Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 26, 1993 TAG: 9302260054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WANTED: MORE MINORITIES ON BOARD
Lewis Peery had trouble counting all the community boards on which he's served."Oh, gee," he said. "I think about 13."
For years, a few black Roanoke Valley civic leaders have been the minority mainstays of nonprofit agencies.
Peery, a retired postal worker, has been on the boards of the YMCA, Goodwill Industries, Tinker Mountain Industries and many other organizations.
"People are tired of seeing us sitting on the same boards," said Claudia Whitworth, editor and publisher of the Roanoke Tribune and another popular board recruit who's black.
Everyone agrees: The Roanoke Valley needs more black people and other minorities on charity boards. The days of tokenism should be over.
Minorities account for fewer than 15 percent of members of boards of the United Way and its 36 affiliate agencies. Two-thirds of the boards have three or fewer minority members.
Furthermore, "few minorities occupy leadership or high-visibility positions on boards or policy committees," the United Way of the Roanoke Valley wrote in a grant application last year.
As of this week, 27 new black volunteers - most of them professionals in their 30s and 40s - stand ready to serve.
They completed a six-week, 15-hour training program put on by the United Way of the Roanoke Valley with a grant from the Ford Foundation.
The class covered the many aspects of board membership: fiduciary duties, effective presentation of ideas, fund raising - and all the thankless tasks required when you join a board.
If agencies recruit them, the civic workers could bring significant new influence to valley institutions. Race aside, they are one of the largest pools of specially groomed volunteers to come on the scene in a long time - maybe ever.
After a Tuesday night graduation ceremony at the Roanoke Civic Center, Crystal McCadden of Allstate Insurance Co. and other classmates gathered literature from among more than 20 charity booths set up to entice board members.
Other members of the "minority leadership enhancement" class came from Appalachian Power, Norfolk Southern Corp., Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Kroger Co., Coca-Cola Bottling Co. and other local offices.
Seasoned board members had warned the young volunteers not to spread themselves thin by joining too many boards.
"When your name first gets out there, you get on 100 of them and you don't do that well," said Marion Crenshaw, a United Way board member whose committee planned the training.
"You're going to get requests from everybody," H. Clarke Curtis of Hamlar & Curtis Funeral Home told them in class, and it's a lot of work. "Don't get on a board just for the prestige."
Veteran volunteers urged the young civic workers to shop around, find a cause they're drawn to and learn right away what will be expected.
Years ago, when he was about 20, Curtis was invited to join a board as its youngest member. Others had been on the board for decades. No one listened to his comments. "I still don't understand why I was on that board," he said.
Donnovan Young of Shenandoah Life Insurance Co., who helped plan the training, once belonged to six boards. Now he's on three. One of his previous board memberships was uncomfortable. "Nobody said anything to me," he said. "I felt really alienated."
Dana Martin, a human resources executive with Allstate Insurance, planned the class curriculum with Melinda Payne of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
Martin said he's noticed that some boards overlook potential minority members after they gain just one. "Once you get one," he said, "nobody thinks of getting another."
He hopes such tokenism, even if unintentional, is fading. Minorities are particularly needed on the boards of arts organizations at Center in the Square, he said.
United Way organizers were pleased that 50 black men and women signed up for the winter class - almost twice the number they could handle. They hope to add Hispanic, Asian or other minorities for a second class, perhaps in September.