Once the Governance Committee has successfully recruited new board members, it is important to put an equal amount of time into orienting them and keeping them continually engaged.
Board Orientation
Board orientation is essential. A new trustee will not automatically grasp the complexity of your organization. You will have to guide them through the history, current challenges, and the future direction of the organization. Typically, the Governance Committee organizes the board orientation with assistance from the board chair and CEO. You may find it useful to add several trustees at one time so that you can orient them together, and so that you avoid constantly catching new trustees up to speed.
Retaining Trustees
To keep strong trustees on your board, the single most important thing is to tighten-up your board meetings. Board meetings that continually engage strong board members typically last no longer than two hours, keep to the established agenda, and focus on strategic, future-facing issues, not minutiae.
Make sure that each trustee is engaged in meaningful work on behalf of the organization. Each board member should actively serve on a committee or contribute to another tangible project.
Provide opportunities for board members to participate in school activities. Coming in contact with the mission is key to staying engaged and passionate.
Conduct trustee evaluations to gauge board member satisfaction.
Conduct board retreats and outings so individuals develop rapport and feel comfortable challenging one another. This is key to a high-functioning Governance Team.
Task your Governance Committee with developing a simple annual board-building program (see tips and activities below).
Board Team Building Exercises
1. Guilt-Free Board Member Activity (see Guilt-Free Board Member sample)
- Trustees often lament that they don’t know what they're supposed to do month to month. On the other hand, CEOs wish their board members were doing more.
- Adapt the BoardOnTrack Guilt-free Board Member Expectation sample to your board’s needs.
- Make sure you have job descriptions with roles and responsibilities for the board, individual trustees, and officers.
- Come up with an easy way to chart progress towards actions/goals at each board meeting. BoardOnTrack's Board Goals Tracker is ideal for this.
2. Board Member Book Club
- We haven’t met a board yet that didn’t think they needed to do more fundraising. Buy each board member one or both of these books. They are fun, inspirational, and brief. Then have a 20 minute book club discussion at a board meeting.
Big Gifts for Small Groups: A Board Member’s 1-Hour Guide to Securing Gifts of $500 to $5,000, by Andy Robinson
Asking: A 59-Minute Guide to Everything Board Members, Volunteers, and Staff Must Know to Secure the Gift, by Jerold Panas
3. Read a provocative article:
Some great articles can be found at the excellent website www.Help4NonProfits.com. Look in their free nonprofit library for these and other articles.
- Riding the Horse the Way It Is Going
- Fundraising for Small Nonprofits
- Founders Syndrome
The Harvard Business Review also has great articles to use to propel board discussions.
4. Envisioning the Future
- Ask board members to think about what your organization will be like in twenty years. Pretend that you are a visitor to the future. You go to see your charter school(s). Write down what it looks like, what is happening there, who is there, etc. Then share your thoughts. Discuss how to create a bridge from where you are now to where you want to be. What is the role of the board in getting there?
5. Board Meeting Evaluation
- Evaluate your board meetings regularly.
- Rotate through the board with each board member taking a turn at evaluating the board meeting by sharing observations and feedback at the end of each meeting.
- Ask a few key questions:
- What did we do tonight to further our mission?
- How much of our time was spent reporting on the past vs. planning our future?
- Did we stick to the agenda?
- Was there equal participation by board members?
- Was this meeting effective? Why or why not?
- What could be done to improve the board meeting?
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