Board Self-Assessment is one of the key leadership habits that well-performing nonprofit boards employ to ensure the long-term success of their governance. It requires the board to take a break from their day-to-day activities and reflect on its effectiveness. This allows the board members to resolve issues that might otherwise cause tension and frustration.
There are a variety of ways to conduct a self-assessment for your board, ranging from surveys and interviews to facilitated discussions. The best approach will depend on the size of your board, the resources available and the depth you’d like to add to the assessment.
If you choose to conduct the assessment be sure to establish the goals of the assessment. For example, do you seek to improve governance, match governance with goals of the organization, or enhance accountability? Once this is determined you can choose an evaluation tool.
Certain tools let you analyze your results against other health facilities and hospitals, while others focus solely on your company’s governance practices. Whatever you decide to use it is essential that the tools you use are impartial and don’t call out director individuals. This will create a secure environment for honest feedback.
A lot of boards employ a peer-review procedure, which requires directors to rate each other. This can be a useful and efficient procedure, but it’s crucial that the process remains secret. Certain directors might be hesitant to criticize a director for fear of repercussions. In this scenario it’s usually better to have a facilitator go External Communication Policy through all of the comments and determine which information is relevant to share with the board.