Board Booster
Board Development for
Nonprofits & Foundations
Want your board to work better?
Board Booster prepares your board for lift-off.
Does your board…
- Spend meetings checking email, stepping out for phone calls or otherwise distracted?
- Listen to updates, then rubber stamp management plans without challenging or enhancing them?
- Focus only on fiduciary responsibilities?
- Lend their names, but not full talents, skills, experience and expertise?
- Have limited exposure to the true status and challenges facing the organization?
- Advance personal agendas over organizational priorities?
- Lack the trust necessary among directors or between directors and CEO/executive director to lead effectively?
Then, you need Board Booster
Leadership Transition
New CEO or executive director? New board chair? Transitions are perfect times to revisit culture, norms and operating agreements using Board Booster.
Weathering Storms
Board Booster helps when culture isn’t healthy, board-management tensions are high, or the board isn’t satisfied with its own performance.
Improving Progress
When your board appreciates the value of ongoing learning and development, Board Booster adds the strategy and proactive approach for tangible progress.
Preparing for Growth
The board that got you here may not be the board to get you there. Use Board Booster to build the board you need for the future you want.
With Board Booster, your board becomes…
- Fully engaged and fully leveraged to advance your mission
- Ready to ask tough questions and engage in strategic and generative thinking
- Strong partners for the CEO or executive director
- Collaborative leaders to realize your vision of the future
- Effective advocates and promoters for your mission
- Owners of their work and its wider outcomes
- The “shot in the arm” your organization needs to grow
Board Booster Services
Meeting Makeovers to diagnose your board meeting mistakes and offer “fixes” that increase effectiveness and efficiency
Mind the Gap Assessment for individual and collective performance + tools and action plans to close the gaps
Board Chair-CEO coaching
Recent Board Development Clients
Case Study: JF Maddox Foundation
In 2015, the JF Maddox Foundation, a New Mexico-based family foundation, began to transition governance to the third generation and transition more day-to-day responsibility to staff. This change came after decades of leadership and foundation management by second generation members. The Foundation held a board retreat in 2018 to address the natural growing pains and delegation challenges associated with this leadership transition.
The Foundation hired CSR Communications to design and facilitate the three-day board retreat. Effective retreat design included understanding the history and current status of the Foundation; interviewing staff, directors and emeriti directors; and balancing a long list of desired outcomes with the available timeframe.
The Board left the retreat with a working set of board norms; new language, processes and tools to enhance board meeting effectiveness; deeper understanding of and appreciation for staff; and a commitment to engage in strategic planning to move them forward.
Nancy’s work with us – from designing and facilitating our board retreat to coaching me on effective board leadership and offering specific tips for better meeting management – is concrete, productive and innovative. She supports practical solutions that have created a real breakthrough in our communication as a board. As a result, our meetings are more effective and efficient. With her new frameworks for governance and decision-making, we continue to improve and solidify as a board.
