How to Build a Truly Engaged Board of Directors

Ask any executive director what keeps her up at night and after fundraising, she is likely to say her board. In a small number of cases, things are actively difficult and issues of mistrust or a lack of confidence between executive and board have escalated. But in far more cases, the persistent challenge is engagement. The executive may be asking: How do I get my board to take initiative? How do I get them to own with me the challenges and opportunities our organization faces? How do I help them feel useful? And yes, how do I get them to help me raise money? And how do I get them to do all of this more than once a year at our annual retreat?!

Of course committed Board Chairs and Governance Committee Chairs are also asking all of these questions. As volunteer leaders, how can they inspire board members to step up and engage as deeply as the organization needs them to? For many of us, it's time for a re-fresh. It's time to put in place and implement consistently a set of engagement strategies that are specific to nonprofit board dynamics and to your organization's own mission and culture.

Board experts Marla Cornelius and Vernetta Walker are back! If you missed it live, you have to watch their excellent two-part series on the unique role of the Board Chair; it's in your Leading Edge Membership library. In this session, they will cover:

1. What do we mean by board engagement? What are the expectations? The benefits?
2. What specific, actionable strategies can we implement to sustain engagement?
3. How can we design on-boarding processes, meetings, committees, and retreats that fuel engagement and accountability?
4. What are the roles of the executive director, the board chair, and other key actors in inspiring and supporting engagement?