We recently recorded an episode of the Nonprofit Radio Show about a common phrase in our sector: “We’re just a working board.”
It’s often said as a disclaimer to explain the reality of being a small nonprofit. But that phrase carries a hidden instruction. It tells board members what to pay attention to (the work) and what to skip (governance). Nobody decides that on purpose. The label decides it for them.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes System 1 as the fast, automatic, associative part of the mind—the part that hears a word and instantly, effortlessly, floods it with meaning before System 2, our slower and more deliberate thinking, ever gets involved. Say “working board” in a board training, and System 1 has already served up a picture of boards discussing operational issues. The word does the thinking.
This matters if you teach or lead people. An existing mental model doesn’t just sit quietly next to your content. It decides whether your content has anywhere to land. I can teach governance all day—oversight, accountability, leadership—but if the room is picturing “working board” as a synonym for operations, none of it has a place to go. My lesson gets filed under “not for us” before I’ve finished my second slide. I’m not adding information to their mental model. I’m competing with it, and the mental model was there first.
Many terms carry a mental model
A mental model is the picture we carry around in our heads to make sense of something too complex to hold in full.
ModelThinkers uses the old idea of a map and a territory to explain this: a map is never the actual land, only a simplified stand-in for it. The 1931 London Underground map is the classic example—it abandoned real geography entirely in favor of a clean diagram, and it worked so well that transit maps everywhere still copy it.
FrameWorks Institute has spent years studying this in the context of big social issues: the way an idea gets framed doesn’t just describe people’s understanding, it builds it. Framing shapes what people notice, what they think is possible, and what they believe is worth supporting. Change the frame, and you change what people are willing to do next.
So when a board calls itself a “working board,” that’s not neutral description. It’s a frame. And it’s quietly training people to picture task lists instead of leadership.
More examples
Once you start looking, the pattern shows up inside the sector and out:
- Overhead. Donors use the ratio of “overhead” to program spending as a stand-in for effectiveness. The term frames staff salaries, technology, and training as a tax on the “real” work, rather than the infrastructure that makes the real work possible—leaving us with the nonprofit starvation cycle where organizations underinvest in the very things that would let them do more.
- Advocacy. Say it to a room of nonprofit staff, and most minds jump to lobbying—something political, something risky. Funders often carry an even narrower version: the belief that a 501(c)(3) isn’t allowed to advocate at all. Neither is true.
- Learning styles. Ask any group of adults, and most will confidently name their style. Decades of research say the learning styles aren’t a thing—but the mental model is already installed. Believers quietly filter learning opportunities into “is this offered in my learning style or not?”
So what do we do with the words we’ve inherited
Start by noticing how people describe things—their board, their budget, or anything else. What words do they reach for automatically? Then ask them to unpack it: “When you say working board, what does that look like in your board meetings?” Let them describe the picture in their own words before you try to change it.
Then, rather than fighting the term, redefine it in front of them:
- “Yes, you’re a working board—and every working board is also a governing board. Let’s talk about what that means for how you spend your meeting time.”
- “Yes, you have core administrative costs, what used to be called overhead. Let’s figure out how you explain the value of these investments to funders.”
- “Yes, advocacy includes lobbying—and lobbying is legal within limits. But most of what counts as advocacy isn’t lobbying at all. Let’s talk about all of the ways you can build power and influence for your organization that have nothing to do with lobbying.”
- “Yes, you may have a learning preference. And preference isn’t the same as what actually helps you learn—so let’s bring in a balance of methods so everyone learns as much as possible.”
None of these responses erase the word. Each one keeps the map and adds back a piece of the territory it left out.
I didn’t choose the term “working board.” I can choose how to engage with it: name it, unpack it, and add back what it leaves out.