The Miami Valley Nonprofit Collaborative’s primary mission is to help other local nonprofits thrive. They do this by providing training, leadership development and help with networking.
The organization has helped more than 500 local nonprofits since 2015, and now they say many of them are struggling to find engaged board members.
To find out more, WYSO’s Jerry Kenney spoke with Jenny Warner, founder and executive director of the Miami Valley Nonprofit Collaborative.
This interview transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jenny Warner: We're serving new nonprofits, your new friends for us. Every year, certainly we make more connections; staff members, and board members change within nonprofit organizations so we're always working hard to reach out and make sure that they're aware of our programs and our services. But yeah, we've certainly expanded our footprint over the last, especially five years or so. The pandemic forced us online, like it did everybody, so we pivoted and put all of our programming and such on Zoom. We actually ended up making new friends that way. Folks who wouldn't have traveled or hadn't traveled to our live in-person programs in the past joined us via Zoom and then they stuck with us after that, now that we're back in person.
Jerry Kenney: Can you give me an idea or quantify the footprint or scope of the number of nonprofits that you work with?
Warner: I can, yes. So over their 10 years, we have served over 500 area nonprofit organizations. We primarily run our programs in Montgomery County, closer to central downtown Dayton, but we serve nonprofits that come to us from Miami County and Green County and Preble County and Clark County and Shelby County and so certainly all the surrounding areas as well. But over 500 non-profit organizations have taken advantage of our programming in the last 10 years.
Kenney: That's a lot of nonprofits and we understand that there is a shortage through many of the nonprofits that you work with. Tell us a little bit about that.
Warner: Time after time, year after year, nonprofits just continue to tell us that probably one of their biggest challenges would be equipping their board of directors with the right people, with the folks who have the time, who have a passion to engage in their mission and support the organization as it moves into the future.
Kenney: What are these nonprofit boards looking for in a person that serves?
Warner: Yeah, great question. So number one, what nonprofits repeatedly tell us is well is once they have a board member, for example, just keeping those board members engaged. So, number one even knowing how to leverage the skills and the experience of the board members who are serving with them, you know, providing those opportunities, making sure that they're on the right seats, you know, on the bus, so to speak.
But also just making sure that board members are aware of the kind of things they should be supporting the organization with, the kinds of activities to engage in, and the kind of activities that they really shouldn't be engaging. There's an education piece there for both board and staff to know whose lane is whose and who supports, you know, in what way.
Kenney: And how do potential board members know how they're supposed to serve in that capacity if they have no experience, but they may be a good fit?
Warner: So one of the resources that we provide at the Miami Valley Nonprofit Collaborative is a new program. We actually just launched it last year and then because it was so popular, we revamped it at the beginning of 2025. It is a three-part board workshop series, and it really lays out for maybe a new or an inexperienced board member or maybe an experienced board member who never received formal training on, according to the state of Ohio attorney general, what are the roles and responsibilities of a nonprofit board member in our state; roles and responsibilities, again, the lanes that they support in, their responsibility for financial oversight, and how to provide that, and the tools that they should be looking for, asking for, from the nonprofit in order to do that.
And finally, board members and fundraising. It is a legal responsibility of a nonprofit board member to support the organization in some way in fundraising and in marketing and advocacy, for that particular organization. It can look different for different board members, and it looks different in different organizations, but it's absolutely a responsibility for a nonprofit board member to participate in some way.
Kenney: So those are some of the lanes that you mentioned that board members may travel in. Are there others that you can highlight?
Warner: Well, board members certainly are responsible, number one, for helping build the board of directors. So, nonprofit executive directors should not be building the board of directors, it's the board that builds the board because the board is going to continue long after a particular staff leader is serving the organization. So board members are responsible for helping recruit and engage and work with other board members to sustain the organization long term.
They help set direction for the organization. They help in strategic planning and goal-setting. So they should be participating greatly in the strategic goal-setting of the organization. Hiring, reviewing and evaluating the executive director, the executive leader of the organization, is a full board responsibility as well. Again, financial oversight, fundraising, advocacy, and then just hands-on help where they can. If there's special events or programs, you know, there can be committee work, that sort of thing that board members can choose to get involved in as well.
Kenney: I'm sure in your conversations with nonprofit leaders and people who are currently serving on boards, an absence of just a few board members really places the onus on the existing board members to pull some extra weight.
Warner: No, sure. Well, just like nonprofit staff can get overwhelmed when they're understaffed and they're trying to juggle a lot of things and handle multiple tasks, even cover multiple jobs, even if it's for short periods of time, board members can feel the same, right? If the board is understaffed, if the committees, for example, are under-represented, then the existing board members sometimes end up serving on several committees. So that's in addition to their regular board service. So absolutely, boards of directors can get stretched, just like staff members can.
Kenney: I guess, finally, what advice, if someone is listening to this conversation and thinks that they have the time, energy, opportunity and know-how to provide a nonprofit agency, what are the steps they should take?
Warner: Number one, we do have a training resource we'd love to make available to the community and make sure people are aware of. Our three-part board workshop series is designed for the individual who wants to make sure that they understand exactly what their roles and responsibilities are, or would be, if they joined a nonprofit board of directors. It's on our e-learning platform. It's called MVNC On Demand. And so a board member or a potential board member can view it on their own time at their own pace. They can review content. They can go back into it. There's handouts and templates that are downloadable and customizable as well. So there's a lot of great content there, again, that can be reviewed on their time. So the MVNC On Demand three-part board workshop series we make available to the community. You can find information about that on our website.
And other than that, if a community member's interested in supporting the nonprofit community, I do believe that the environment that we're in at this time, nonprofits more than ever need community support, including on its board of directors.
So I just encourage community members, think about if you're interested in exploring board service, what do you care about? What are the issues that you're really interested in? Is it animals? Is it vulnerable seniors? Is it your neighborhood? Is it hunger, for example? Is it recovery? There's lots of different things. What are you the most passionate about? And then start doing some research on some local organizations who provide those services.
A great way to get involved, if you're not entirely sure about joining a board, making that commitment right away, is get involved with the organization and then do some volunteering. No better way to learn about what the organization does, how they serve, and what the culture of the organization is, and if that's going to fit.
Secondly, you can certainly do some research on accredited nonprofits. The Better Business Bureau is a great resource of nonprofits that have been through their charity seal accreditation process, and that simply means that a third party has taken look at their transparency, their ethics, their standards in which they operate. It's just a great list to start with if you're not entirely sure. Lots of other great nonprofits are out there that aren't accredited, but that is a great list to begin with.
And finally, we also recommend that before making a full board member commitment, maybe serving on a committee for a board of directors. Most nonprofits have committees that do some very focused work for the organization. Maybe it's marketing, maybe it's fundraising, maybe it's financial oversight. You know, there's various ways to get involved with a nonprofit and learn more about them before joining as a full board member.
Kenney: Jenny Warner is executive director of the Miami Valley Nonprofit Collaborative. Jenny, thanks so much for the conversation and hopefully this will spark some interest from some of our listeners to serve local nonprofits here in the Miami valley.
Warner: Thank you very much. I appreciate talking with you this afternoon.
