Building volunteer board alignment: What every leader should do

Board alignment is a make-or-break element of a charity or nonprofit’s success in achieving its mission. But does everyone on your board understand what alignment is, and is the board administrator fully prepared to foster alignment?

This was the discussion at a recent webinar, “Getting your nonprofit board on the same page”, which brought together experts to discuss strategies for achieving and preserving alignment, and how your mission-driven organisation can benefit.

Dottie Schindlinger, executive director of the Diligent Institute and founder of BoardEffect, talked with three experts, who shared their insights on this important topic. Watch the full discussion here, and read on for some of the highlights.

What are the benefits of board alignment?

Alignment for a board of directors means that all members share a common understanding of the organisation’s goals, values and strategic direction. It ensures they work as a team to support the organisation’s mission and community, leading to more effective decision-making, streamlining discussions and fostering a positive, collaborative environment.

On the other hand, a lack of alignment creates risk, causing delayed or poor decision-making, strained relationships, increased turnover of board members and staff and costs both financial and in inefficiency.

Strategies for supporting board alignment

Our webinar’s team of experts broke down key ideas in their discussion — here are just a few:

Establish definitions and roles

Webinar participant Michelle L. Christian is chief of staff of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Toronto and runs an equity informed governance consultancy that helps management and boards work together. She notes that “the biggest challenge I come across is that everyone says the words ‘strategy’ and ‘alignment,’ but no one defines them, so we all end up talking at cross purposes. I always define these governance terms because it helps with alignment, getting us common language, same-page, common meanings that we can interrogate and work through together.”

Diarmaid Ó Corrbuí, CEO of the Carmichael Centre for Voluntary Groups, a board chair network for charity and nonprofit chairs, says, “One thing I’ve seen boards do that’s quite effective, particularly for new board members, is to have a board buddy system for the first six months. I’ve been in that situation, where you’re not quite sure about the history or the context of a lot of the discussion and you may be reluctant to ask questions that might be very pertinent because you’re not sure what’s the history behind this. Having that board so you can have that offline discussion, whether over a cup of coffee or online or in person, it’s very, very, very helpful.”

Ready to transform your board and achieve greater alignment? Board administrators play a crucial role in fostering alignment, and can help create a more cohesive and effective board. In our practical guide to board alignment, you’ll discover four areas to focus on, to help your board get “on the same page” for operations, collaboration and the future. Download our board alignment guide now and start building a more effective and cohesive board.

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Distinguish operational from oversight functions

Hand-in-hand with understanding the role is understanding what the board shouldn’t be doing. Many an organisation has been hamstrung in function by a board taking on too much front-line responsibility.

Ó Corrbuí notes, “There’s an awful lot of pressure on the day-to-day running of the organisation that it begins to pull the board into operational focus rather than strategic focus. A lot of nonprofits are struggling with sustainability and funding, and those side issues sort of monopolise the board time, the board agendas. So it can be difficult to pull yourself back and ask you those critical questions about what are we here for, what are we trying to achieve, how do we know we’re making progress?”

Avoid mission creep

There are many reasons mission-driven leaders might be tempted to expand the scope of the mission — a key one being their greater understanding of community needs. But mission creep can conversely dilute an organisation’s effectiveness by diluting resources.

Symone Morales, Executive Director of OneGoal, a nonprofit supporting low-income students with post-secondary advising and support, says, “We’ve had a lot of challenges with working in the education funding landscape. It’s been a rough few years, post-pandemic. Because it’s been so challenging to create impact at scale, we’ve had conversations about changing what we do and how we operate, which can lead to mission creep.

“When I got into this position a couple of years ago, we were at a stalemate, and now we’ve finally broken through that. So we’ve had board members who’ve been on the board through that process, watching us be at a stalemate, pushing into mission creep, and then coming back and seeing what persistence looks like. It is so important because it can shatter confidence and then it creates a ricocheted effect where everyone on the board no longer is supporting in the way in which we would hope they would.”

Implement the right tools

Board alignment can be supported by the right tools — tools that can be implemented efficiently through board management software:

• The agenda, according to Christian: “I look at every agenda as a tool and a strategy. Out of the agenda flows the materials, and it’s a strategic opportunity to each time reorientate the board back to the common mission, to its level of governance.” She also uses the software for meeting prep and to check who has opened the book before the meeting and after. This allows her to hold board members accountable.
• The skills assessment, according to Morales: “Our board members are brilliant. They are brilliant humans with awesome connections and great vision, and oftentimes we don’t utilise them to the best of our ability because we don’t know everything they bring. I work with every board member to let them tell me, ‘What is it that you feel like your areas of expertise are and where do you feel like I’m not utilising you enough?’ I created a resource bank of those skills, I brought that to my leadership team and we started hand-picking, like, ‘Okay, in this quarter we’re going to be working with this board member to do these things because it’s filling a need that we don’t currently have on our team.’ So those are a few strategies that I’ve implemented in the past 10 months or so.”

Improving board alignment is possible, and it’s also necessary for your mission-driven organisation to succeed.

Find out more about board alignment by watching the full webinar. BoardEffect offers other resources such as board alignment guide and a board alignment cheat sheet.

Request a demo to see how we can help your board.