What does small nonprofit governance look like when no department—or even person—handles every responsibility?
July 1 was a good day.
After several years of volunteering with nonprofits, Rebecca was excited to step into her first leadership role. The nonprofit was small, with a mission she believed in, a volunteer board that cared deeply about the work, and a budget that required everyone to be thoughtful about resources. She knew she would wear several hats. She expected that.
Then came July 2.
A volunteer needed database information for an upcoming event. Someone else couldn’t access an online account. A vendor was waiting for approval to move forward. The board president forwarded a question about a decision made more than a year ago.
None of it was a crisis. But sitting at her computer that morning, Rebecca had the sinking realization that she didn’t know the answers.
So, she did what capable people do. She started figuring things out.
One question at a time. Accessing what was available. Asking those who might know. Googling what she didn’t know. Even asking ChatGPT how other nonprofits might approach a similar problem.
But one question still had no clear answer.
It wasn’t simply an operational question Rebecca could solve and move on from. It was bigger than her role. This wasn’t her decision to make.
Rebecca began the week thinking she needed to learn how everything worked. She was beginning to discover that some answers already existed and needed to be found. Some required expertise she didn’t have. Some decisions belonged to other people.
And sometimes, the nonprofit simply hadn’t decided yet.
If you lead or serve on the board of a small nonprofit, you may recognize some version of her July 2.
Small nonprofit governance rarely looks like a formal governance exercise in moments like these. More often, it shows up in ordinary questions about who decides, who does the work, and what happens next.
Work Doesn’t Get Simpler Just Because the Staff Is Small
Small nonprofits don’t have miniature versions of every department found in a large nonprofit. Nor should they.
Rebecca inherited a third-party finance vendor. A website pieced together over several iterations. Programs that would not have been her first choice. Can you feel her pain?
She wasn’t building something from scratch. She was stepping into a nonprofit already in motion. Before she could decide what needed to change, she first had to understand what was already there, why it was there, and who was carrying it.
If you’re still reading, you may be a board member or nonprofit volunteer. Or maybe you’re the lone wolf sitting in the executive director—or even the administrative—chair.
You may not have a membership director, but somebody is maintaining member information. Your nonprofit may not have an IT department, but someone decides which technology you use and who gets access. You probably don’t have a data governance officer, but you’re still collecting and storing data. And these days, someone connected to your nonprofit may already be using AI to get work done.
Those functions don’t disappear because you don’t have employees dedicated to them.
That is where I think organizational Alignment becomes useful.
For a small nonprofit, organizational Alignment isn’t about adding layers of management or recreating the infrastructure of a large nonprofit. It’s about making sure important functions connect to the people, authority, information, resources, and capacity needed to carry them out.
“Lean staffing may determine who carries out a function. It shouldn’t determine whether the organization has thought about the function at all.”
— Lisa Olinda
Sometimes an Ordinary Request Isn’t So Ordinary
Think back to Rebecca and the request for information from the database.
Exporting a spreadsheet isn’t particularly complicated. But Rebecca still has questions. What information is needed? Who needs access to it? And how will it be shared and used?
These questions reflect basic principles of good data stewardship. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines personally identifiable information, or PII, broadly to include information that can identify an individual or information linked or linkable to that person. Its guidance also recommends minimizing the use, collection, and retention of PII to what is necessary for the purpose and mission.¹
The Federal Trade Commission offers similarly practical guidance: know what personal information you have, keep only what you need, protect what you keep, and limit access to those who need it.²
Rebecca doesn’t need to become a data privacy expert to recognize that sending the entire database because someone asked for a list may not be the best answer.
That’s the larger point. She isn’t struggling because she doesn’t know how to export a spreadsheet. She has encountered questions that go beyond the administrative task in front of her.
And the questions rarely stop with one spreadsheet. Similar issues come up with account access, personal devices, shared files, new technology, and even AI.
An SOP may provide guidance, but it can’t anticipate every situation. When the answer isn’t clear, the person doing the work needs to know who to ask.
Who Decides? Who Does? What Happens Next?
Three simple questions can bring greater clarity.
Who decides? Where does the authority for this decision belong? Has authority already been delegated? Does the board need to decide, or is this an operational decision? Is outside expertise needed before anyone decides?
Who does? The person authorized to decide isn’t necessarily the person who should carry out the work. Likewise, the person doing the work shouldn’t have to assume decision-making authority simply because the task landed in their inbox.
What happens next? Decisions create work. They can create communications, records, expenses, technology needs, administrative steps, follow-up, and ongoing responsibilities.
I’ve written about the many people who shape nonprofit culture. Board members, executive leadership, employees, volunteers, donors, and others can all have influence. But influence, authority, responsibility, expertise, ownership, and capacity aren’t interchangeable.
Clarity about those distinctions doesn’t make a small nonprofit more bureaucratic. It can make everyone’s work easier.
“We Don’t Have Anyone for That”
This is where reality comes in.
Perhaps you’re thinking, Lisa, we’re a small nonprofit. We don’t have a data manager or someone dedicated to technology. And now we’re supposed to figure out AI too?
Fair enough.
But there’s an important difference between “We don’t have a person dedicated to that function” and “We don’t need to think about that function.”
The answer isn’t automatically another employee, another committee, or a ten-page policy.
Good small nonprofit governance doesn’t require recreating a large-organization structure. It requires enough clarity to handle important responsibilities well.
A simple procedure may be enough. The board may establish a boundary and delegate implementation. An outside professional may provide expertise you don’t have internally. You may need to assign responsibility and document a few key details.
And sometimes the responsible decision may be: We’re not going to do that right now.
The question I would encourage you to ask is:
What is the simplest responsible way for us to handle this?
Capacity Is More Than a Budget Question
The same thinking applies when a small nonprofit considers something new.
A new program may fit the mission beautifully. The direct financial cost may even fit comfortably within the budget.
But what happens after everyone says yes?
Someone has to develop the program, communicate it, maintain records, coordinate people, update the website, process payments or registrations, and handle whatever follow-up comes next.
A decision can be completely aligned with the mission and still be misaligned with organizational capacity.
“Can we afford it?” is an important question.
So is:
Can our organization carry it?
That doesn’t automatically mean saying no. Perhaps the idea can be simplified. Maybe it happens six months from now rather than next month. A volunteer may own a clearly defined portion. Outside expertise may fill a gap. Or another priority may need to wait.
A thoughtful yes is better than a yes that leaves someone else quietly figuring out how to make the impossible happen.
Sometimes the Solution Is Smaller Than You Think
Let’s return to Rebecca.
Eighteen months have passed, and she would like to take two weeks off.
There’s one problem: she’s become the person who knows how nearly everything works.
Her first thought might be, I can’t possibly leave for two weeks.
The board’s first thought might be, We need someone to cover everything she does.
But what if neither is true?
Perhaps most routine work can wait. A clear out-of-office message can set expectations. A board member can be the point of contact for a true emergency. She can handle a time-sensitive task before she leaves. Everyone can agree on what constitutes an emergency.
Then Rebecca can go on vacation without taking the business phone, her laptop, and a folder of information that might be needed. One board member has her personal cell number in case there is a true emergency.
Rebecca gets to unplug and recharge on vacation.
Organizational Alignment doesn’t always require more resources. Sometimes it requires clearer choices about how to use the resources you already have.
When One Person “Just Knows”
Of course, Rebecca being able to leave also depends on what happens during those first eighteen months.
A legacy email account tied to her role keeps correspondence searchable and available to the next person rather than disappearing into a personal inbox. Important documents can live in a shared drive rather than on her laptop. A project management system can document current work, responsibilities, and next steps.
Even an organization-owned phone can matter. In addition to keeping work communications separate from Rebecca’s personal number, it can be used for authentication on important accounts and transferred when leadership changes.
These may seem like small operational choices, but together they support continuity. If access to an important account depends on a verification code sent to one person’s personal phone, recovering that account after they leave can become far more complicated than anyone anticipated.
And someone else needs to know how to get to what matters.
Perhaps the board president serves as the designated point of contact and knows where to find securely maintained emergency access information. That doesn’t mean sharing passwords casually or giving everyone access to everything. It means thinking ahead about what you’d need if Rebecca were unexpectedly unavailable.
The goal isn’t for everyone to know everything Rebecca knows. It’s to make sure the nonprofit isn’t dependent on Rebecca being available to function.
Start With One Thing
If this article has your mind buzzing and you’re listing all your nonprofit’s failures, stop.
You don’t need to fix everything.
Choose one area you can influence—access to an important account, where you store records, or perhaps a responsibility that everyone assumes belongs to someone else.
Look at that one thing and ask:
Who decides? Who does? What happens next?
Then ask one more question:
What is the simplest responsible way to handle this in the nonprofit we have today?
Rebecca didn’t transform her small nonprofit into a miniature corporation. The budget didn’t magically double. She still works with a volunteer board. She still gets questions she hasn’t encountered before. And there are probably still days when she opens an email and thinks, Well, that’s a new one.
But she no longer assumes every unanswered question is hers to answer alone.
She knows to look for what has already been decided, seek historical knowledge, use outside expertise when needed, recognize when a decision belongs somewhere else, and identify what still needs to be addressed.
That’s what organizational Alignment can look like in a small nonprofit.
It isn’t about adding complexity.
It’s about bringing enough clarity to the complexity you’re already carrying.
I’ve spent 40 years working with nonprofits in different capacities—administrator, volunteer, operations leader, financial officer, and executive director. I’ve seen these questions from both sides of the table.
If you’re noodling through a challenge in your nonprofit and could use another perspective, Let’s Untangle It together. Schedule a 20-minute call, and we’ll talk through the issue and identify a practical next step.
Schedule a Let’s Untangle It call
References
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Special Publication 800-122, April 2010. NIST SP 800-122
- Federal Trade Commission, Protecting Personal Information: A Guide for Business. FTC guidance
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