Board Development - moss + ross

Next Gen Board: Recruiting for a New Day
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Next Gen Board: Recruiting for a New Day

All Posts, From The Partners, Highlights from the Latest Newsletter

Next Gen Board: Recruiting for a New Day

By Susan Ross, Founding Partner. If your Board nominees look like mirror images of your current board, perhaps it’s time to try a new approach. Most of our nonprofit clients are actively seeking ways to embrace Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. A stated commitment to DEIB is a good step, but it needs to be followed by actions and outcomes. Nonprofit leaders need board members to be their trusted advisors on strategic questions. If your whole board has the same perspective or the same skillset, you won’t get the best guidance. Board members play important roles as ambassadors and outside eyes, for which you need multiple networks represented. Our clients tell us that they know their boards need new blood, but they don’t know how to find new people. Great candidates are all around us, but it [...]

DeniseT2022-11-06T09:43:56-05:00October 26th, 2022|All Posts, From The Partners, Highlights from the Latest Newsletter|

Advice for Engaging Boards
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Advice for Engaging Boards

All Posts, From The Partners, Special Topics

Advice for Engaging Boards

By Mary Moss Let’s look back at the last month, which seems like a year. Your first order of business was to make provisions to meet your mission even as you were shuttering your offices. Somehow, you had to go virtual administratively and also devise new ways to meet your constituencies’ needs. Then, in the flood of programmatic adaptations, you cancelled or postponed fundraising events, reached out to your donors and volunteers to check in, and pushed out some great annual fund appeals. You have done a terrific job. Now, what about your boards? The pandemic thrusts boards onto center stage to assess and reassess the risk that COVID-19 poses to the organization. Risk management will continue to be the number one focus during the crisis, with special attention directed to program delivery and finance. Yet there [...]

DeniseT2020-04-07T19:43:51-04:00April 7th, 2020|All Posts, From The Partners, Special Topics|

Succession planning: What can you do now?
Succession planning: What can you do now?

All Posts, Staffing, Strategic Planning

Succession planning: What can you do now?

While the departure of an executive director is not something that can always be planned, there are things that can be done along the way to ensure the organization is not crippled when this happens, because sooner or later, it will. Executive directors play such key roles representing an organization to all of its constituents. Often, he or she really is the face of what you do, so it’s not surprising that a departure can send waves of anxiety through an organization’s staff and board. Succession planning applies also to boards of directors. Many boards have a founding board chair who has become the driving force of the organization, functioning almost as staff. It is just as critical that the board members have a plan for what happens when that person wants to step down or cannot serve any longer [...]

moss+ross consulting firm2015-08-20T01:45:31-04:00August 20th, 2015|All Posts, Staffing, Strategic Planning|

Show your board some love

At this year’s AFP Philanthropy Forecast, held January 26, Mary Moss led a roundtable where participants discussed the importance of strong board leadership. As part of the conversation, Mary asked participants what was on their minds. The issue most cited was that board members did not have a full understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and therefore had unclear expectations for the staff, and vice versa. Suggestions to address this issue include the following: Present a written and up-to-date job description to each potential board member before joining the board so expectations are clear from the beginning; Plan a board orientation in the first months of a new board member’s tenure that involves staff and key board members; Ask the board chair to have one-on-one meetings annually with all board members as a way to check in to see what [...]

moss+ross consulting firm2020-02-21T18:26:10-05:00February 10th, 2015|All Posts, From The Partners, Fundraising Counsel|