In celebration of National Indigenous History Month, Vantage Point reached out to a governance expert, Kinwa Bluesky, for her thoughts about not-for-profits and Indigenous governance.

Kinwa works as a consultant to organizations and leaders in the areas of strategic planning, organizational development, fundraising, and project management. She is also a legal researcher, policy advisor, human resource consultant, and contract manager. Kinwa is a doctoral student at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law. It is an honour to have her share her thoughts with us.

Please tell me about your work within governance as it applies within organizations with a social mandate.

I am an Indigenous consultant – working with Indigenous communities, Nations and with local, provincial, and federal government. This is one way that I can be more engaged and more connected to the people. My background is in law, and I use it in terms of understanding legislation and policy, and then how these create impact. I try to work from the top-down and bottom-up -- hopefully we’ll end up creating change somewhere along the middle for everyone involved.

Everybody is committed in some way to have Indigenous peoples be more self-determining, working towards more self-governing structures & frameworks in all areas of governance. Everyone is working towards what reconciliation means and how institutions can be more proactive in trying to implement various different tools and frameworks, such as UNDRIP as well as the call to action through TRC. Most recently, I’ve been working in the province implementing Jordan’s Principle, ensuring First Nations children and youth have access to social, education, and health services when they need them.

What have been the greatest influence(s) to governance as you practice it?

The ideal is that people have self-governing bodies, so then they are able to make laws and policies based on their own self-determining desires. Because I work a lot with governments, I feel like funding impacts significantly the kinds of opportunities that can be achieved moving forward. This can sometimes be a blessing and also something that has to be reckoned with as well, as funding seemingly comes and goes. For all First Nations organizations and societies, funding is very unstable, but I’m hoping in the future we can look at various different funding models that allow our peoples to become more financially secure in being able to offer the kinds of services and programming to fully meet the needs of their communities --- as they should be met.

What are some key steps not-for-profit boards can take to implement more diverse and particularly more Indigenized representation? And what about governance approaches?

Representation is a very interesting topic. I end up going to a number of Indigenous events and conferences, and still there are high numbers of male chiefs present. Women are not fully representative in a 50/50 -- the numbers are very high in terms of male leadership, and if we look at business,the trend would likely the same. In human resources, health and social services, women appear to be more dominant within those areas of leadership, which is refreshing and nice to see. I would like to see diversity flipping so there are more Indigenous female Chiefs, CEOs, Founders and Operators, and Chairmen of Boards – because we are present, doing good work, and we are rising through the ranks.

As for Indigenizing approaches, that’s part of the work that I do in my academic research looking at how Indigenous law can become more active– not just on an individual level, but guiding the laws of our communities, our governments, organizations, societies, and programs. So that our laws are being more fully reflected in our policies and not something we think about as, “Oh right, traditionally this is what we used to do!” It’s active and present and we are all agents of legal change, fully enacting and being our Indigenous laws. I’m constantly looking for ways to do that – and we are doing it! It’s in how our relations are built, how we conduct business, how we provide services, and most recently, how we prioritize our children and youth and women. We are creating ways of change.

What is your biggest hope for your broader work in 2018?

There are areas that are building up momentum locally with Chief Ian running for mayor – that’s exciting and might change some of the work that I’ve done in the past for City of Vancouver, recognizing Indigenous women and being proactive to create spaces for missing and murdered Indigenous women girls and their families while the Inquiry was going on here. We’ve done some work with the Mayor’s Task Force on Mental Health and Addiction by taking into account the needs of our members in the Downtown Eastside. There’s been quite a lot of reconciliation work, led at the time by Ginger Gosnell-Myers. It’s nice to see the steps taken for reconciliation – the work is now opening up space for leadership. I think even provincially, various ministries are open to creating change, specifically around First Nations children and youth and around mental health, with the creation of the new ministry (Mental Health and Addiction).

“Abundance” is a principle value at Vantage Point. How do you bring an abundant viewpoint to your day-to-day work?

When I was in Ottawa working at the archives on my dissertation research recently, I came across something that my great-grandmother Angenik Kaponicin had written. This was captured in the early 1900s. She said that when it came to our territory -- I’m Anishinaabe, from around the Ottawa region-- “we were just free, to go wherever we wanted,” and then she talked about how there was enough food to feed everyone. And I just thought, “that’s such a wonderful mindset to have been living in.” She acknowledged that this had changed. She was born in 1880s and had seen the transition of being able to roam free to living on reserves. Initially the environment there was able to provide for the health, wellness, and food security for everyone involved. That’s not the case now. What an empowering view to behold – and how can we maintain that today? How can we build towards this abundance for everyone and all who roam freely across these territories?

Serving on a board should be fun and engaging. At Vantage Point we’re passionate advocates for governance that goes beyond oversight. With a focus on impact, there are some great practices organizations can use to support meaningful governance In our work we often come across organizations that have developed or adopted unique governance practices that are aligned with their values.

Many of these practices also foster a board dynamic that is engaging, fun and grounded in community impact. Two great examples are Exchange Innercity and HUB Cycling.

Here are some of the practices these two organizations have in place to make their governance awesome!

1. Make information accessible before the meeting

Exchange Innercity is a community economic development organization comprised of individuals and community groups in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The organization prides itself on taking direction and leadership from the membership as a whole. All members are invited to attend committee meetings. However, with a diverse and broad membership, ensuring meeting attendees have sufficient information to participate effectively is no small task. In order to achieve this, the coordinator makes herself available for 3 hours per month (1.5 hours on the second and third Wednesday of every month) at a local community centre where she provides printed meeting packages. Participants who don’t have access to a computer or email can get the information they need prior to any of the meetings.

HUB Cycling, uses a consent agenda. This tool requires a reading package to be sent out at least one week in advance, so that key information items are not reviewed at the meeting itself. Board members arrive prepared to delve into discussion.

2. Define “consensus decision-making” and dedicate time to “discursive” items

HUB Cycling has identified that board meetings are most effective when they allow for discussion and dialogue (instead of using meeting time to share information). To ensure this happens, the meeting agendas include a standing ‘discursive’ topic section, where rotating board members bring forward innovative, generative and diverse topics for dialogue at the board level. These items are for discussion only - decisions are not typically required - which opens up the meetings to generative reflection, discussion, and engaging new ideas at board meetings.

When it does come to making decisions, some groups use a ‘consensus-based’ decision making model. However, trouble arises when this is not defined; consensus means very different things to different people. To mitigate this challenge, Exchange Innercity proactively created a governing document that defines precisely how they can achieve a decision and the procedures to follow in order to empower members to raise and deal with conflicting viewpoints.

3. Mission first

For both organizations, keeping mission top of mind is a key feature of how they’ve structured governance practices. At the beginning of HUB board meetings a rotating board member will outline the mission and priorities of the organization, as they understand them. This grounds the subsequent discussions in what the board is there to achieve.

At Exchange Innercity, a key part of their mission is empowering individuals and organizations in the Downtown Eastside. They’ve given much thought to meeting processes as well as clear definitions to the roles of the staff, the executive committee, and committee members to ensure members have ample opportunities to contribute in different ways - which is a critical part of their mission.

How do your governance practices reflect the values of your organization, or the mission? Are there governance practices unique to your organization?

For those of us who work with not-for-profit sector organizations and their governing bodies, the same issues in not-for-profit governance seem to keep coming up year after year. That insight has caused a thoughtful sector leader to ask: “why are we doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?”

We hear these types of stories all the time:

“My board blurs the lines between operations and governance.”

“The executive director expects the board to fundraise, that’s not what I signed up for!”

“Nobody told me we’d spend so much time looking at boring financial statements.”

“We elected a chartered accountant to the board, and now he’s refusing to act as Treasurer!”

“We’ve tried to recruit for diversity on our board, but we don’t know any qualified candidates from minority communities.”

Reimagining Governance

On March 12, Vantage Point partnered with Ignite NPS to start conversations on how we can shift our perspective and do governance differently. Executive directors, board members and consultants met with Linda Mollenhauer to explore how not-for-profit governance structures, processes and practices should and could be adapted to meet the challenges of today’s complex environment.

Linda is a cofounder and the Board Chair Ignite NPS, where she volunteers her time and expertise to support development and distribution of practical research, resources and tools designed for board members and staff of non-profit organizations across the sector. Her goal is to foster new ways of working and support leaders to adapt to the complex and competitive not-for-profit landscape.

The questions Linda posed on March 12 certainly ignited my thinking! Here are three of the many insights raised in the three-hour facilitated conversation:

1. Governance is a team sport. All too often, we think of governance as the board’s work, but in fact, it involves the collaboration of the chief executive, staff, and stakeholders in the community served by a not-for-profit organization.

2. Successful governance requires a shared understanding. How often do we stop and explore what we mean by “successful governance”? Some people hear that word and think “govern”, focusing on the fiduciary. Others think “vision” or “leadership”. It’s time to get on the same page, to achieve clarity through an explicit conversation that leads to a shared understanding of what we mean by “successful governance”.

3. Each of us has a role in finding a new model. If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got. Everyone working in the sector can shift our energy, from focusing on the challenges, to imagining how we could make it better.

Thanks, Vantage Point, for making space to encourage thought leadership and reimagine governance. It’s a conversation whose time has come!