As with any committee, your Governance Committee’s work should be organized around goals and tasks.

One of your committee’s primary goals might be to:

Create a board policies manual.

To ensure you meet that goal, you might assign specific committee members the following tasks:

1. Research required policies for charter school boards in our state
2. Cross-reference with our authorizer
3. Investigate sample policies to bring us into compliance
4. Committee makes recommendations to the whole board for adoption

Here's an example for setting a goal to increase the board's diversity.

Board membership should reflect the broadest level of ethnic, racial, gender, and geographical diversity. The diversity of board members heightens the credibility of the board in the broader community’s eyes.

BoardOnTrack is built to help boards be conscious about their trustees’ diversity. The Members Report highlights age, ethnicity, and gender.

Having data to help guide your conversation about diversity can make the conversation easier and much more productive. Instead of just focusing on opinions or assumptions, you can ask yourselves and each other the following questions. And answer them with data:

• What does the report tell us about the current levels of diversity on our board?
• How does our current board makeup align with our organization’s mission and vision?
• How does our current board composition align with our student population, service area, and broader community?

With this information in hand, you can set inclusive recruiting goals, like this one:
By {month and year}, we will have a sustainable governing board of 11-15 diverse trustees who bring the needed skills to the board to ensure effective governance.

Here's another example, looking farther into the future.

Say your board has committed to reaching these goals in the next three years:

1. By June 2021 have a sustainable governing board of 11-15 diverse trustees who bring the needed skills to the board to ensure effective governance.
2. Develop enough bench strength so that the board can create and sustain a succession planning process for officers, committee chairs and trustees.

This year's Governance Committee goals might be:

1. Expand the board by 2 trustees by December and by an additional 2 trustees by May with the prioritized skills of human resources, fundraising and finance.
2. Add at least one non-board member to each committee by January.
3. By January, have board-approved written job descriptions for each officer position and
   each committee.

For that first goal, your Governance Committee might define and assign these tasks:

 What's more, your CEO's governance-related goals might be:

1. By September, documented the role of senior staff in supporting each board committee, and ensure that each committee is properly staffed.
2. By December, assist committee in developing an onboarding and new trustee orientation process

Updated October 21, 2024 17:50