How to Conduct a Board Self-Assessment
Board Self-Assessment offers a means 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 in turn leads to effective governance improvements.
Developing an effective board assessment process requires planning, time and participation of board members. The first step is to determine the scope of the assessment. It could be the entire board, specific committees, and/or individual directors. A good plan will identify the method of evaluation. Surveys, interviews or facilitated discussion are common methods. Once the nature of the evaluation and the methodology have been determined it’s time to create and distribute questionnaires.
Some boards choose to conduct the evaluation internally while others employ a third-party consultant. A third party consultant will ensure an objective and thorough analysis, which is important for those who do not have the time or resources to conduct the assessment yourself.
While it is crucial for board members to assess their own performance, it’s equally important for nonprofit boards to focus on the group as the whole. It is easy for board members of nonprofit organizations and their facilitators to become obsessed with evaluating the individual’s responses and forget the board as a whole.
A successful self-assessment is able to help boards define expectations, uncover gaps in the board composition and align the knowledge of the board with the organization’s strategy, address concerns from investors about turnover and diversity and improve board procedures and practices. In their proxy statements, public companies publish the outcomes of their board’s evaluations.