Board Leadership Practices That Every Non-Profit CEO & Executive Director Need to Enforce [Video]

As the CEO or Executive Director of an NPO it’s your responsibility to enforce best leadership practices with your board. To help, there are five specific areas to optimize and report out to GuideStar that result in strong confidence regarding the governance of your organization. Watch today’s Monday Money Moments video for more (and skim the transcript below).

Dana Miller (00:01): Hello, and welcome to Monday Money Moments with myself, your host, Dana Miller from Executive Financial Insights.

(00:09): This week’s topic is an interesting one because it is about board leadership practices. And why would we be talking about that with CEOs? Well, as the CEO of a nonprofit organization, you’re in the unusual position of usually hiring your own bosses or bringing them into the fold and then making sure that they’re trained and making sure you have a good rapport with them. And then of course doing the same with your own staff, but let’s stick with our best board leadership practices.

(00:47): There is an organization, there are a couple of them, but GuideStar is one that monitors how well nonprofit organizations do with respect to board leadership practices. There are five areas that they have very specific questions on. So we’ll review those here, just so you know that you need to be paying attention to this and on top of it, so you can report out to GuideStar and then engender confidence in the governance of your organization.

(01:20): So we will start with:

Board orientation and education

Do you conduct a formal orientation for your new board members and you require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding what their roles, responsibilities and what your expectations of them are.

(01:46):

CEO oversight

Does the board conduct a formal written assessment of you, the chief executive, and do they do so on an annual basis? And then do they evaluate your pay and benchmark in the marketplace? And some of these questions are actually also asked on the IRS 990 tax returns. So answering in the affirmative of these will give more credence to your organization.

(02:19):

Ethics and transparency

Have you and the board and the senior staff reviewed the conflict of interest policies of the organization and completed and signed off on disclosure statements of any conflicts of interest or lack thereof in the past year.

(02:43):

Board composition

Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought in leadership? So you don’t just want a bunch of, yes, people surrounding you. You want people to engage in dialogue for furthering the organization and maybe have some dissenting opinions because that’s how we all grow.

(03:14): And finally

Board performance

Has the board conducted a formal written self assessment of its performance within the past three years. Again, this is for their benefits and for the benefit of the organization; we do not just want yes people. And we don’t just want people that show up to check a box. We want them engaged. Most board members do attend and join your board because they have a passion for your mission and for your organization. So we want them to participate and engage and they need to acknowledge and evaluate that participation.

(04:01): So those are our big topics of board leadership. And for more information, please visit me at www.executivefinancialinsights.com. Thank you.