The 4 Critical Responsibilities of the Board

It would be helpful for this blog to include a list of critical Board responsibilities. Over the years I have tweaked what follows. The goal was to develop a short and sweet list that would be clearly understood by both Boards and not-for-profit staff. Here we go.

1. Determine "what" the organization will do (i.e. focus on the future).
2. Establish policies (the rules) that clearly define who does what, and hold people accountable for complying with those policies.
3. Recruit, hire and monitor the performance of the Chief Staff Officer (Executive Director, General Manager, President or CEO).
4. Focus on Board renewal (recruit, evaluate and monitor the performance of the Board as a whole and individual Board members).

We'll explore each of these elements in the coming weeks.