How to Develop and Sustain an Effective, Engaged Nonprofit Board

Do you want to strengthen your board’s effectiveness and the relationship between your board and staff executive? Do you want your board and members to be vitally engaged and forge the best possible working partnership with staff to more fully achieve the organization’s mission? This workshop is for current and aspiring nonprofit staff executives and board leaders, including incoming board members, who want to learn and apply promising practices based on the latest research for making their boards even more effective and their staff-board relationships more productive and satisfying. It will also provide an opportunity for workshop participants to share with their peers the greatest challenges and successful strategies for strengthening board effectiveness. The learning activities will mix plenary presentation and discussion, panel presentation and question and answer with a diverse set of nonprofit leaders, and small, break out group discussions.
The workshop will address topics such as:
(1) the nonprofit board’s primary roles and responsibilities;
(2) promising practices and tips from the latest academic research on board development and effectiveness, from board composition, recruitment and on-boarding through engagement and leadership development to evaluation and renewal;
(3) a new model containing successful methods to determine the best working relationship for board and staff at the full board, committee, and individual member levels.
Instructor John McClusky is a consultant and educator of nonprofit leadership and has worked locally, nationally, and internationally with hundreds of NPOs and thousands of nonprofit leaders. He has trained and consulted with a vast range of nonprofit organizations on governance and boards. He was the founding director of UMSL’s NPML program. He is the recipient of numerous academic and professional awards, and an author of numerous publications on nonprofit organizational leadership, governance, effectiveness and capacity building.
The three panelists, Faith Sandler, Jessica Eiland, and Andrew Thorp represent a great diversity of nonprofit leadership in our region across different mission domains and sizes of organization, and all have extensive service as both executives and board leaders. They will present a rich variety of lessons learned and successful strategies and tips for building effective, engaged boards, as well as respond to workshop participants’ questions.