Most of us are familiar with the concept of a nominating committee, the primary or perhaps only responsibility of which is to nominate new board members and officers for your organization’s board of directors. Typically, the process goes something like this:
A month or two before the annual meeting, the board chair asks for a small group of volunteers to put together a slate of nominees for the board. That group meets to come up with a short list of people they think would agree to serve by looking at their own personal list of contacts. Phone calls are made, simple expectations for board members communicated, and the group gets back together to see who said yes and who said no. If enough candidates said yes to fill the vacant slots, the list is forwarded to the full board, and then voted on at the annual meeting. A similar process is probably used to recruit officers from among the board, generally also elected at the annual meeting. Here ends the responsibility of the nominating committee.
This process gives short shrift to your organization’s need to create and maintain an involved, effective board with the skills and diversity necessary to advise staff on strategy and best practices for your service area. Imagine board and committee meetings where you can pose challenging questions about the overall direction, effectiveness and financial stability of your organization and consistently receive advice and counsel that is relevant and on point. If this kind of dynamic doesn’t sound like your board, I recommend the first place you look is your nominating committee.
The names nominating, governance and board development committee are often used interchangeably. Consider, though, the scope of the work implied by these names. The nominating committee nominates candidates for election. There is often no overarching strategy or planning involved, no assessment of the skills sets needed by the organization, and no long view of succession planning for leadership. A nominating committee is like failing to attend class all semester and cramming for the test the night before – you may pass the test but any long term retention of the information is probably accidental.
A governance committee gets a little closer to our ideal, in that the name implies some ongoing responsibility for monitoring board members’ performance against stated duties. However, often the strategic view of cultivating and recruiting new members to the board is missing.
The board development committee should, ideally, encompass all of these responsibilities. Its members should be carefully chosen from among members of the Board (this generally is not a committee where non-board members serve as volunteers). The responsibility of the board as whole is to set strategy, so the responsibility of the board development committee should include a strategic view of who is on the board, how members are recruited, what training and information members need to be effective, and how board members will be held accountable for their performance.
The following is a sample description of the a board development committee. It is fairly comprehensive, but I have used it for both large and small organizations. If your board is small, the duties of the board development committee can be combined with the executive committee until your board is large enough to support both standing committees.
Membership of the Board Development Committee shall consist solely of Directors of the Corporation currently in office. The Board Development Committee shall: (a) identify and evaluate candidates for election and re-election to the Board and recommend them for election; (b) identify Directors to serve as Officers and nominate them for election by the Board; (c) approve candidates recommended to serve as Ex Officio Directors; (d) assist the Board in developing a statement of expectations for individual Directors, including standards for committee service and financial support; (e) develop procedures for the cultivation and recruitment of new Directors, including an assessment of skills, expertise and diversity needed to provide strategic direction to staff; (f) create and implement an orientation program for new Directors; (g) consult with the President regarding committee assignments for Directors and other individuals; (h) monitor the procedure by which Directors annually identify and report known and potential conflicts of interest; (i) from time to time, recommend to the voting Directors amendments and revisions to the Articles of Incorporation and the Code of Regulations; (j) develop and implement criteria for, and conduct, annual evaluations of individual Directors and the Board as a whole; (k) engage in succession planning for Board leadership, especially the position of President, and make recommendations to the Board regarding the process and timing of leadership transitions; (l) keep informed of current and emerging best practices in the field of non-profit board governance and operation.
Next time, we’ll take a look at best practices related to the function of the Executive Committee.
