards themselves or there are executives who've worked with the board of directors, but they understand what is board service. Look like and how does one get on a board? Um, and for many of them, they only know how they got on a board. So we do training so that they understand that there's a whole vr variety of ways to get on boards.
But we do that um to really make sure that people understand that one, for every person out there who's interested and has things to give, there is a nonprofit out there and could use someone on their board. On the nonprofit side, I think what's equally true. Is that um while there's no on-ramp specifically for people looking to be on boards, there's not a really clear way of casting a net really broadly.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What’s driving the million‑plus vacant nonprofit board seats?
0:05–6:16
2
How does BoardBridge create a clear on‑ramp for first‑time board members?
6:16–11:23
3
What practical advice does Steve give to people who want to join a board?
11:23–17:14
4
What are the essential components of a board‑service crash course?
17:14–23:58
5
How does board service outperform traditional leadership‑development programs?
23:58–29:51
6
Why is the “new kid card” a powerful advantage for new board members?
29:51–35:17
7
What does the end‑to‑end BoardBridge placement process look like?
35:17–40:01
8
Which free resources can help aspiring board directors get started?
40:01–44:38