Jennifer Goings Smith, a BVU Fellow, worked with Union-Miles on a year-long project to structure their Board of Directors. The Executive Director of Union-Miles, Roshawn Sample, provides details on Jennifer’s profound impact below.
How did your fellow help your organization’s bottom line?
Jennifer has been instrumental in helping to bring structure to the formation of the organization’s Board of Directors. She has created a structured approach for board communication, file storage and sharing, training for new board officers and supported the creation of the board committees.
Is there a particular story or anecdote you can share about how your fellow helped move your mission forward?
The formation of the board committees and the board officer nomination process. Jennifer outlined the responsibilities for both. For the board committees, she arranged the meeting agenda and other documents, and facilitated the working meeting with the board members so that the committees would be fully formed by day’s end. We had self selected into committees, identified the committee chairs, meeting dates and had outlined our individual committee priorities to work on moving forward. The board officer nomination process: Jennifer was the repository for nominations, held conversations with the nominated individuals to gauge interest in the positions, created the ballot and ran the election successfully. The end result was our newly elected 4 officers.
Would you recommend a BVU Encore fellow to other nonprofit organizations? Why?
Absolutely would recommend an Encore Fellow because of the breadth of knowledge they bring to the organization to help build processes and structures to support the successful operations. Small NP organizations may not have the human capital or expertise to support their areas of growth and can use the BVU fellow to develop and/or help grow the organization’s strategies.
What skills and value did the BVU fellow bring to your organization?
Jennifer has brought the skills of organization, knowledge of business processes, facilitation, structure, communication, template development, technological development and support, and coaching
To find a BVU Encore Fellow for your nonprofit, please contact us.