What a board does for a social enterprise

We've just finished a board meeting for Digital Divide Data...and I am feeling deeply appreciative of our board of directors. Our board saw us through a critical organizational challenge...and we are poised to emerge as an even stronger organization from the experience.

The DDD board meets three times per year, at least once each year in Asia. At this most recent meeting, we learned that our General Manager in Cambodia, Sophary, would be leaving the organization. Initially, the change made us greatly concerned.

Over the past five years, Sophary helped found and grow DDD to become an effective and well-recognized social enterprise. He has helped DDD make a big difference in lives of many Cambodians—and to continue to transform disadvantaged young people there and in Laos. We are deeply indebted to his strong leadership. We are excited to learn of his new plans to start a new technology-related business in Cambodia—that may employ some of DDD’s “graduates”—as well as his concept to start a center for the elderly. However, it was difficult for us an individuals to contemplate what we would do next.

Fortunately, our board pulled together to analyze the situation, make some decisions about a new management team, and rapidly establish a process to make the changes. Having a seasoned business manager, an accomplished HR specialist with cross-cultural experience, a rock-star management consultant, and a strong local manager on the board was invaluable in this process. In fact, I'm not sure how well we could have negotiated the transition without them. With them, we not only made good decisions, but came up with a process to implement these decisions that left our team feeling positive and excited about the future.

It was an immportant lesson to see how our board was so much more that a reviewer of financials and a support with our fundraising. They have truly shaped the future of our organization!