On November 15, National Philanthropy day, we sat down with board governance and engagement expert Kim Donahue to discuss “Powerful Board Accountability, without the Struggle.” Kim was a director at United Way of Central Indiana for over a decade. In addition, she has served on several nonprofit boards and is currently working as a consultant in board development and relationship building. She has over thirty years of nonprofit employee, board member, and consultant experience.
What We Discussed
Board accountability is a broad subject, so what does it actually mean? We explored the symptoms of poor board member accountability, as well as treatment:
- What is board accountability? We discussed what board members are actually responsible for, and how to educate them on their responsibilities. You can’t expect them be accountable, if they don’t know what is expected.
- How do you assess the quality of your board’s accountability? Kim knows the symptoms of poor accountability, and how the effects can be pervasive throughout an organization. We examined ways to quantify engagement and set goals for accountability
- What causes board accountability issues in the first place? Ideally a board starts out with everyone engaged and following through on their commitments, so why do things go south? We looked into the warning signs that a change of course is needed.
- How can you effectively correct lack of accountability? It isn’t easy to turn a board of individuals around, but Kim had some simple and actionable tips for bringing everyone back to a good mindset.
- Can accountability problems be prevented? If your organization is in a good place (or you have made improvements using Kim’s tips), we talked about how board accountability can be preserved and strengthened, heading off the possibility of future disengagement.
Additional Board Accountability Webinar Content
During this event, we introduced an important research tool related to board accountability. We are launching a four-minute (ten question) survey about board engagement, and we would appreciate your input. This brief questionnaire will capture your role in relation to a board of directors, the level of engagement you currently perceive, and your thoughts on what would improve board member engagement at your organization. Please consider sharing this link with any other nonprofit board members, staff, consultants, or volunteers that you know. We will be conducting another webinar in December, with experts weighing in on the results of the survey. Stay tuned!
New at Boardable
At the midway point of the webinar, we debuted our newest software feature release. We have created a Minutes Maker and Task Manager that will make board meeting documentation a breeze. The minutes maker pulls directly from the agenda created for the meeting, allowing the administrator to make notes of meeting discussion, votes, and action items as they unfold. In addition, the Task Manager makes it simpler than ever to assign to-dos to specific people. The tasks will show up on each individual’s dashboard, as well as on the account admin’s interface. We showed a brief demonstration of these features in the board accountability webinar.
Interested in how to make your board of directors more productive through the effective use of technology? Boardable is a software platform that centralizes all communication between you and your board. Find the best meeting times, securely store all of your documents, archive discussion threads and more—all in one place. Click below to schedule a demo with a member of our Boardable team.
