Thank you for saying in so few words what I’ve been trying to say with many. You’re exactly right, the board is the place where internal experience is absolutely necessary. Not that ALL board members should be internal (that just gets insestuous, for lack of a better word, something I’m working on in my own professional life), but some of that “ground up” experience is absolutely valuable on a board level. There should be alumni from each program in board or advisory roles at HQ and on local levels, in addition to the business leaders and innovators.
As FIRST moves in the direction of other national/international nonprofits and begins to set up independent subsidiaries (i.e. districts), that’s where we will see real movement happening. FIRST is starting to move away from the HQ-down management approach, and local control is becoming more and more prevalent. Almost all national/international nonprofits organize this way: Independent-but-affiliated subsidiary organizations with their own boards and employees, who employ the high-level missions and policies/procedures from HQ, but have localized control on how those missions are accomplished. As these become more and more prevalent, that’s where team/volunteer experience becomes EVEN MORE necessary to lead on those local levels.