Welcome Aboard: Best Practices for Board Member Onboarding

Synopsis
Maintaining organizational health at the board level requires a sound and coherent governance model. Within that model you must have a well-considered process for onboarding new board members. Your organization is always one rotation of new board members away from neglecting your governance model. This eventually leads to your board losing sight of their purpose and abandoning healthy processes. Avoid this by fully onboarding every new board member. 

Article
Tim Kurth, Vice President, Ministry Solutions at LCEF, provides insights on best practices for onboarding new board members. 

It is good, right and salutary that your board turn over membership on a regular basis. I’m often asked about appropriate board terms. My advice is no more than three years and, if absolutely necessary, the option of two consecutive terms. My preference would be to avoid that option. I once served in an organization that turned over leadership every six months. To keep this organization viable, we needed to have a strategic and well-developed onboarding practice. Each time a new leader took office I advised him or her to begin looking for the person who would succeed them in the role.  

For this to work, there was a keeper of the model who insisted the organization stay faithful to the model. Nowhere is this approach of mindful succession, intentional onboarding and fidelity to the model more important than with your organization’s board of directors (by whatever title it’s called). The Principles Based Governance model is elegant, flexible, coherent and challenging to maintain. This is because it is unfamiliar. Familiar board behaviors have proven unsatisfying, incomplete, frustrating and confusing. Principles Based Governance brings clarity, purpose and discipline to your board. Discipline, above all, requires intentionality and focus. 

This brings us back to onboarding and term limits. Entrenched board members have a tendency to get stuck in historical patterns that may or may not be helpful for ministry success. Also, turning over board members on a three-year cycle allows new voices and new perspectives to inform the board and direction of the ministry. However, the governance model is the mechanism through which new board members are constrained from going rogue or coming to the board to pursue a personal agenda. A healthy governance model faithfully followed, repels those with counterproductive agendas. Start with the recruitment process and fully explain the model, the purpose of the board and the limitations of the board. This is step one in qualifying candidates for the board. Those who don’t like the model will, most likely, withdraw from consideration. 

Once elected, new board members should have a bibliography of governance materials to read prior to the first meeting. This would include the most current version of board policies. Additionally, any other tutorials (videos, podcasts, etc.) about the governing model that would help the new member understand is advisable. Finally, and this goes beyond onboarding, the entire board should engage a governance expert once a year to evaluate the board’s fealty to the model and to provide a refresher on governance best practices.  

When your governing board takes these steps, you will find people enthusiastic to join the board. You’ll also enjoy a board that is advancing your work and benefitting the mission of the organization.

Learn more about Principles Based Governance from LCEF and our Governance Systems Professional, Tim Kurth. Email him at tim.kurth@lcef.org and schedule a visit.