If you haven't yet read our quick article about why board goals matter, start there.
Our six-step process will help you get your board's goals on track, quickly and easily.
You’ll create clear, measurable, realistic goals. And position your team to achieve them. With these six proven steps, your board can use your goals as your GPS to success.
Step 1: Align on your organization’s priorities
What are the most important things that your organization needs to do this year?
Priorities are what guide our goals. They’re not the goals themselves.
Your organization’s priorities are the big initiatives or efforts that your team needs to be most focused on in order to stay on track to meet and exceed your charter promises.
A priority for your organization might be to raise funds for technology. A goal to meet that priority might be for the Development Committee to raise $30,000 from individual donors.
Goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timebound [SMART] statements of how you will pursue your priorities.
We align on the organization’s priorities before the board’s priorities.
The charter schools that make good on their charter promise are crystal-clear about the most important things they need to tackle each year — their priorities.
And the best charter school boards help meet their charter promises by proactively working to support those priorities.
So, once you know what the organization needs to accomplish each year, you can decide what the board will focus on for its annual priorities.
Note: Your board’s priorities won’t necessarily be identical to the organization’s priorities.
For example: As a board, you’ll set priorities each year to help ensure your governance capabilities evolve alongside the organization’s needs. The organization’s priorities might be to close the achievement gap, improve college readiness, and grow a high-functioning teaching staff. Although having a strong board isn’t necessarily stated explicitly within those priorities, it is an implicit need. (More on that later.)
Your organization’s priorities are led by your charter promises.
The CEO and the board work together to decide what your organizational priorities are for the year ahead, in order to meet or exceed the promises in your charter and/or strategic plan.
Dig into the rich knowledge and expertise that comes from your charter contracts and strategic planning documents. (If you’re a BoardOnTrack member, these will all be easy to find in your Documents dashboard.)
Look at where you need to be by the end of your current charter. Decide what that means for this year.
For example, your charter petition might’ve promised that you would engage and grow competent and experienced school leadership and staff. That might make this year’s priorities hiring senior staff, or providing staff with training and development.
Or, your strategic plan might set the goal of opening a second school in order to increase the number of grades and students served. So, establishing the funding for a new building is a priority for this year.
With your organizational priorities for this year in place, you’ll be ready to determine the board’s role in addressing those priorities. That’s the next step.
Step 2: Decide your board’s priorities
With your organization’s priorities for this year in place, you’re ready to determine the board’s role in addressing those priorities.
The board and the CEO play unique roles in contributing to the organization’s priorities.
You might set an organizational priority to expand academic programming.
To support this, the board might make fundraising among individual donors a priority for this year and will set specific goals to meet that priority.
The CEO might make it a priority to solicit funding via grants and other institutional sources, and so will have specific goals to meet towards that priority.
As a team, decide exactly how your board will contribute to your organization's priorities.
But first: What kind of board do you want to be? And what kind of board are you...really?
Most boards think they’re pretty good. But a board is more than a group of well-meaning volunteers. It’s a strategically assembled team with the time, temperament, and experience to govern a multimillion-dollar public enterprise.
As you decide how you’ll contribute this year, be honest with yourselves about your board’s real impact to date, and align on what you want it to be.
To decide where you want to go this year, start by understanding where you are. Ask yourselves: What difference has your board made this year for your school?
This question can be especially eye-opening if this is your board’s first try at setting goals.
Without goals, you can easily become a board that’s far more certain of your good intentions than you are of your real accomplishments. And even with goals, real impact only comes with an honest assessment of your progress.
Assess your board’s value, honestly and without judgment. Reflect, discuss, then decide to act.
Get on the same page about what kind of impact you have had, and what kind of impact you want to have.
What has the board accomplished to date? What impact have you made as a board?
Without the board, what would be different for your organization?
Every trustee should do this deep reflection on their own, before holding an honest discussion together as a governance team.
How do you want to evolve as a board this year?
Is your board equipped to contribute to the organization’s priorities?
What tools and professional development opportunities will help you serve your organization even better?
Too often, boards are left out of professional development plans. But it doesn’t have to be this way. (And it shouldn’t!) Each year, set priorities that commit your team to boosting your governance capabilities as a team. That’s how you scale the path to excellence.
Use the power of data-driven governance to make the hard conversations easier.
If you’re a BoardOnTrack member, use the BoardOnTrack board assessment tool to get a sense of your board’s strengths and areas to improve. This data is the springboard to creating your board’s goals.
If you’re not yet a member, you can still find your place on the path to excellence and use our proven processes to see how to improve. In addition to the priorities that link directly to the work of the organization, prioritize your board’s development. Your governance capabilities must evolve alongside your organization’s needs.
You might begin to realize that you don’t have the right people, skills, or structures in place to meet your priorities. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to structure for success.
Step 3: Structure for success
The most common reason boards allow their goals to fall through the cracks is simple and solvable: not having the structure in place to get the right things done.
To meet {and exceed!} your board’s goals, you’ve got to be structured for success.
That means forming the right committees, composed of the right people, doing the right work.
Each board goal needs to have a committee to champion it.
Each committee will be strategically formed with the right trustees, a senior staff member to provide expertise, and potentially non-voting board member[s] who bring special skills.
This is essential to maintaining momentum and keeping the goal top of mind for the full board.
Establish all of the committees needed to cover the board work represented by each key priority.
Most charter school boards need the following committees:
- Finance
- Governance
- Development
- Academic Excellence
- CEO Support & Evaluation
Strategically assign the right trustees to the right committees.
Each committee needs the right people, with the right skills and talents for the work, along with a chair ready to lead that committee.
Assign trustees to committees that fit their expertise and interests.
Include a C-suite level staff member on each committee, who can provide support, expert guidance, and air traffic control.
Depending on the size of your organization, your CEO might be the senior staff resource for every committee. That’s especially the case during the founding years. But that’s a lot for one person.
As the organization evolves, the staff representation on each committee will branch out beyond the CEO. A development person would be a partner to the Development Committee. A CFO or business manager would be a partner to the Finance Committee.
Strong board officers are vital to keeping the team on track.
You must have officers in place -- with clear job descriptions -- to provide the board with direction and leadership. (Download our board officers job descriptions.)
What if you don’t have the right people, or the right structure, to manage your priorities?
Your board’s composition and structure might be the start of your first goal[s].
Your Governance Committee will set goals to recruit the right people, or to structure the right committees to get the right work done.
With your organization’s priorities defined, your board’s priorities set, and your structure for success in place, you’re ready to set the goals that will allow you to meet your priorities.
Remember, priorities are what guide your goals. Goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound [SMART] statements to which you hold yourselves accountable.
As you’ll soon see, with your organizational priorities clear, the work for the full board, for each committee, and for the management team, will begin to become clear.
Step 4: Build your board’s goals
Congratulations! You’re nearly halfway through the BoardSavvy method to setting and achieving your board’s goals. You’ve completed the pre-work to setting your board’s goals:
- Align around your organization’s priorities
- Decide your board’s priorities
- Structure your team for success
You’re now ready to build your board’s goals.
Apply the SMART goals framework to your board.
SMART goals are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound.
Your SMART board goals will be:
- Specific about the details on how the goal will be accomplished, including these five Ps: who, what, when, where, and why.
- Measurable in that you know how you’ll prove you accomplished what you set out to.
- Attainable, even while being appropriately aspirational. You’ve got a very real job to do as the governing board for this school. The outcomes promised to kids and families are real. The results the board delivers must be as well.
- Relevant to the organization’s and board’s priorities, which roll up to the promises made in your charter.
- Timebound to deliver results by a set date. Charter school governance comes with a special urgency. Each student has just these few and precious years. There’s no time to waste.
Each committee will translate the organization’s and board’s priorities into board goals.
Your committees are where the real work happens. Committee goals, rolled up together, fully articulate how the board will add value to the organization this year.
For each organization-level or board-level priority that merits board work, a committee is assigned to develop SMART goals that define how the board will contribute.
Some of the organization’s priorities might represent a shared focus between the board and the CEO. Some might be exclusively for the CEO. In most cases, the committees’ goals should complement the CEO’s goals.
In committee meetings, you’ll take those big, nebulous, high-level priorities assigned to you, dig into the weeds with the help of staff expertise, and draft goals to be finalized with the board and CEO.
And, often, multiple committees will contribute in different ways to a single priority.
Consider both operational and aspirational goals.
Operational goals are typically tied to the operational elements of your organization that happen year after year. They’ll include conducting an annual audit, approving state-mandated policies, signing off on the monthly financials and other foundational elements that your organization will do year over year. Many of these will directly tie to your charter agreement.
Your aspirational goals are often the things the organization will get to once they’ve effectively achieved the operational goals. Aspirational goals may span the course of several years.
If your board is just starting out, and especially in the first few years, it’s ok to be focused almost 100% on the operational. In fact, we recommend it. Over time, your board will evolve. You’ll go from focusing on the operational and reactive day-to-day business of being a board, to having freed up the time and mental space to think big.
Here’s a real-life example to follow. Let's say your organization’s priority is to add a new school.
This year’s organizational priority might be to acquire a building in order to have a place for that new school. What will the board do to help make that happen?
The Development Committee’s goal might be to raise $30,000 from individual donors to come up with the funds necessary to make that facility happen. But this priority takes more than funds.
There will be interdependencies between the Academic Committee, the Development Committee, and the Finance Committee.
The Finance Committee will manage the financial requirements.
The Academic Committee will be highly involved in seeing that the new building supports the academic outcomes that you’re seeking.
The Fundraising Committee will likely be tasked with the significant role to
Before they’re finalized, the committees’ goals will be brought to the full board for approval. And that brings us to step 5.
Step 5: Discuss & approve your board’s goals
Your full governance team has a role to play in understanding and approving your board’s goals.
Allow your CEO time to participate in each committee’s goal-setting process, as well as the full board’s conversation.
Ideally, each committee includes the CEO or a member of their leadership team. Still, your CEO will need time to talk with each committee about their goals.
Each board goal should ultimately further your mission. So, it's vital that your CEO knows what the goals are, what’s expected of them, and has the chance to provide you with their expert advice.
Ensure that your board, as a whole, understands and approves the committees’ goals.
It's important that the whole team understands and agrees with the goals each committee has put forth.
To affirm your commitment, you’ll hold an official vote and approval of both sets of goals -- board and management. We're focusing here on the board goals process.
To be sure this is done thoroughly, plan time for a deeper strategy session or full board retreat to review your goals in depth, away from the distractions of day-to-day business. Getting the team aligned at the outset will make implementation much smoother.
Double-check for any interdependencies; discuss how you’ll coordinate efforts.
What interdependencies has your board already identified? Are there any you’ve missed?
Where are the connection points between each committee’s goals or areas of expertise?
When you reconvene the full board to discuss the committees’ goals and plans, check for interdependencies. Talk about how you're going to handle them.
Most organizational priorities will take the coordinated efforts of multiple committees -- like the school expansion example we gave in step 4.
When you’re ready to get to work, the key is to stay on track to make an impact. And that’s what we'll show you in step 6.
Step 6: Get to work & stay on track to make an impact
Planning is only as good as the action that follows it.
Setting your board goals is a vital first step. But the point is to actually achieve them.
No matter how big and audacious your goal is, the answer to achieving it is the same: one task at a time.
When we define our tasks, then get realistic about the time they’ll require and the resources we'll need, we gain momentum and we just keep rolling.
Here, we’ll show you how to break each board goal into specific tasks and keep the work on track.
Too many people skip this step. And it’s why their board goals don’t translate into results.
By working backward from two key milestones, you can create an action plan that defines and assigns every step along the way.
For each board goal, start by asking yourself:
- By when does this goal need to be achieved?
- When do we need to vote on it?
When you know the milestone votes that your board will take in order to stay on track with your goals, you can build your entire year’s meeting calendar and agendas based on that information.
Consider when committees will need to vote, and whether there will be any other strategic touchpoints along the way.
Then, you can time trustees’ tasks to coincide with those votes and agendas, ensuring you always get the right work done at your meetings because the right work was done in preparation.
To be clear, those tasks are assigned to individuals — not a committee or the board as a whole. Remember, when setting goals, it’s important to be as specific as possible.
Your action plan ensures your board isn’t reliant on the heroic efforts of one or two people.
We often find a couple of cape-wearing superheroes on a board; people who seem to carry an outsized load, or feel like they do. This is especially common when you don’t have the tools to transparently assign and track your tasks.
Those trustees, the ones your board relies on heavily, will end up burning out. And we all lose out on the contributions of these stellar, exceptional trustees.
But, when what each person is responsible for is clear, people can ask for help when they need it. And others can offer to pitch in with help with their own skills, talents, connections, or interests.
Your action plan might even reveal that you don’t have all the right people, in the right roles, to get the right work done. If so, your Governance Committee will be in the lead to solve the problem. They’ll establish goals to recruit trustees or non-board members to ensure those tasks get completed.
What gets measured is what gets done. Measure your progress — and your results.
Transparency, accountability, and visibility are vital to your governance team’s ability to meeting {or exceeding!} your goals.
Use a dashboard to track committee goals and individual task assignments, all in one place.
Review your dashboard at every board and committee meeting.
There’s no shame in calling up your board goals at every meeting. When each committee’s update is driven by each goal, you have full transparency from the board to the CEO to each trustee as to the progress you’re making, and who's actually doing what.
The visibility of a dashboard ensures follow-through.
Each of your trustees is a busy volunteer who wants to do the best they can.
But, we’ve all been that volunteer who agrees to take on a number of tasks for your committee, with all the best intentions. Your meeting adjourns, you go back to your busy life, and those tasks are suddenly not top of mind...until the next meeting.
One board member’s missed deadline can derail the month — or the whole year.
BoardOnTrack’s goals dashboard makes it easy to organize goals by committee, organize tasks by goal, and make your progress visible to the whole team.
Tracking your progress ensures you make strategic use of trustees’ time.
Even the best best of boards, who meet monthly, likely only meet 10 times per year (allowing for the holidays and summer downtime). You’ve got 10 meetings, at two hours per meeting. That’s 20 hours together to achieve your goals and govern a multimillion-dollar public enterprise.
You do not have time to waste on distractions, on getting back up to speed after last month’s meeting, or on revisiting your priorities because something new caught someone’s attention.
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