Kindling Board Trust

How well do you know your fellow directors apart from what you see and hear from them in your work together as a board? Possibly not well. This post is about increasing our familiarity with one another with the goal of building trust around the board table.

One often thinks about trust in the non-profit governance context as being about the relationship between the board and the CEO. Trust amongst board members is important too. Indeed, trust is increasingly important as boards strive to be demographically and culturally more diverse.

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Do we need a motion for that?

Have you ever been uncertain about whether an item to be decided by your board requires a formal motion?  Perhaps your board flirts with some version of “Robert’s Rules” even though no one really knows them? Maybe your board follows past practices with respect to making motions with no idea of where the procedures came from, or what could be improved. If any of this is true, you are in good company.

You might be surprised to know that here is no universally accepted or prescribed set of procedures that non-profit boards must follow in their deliberations and decisions. Yes, there are a set of meeting procedures many people have heard of called Robert’s Rules, but that is not where I am going here.

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