The Self-Assessment of Boards is a crucial board function that offers an excellent platform for analyzing and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of governance. It is a way for the board to take a step back and evaluate its own effectiveness, which can lead to improvements in governance.
Time, planning and engagement of board members are necessary for a successful board evaluation process. The first step in determining the scope is to identify the audience for the evaluation. It could be the whole board, a particular committee or individual directors. A good plan will also identify the method used to evaluate. Surveys, interviews or facilitated discussions are all common methodologies. Once the scope of the evaluation as well as the method used have been decided, it’s time to design and distribute questionnaires.
Some boards choose to conduct the assessment in-house while others engage a third party consultant. A third-party consultant can help ensure a thorough and impartial analysis, which is particularly important if your board lacks the time or the resources to conduct the evaluation on their own.
It is essential that board members review themselves. However it is equally important that nonprofit board portal software boards pay attention to the entire group. It is easy for nonprofit boards and their evaluation facilitators to become absorbed in evaluating individuals’ responses and not pay attention to the board as a whole.
A successful self-assessment can help boards clarify expectations, discover gaps in the board composition and align knowledge of the board with organizational strategy, address concerns of investors about turnover and diversity, and increase board procedures and practices. In a growing number of cases, public companies are disclosing the results of their board evaluations in their proxy statements.
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