Hello nonprofit CEOs, I'm thrilled to provide
you with a guide to board orientation. Why do a board orientation? It's one of the key ways to
engage your board members when they first join, and if you have the opportunity, you
can do it with current board members so everyone gets a refresh on some of
the key highlights in your nonprofit. What we have is a 90-minute, fast-paced,
interactive, but logical board orientation. Let's get started. We begin with a welcome
and introduction. Ideally,
your board chair will do the welcoming, and you will handle the
introductions by pairing up people and having them share why they said yes to serving on the
board. Why am I doing this so early? This is kind of a classic move because I want your board
members to know someone else and begin to have a relationship with them before they're under a
stressful situation in a future board meeting. Step number two: revenue streams. This
may feel illogical to your board members, but it's perfectly lo
gical to anyone who's
been around nonprofits. How nonprofits are funded is critical, and it will be part
of what happens in every board meeting. This segment is ideally done by either your
financial person or your development staff, to share what your income streams are
now and where you would like them to be because if mission is the heart of
your nonprofit, revenue is its blood. The third step is a history lesson, a
look back so you can move forward. Invite a new staff member or perhaps
a newer board
member to go ahead and share the history of the organization. They're going to pull out
three to five points about what's happened, how did you get here, when were you founded,
key leadership changes, again to help your new board members recognize that there's been a
lot of work done to get you to where you are, and there's some interesting history
to build on for your future strengths. Step number four is the legal framework. Invite
your board chair to share your government-
earning documents, where are your bylaws. Maybe they'd
want to share or she'd want to share some of the things that they look at a lot. Again,
this is to give people a key overview of how you're structured but also to say, hey,
there are these documents that we use. This is a reference point for you, and here's
how to get into them if you have a question. So, the CEO leads step number five. It's the
strategy and the organizational chart. So, from your legal work, you're now in the
present,
talking about how your strategy does, how you organize all the complex things
that you have to do into action steps, and then even more into what does that look like.
The organizational chart shows a visual layout of how the organization is functioning now. You also
want to share a list of the responsibilities and roles of the board. This is a place anywhere
in the orientation is to slow down and spend some time so some of the concepts sink in, and
board members begin to understand how the
y're going to interact, how they're leading the
organization, setting its policy and strategy, how they are both insider roles and outsider roles
able to see what's happening in the community around them and then bring that back, how they
can help bring new people into your organization. So, it's a great place in the orientation
to just have everyone settle in and do some thinking. After all that thinking, it's time to
bring your board in step seven on a tour of the organization. Ideally, t
his is a physical
walkthrough where they can see different programs. Staff members can show them what they're
doing and how the program works. Introduce them to more staff who are on-site. What you want to
do is give your board a sense of what it works, how your programs are actually happening.
And when that tour is done, you're going to do appreciation and remembering
who you are and what you're doing. The appreciation is thanking your new members
and anyone who helped with the orientatio
n, talking about your excitement about what's
coming and the work you're going to be doing, and finally ending with a
remembrance, the mission story, something that happened perhaps in the
last week that changed someone's life. You've just gone through a great
orientation to help new board members and anyone else who helped to get
a refresher about what it is to serve as a board member in this organization and
how their gifts are valuable and needed. If you want more, there's a toolkit abo
ut
board orientation that works for you, whether you are one-on-one with the board
meeting or able to do the one I've just described. The goal is to help you quickly
orientate your board members. There are letters of invitation, supply lists, and other
ideas of how to actually do this orientation, all available for you. Let's build
stronger, more engaged nonprofit boards. Thank you for the work you do
serving in the nonprofit sector and for helping your board members to
lead and be the he
roes for all of us.
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