Why Board Members Participate

Abstract

In the United States all legally incorporated non-profit organizations are required to have boards of directors. The members of these boards are unpaid volunteers. This paper examines the reasons board members participate. A triad of data collec tion techniques—questionnaires, interviews, and observations-was used to study the members of the boards of directors of ten human service agencies. The study is based on an incentive approach to participation, which suggests that participation occurs in response to incentives, the expectation of valued outcomes. Four catego ries of incentives-material, social, developmental, and ideological—are used to or ganize the data. The study demonstrates that board members have multiple and complex incentives for participation, that some members achieve an adequate num ber of incentives and some do not, that few members participate in response to in centives that are dependent on specific policy outcomes and that even fewer serve as consumer representatives, and that there are differences among agencies in board members' reasons for serving. Implications for board recruitment and retention are discussed.