The decisions your board of directors makes not only influences your organization’s growth, but impacts how your staff does its job. When a board can’t function, it’s due to one or more of these issues. When these issues arise, it’s time to develop a plan for addressing them.
I’ve been increasingly interacting with board members in my consulting projects. I sit on a few boards myself. These experiences illuminated for me how difficult the nonprofit model can be, and how difficult it can be to make the key parts of a nonprofit–board, executive director, and staff–move smoothly like a wheel.
Speaking of wheels, I considered whether this blog post should focus on balance or on alignment. In fact, when I Googled “balance vs alignment”, I came across multiple articles around tires. This article explains the difference between tire balancing and tire alignment:
“It’s easy to get tire balancing and alignment confused. After all, they both sound like they would do the same thing. But in reality, they are very different services. In the simplest terms, tire balancing uses weights on your wheels to keep your vehicle from vibrating, while an alignment keeps all of your wheels pointing in the same direction for safety and performance.”
Within the context of boards of directors, individual and collective skillsets, networks, ability to fundraise and speak on behalf of your organization, and ability to choose the best leader to serve as executive director are the balance. Their personal identities and values, ability to engage with staff and other stakeholders, and ability to understand how their decision making impacts how staff are the alignment.
It can be a delicate process to develop a plan to increase balance and alignment within your board and between your board and staff, but with intention, commitment and support, it’s possible.
While there are some best practices for developing an maintaining a functioning board, let’s think about how you’d want your board to function. With your board, consider this prompt:
Ideally, our organization’s board of directors…
As you consider this, jot down the characteristics you’d like in your board members. Divide these characteristics into two categories: Board balance and Board alignment.
Board balance
It’s possible you’re thinking of the following:
- Individual member skillset
- Collective skillsets
- Professional networks
- Ability to fundraise
- Ability to govern (board orientation, ongoing professional development, etc.)
- Ability to speak on behalf of the organization (board orientation, understanding of organization programs and services, etc.)
- Ability to hire and routinely assess the leadership of the executive director
- Number of board members
- Active engagement (attend meetings, serve on committees, interaction between board members in between meetings, etc.)
- Updated board bylaws
- Term limits
- Dedicated documentation system(s) (shared drive to hold important documents, meeting minutes, etc.)
What else would you consider for board balance?
Board alignment
When it comes to alignment, you’re probably considering:
- Personal identities and values alignment
- Evidence of dedication to organizational mission
- Desire to engage with staff and other stakeholders
- Ability to assess how decision making impacts the executive director and staff
- Ability to step in to support executive director and staff, where needed
- Ability to lead strategic planing development and implementation
- Yearly board member personal assessment
What else would you consider for board alignment?
Assessment and planning
Now that you have your ideal board characteristics, create a process for assessing where your board currently is, how close or far away the current reality is from your ideal, and what action steps are needed to get closer to the ideal.
For example, let’s say your have 5 board members. You’d like to increase your board by 5 more members. You also want to increase the engagement of your current board members as they currently don’t meet with any level of frequency, they go extended periods without interacting with each other or with the executive director. Most boards would probably move towards recruitment. However, recruiting new board members without addressing how to increase engagement with current board members doesn’t lead to more board balance. Consider the following action steps:
- One-on-one conversations with each board member to determine if they want to remain as board members
- If they want to remain, discuss what’s needed to increase board participation (In this case, morale for the board may increase if there’s dedicated board meetings to attend and committees to participate in)
- During this increased engagement, get everything in order (board bylaws, board and organization orientation, shared document drives, professional development, etc.)
- After an established amount of time of frequent meetings and committee engagement, revisit the need for board recruitment
- If yes, determine the skillsets the board currently lacks, and the ideal characteristics of new board members
- Develop recruitment processes (application and submission, interviewing, selection)
It’s up to you how you document this, but I’d suggest a few ideas:
- Individual conversations with board members
- Anonymous end of year board survey
- Dedicated time during a board meeting to discuss openly, on some level of frequency (quarterly may work for you)
Key takeaway
Like the tires on a car, balance and alignment are both needed for an organization’s board of directors to govern successfully. Determine what your board needs for balance and alignment, and document the action steps needed to move towards progress.
Raise Your Voice: What does your board need for increased balance and alignment? Share below in the comments section.
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