Index to 22 Time-Saving Governance Tools and Templates

“Under Pressure You Don't Rise to the Occasion, You Sink to the Level of Your Training”

Whew! In this tumultuous environment today with the COVID-19 crisis, your time is limited, valuable, and strained. But, with God’s help, you can leverage your time. Hopefully, this blog will save you precious time—with easy-to-use click-on links to this series of 22 time-saving tools and templates (see below).

Over the last 22 blogs, we’ve highlighted the time-saving tools and templates in the new resource, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance. Why is this so important? Peter Drucker wrote, “At least once every five years, every form should be put on trial for its life.” So…if it’s been five years (or 10 or 20 years) since you’ve updated your boardroom tools, this book will be a lifesaver for you—maybe not today, but down the road.

The book gives you full access to all 22 tools and templates—formatted as Word documents so you can customize the tools for your board’s unique training and communication needs. Here’s a convenient master list with links to the 22 blogs: 

22 TIME-SAVING TOOLS AND TEMPLATES!
Here’s a convenient master list with links to the 22 blogs:

PART 1: SELECTING AND TRAINING EXCELLENT BOARD MEMBERS
Tool #1: The Pathway to the Board (Don’t Propose Marriage on Your First Date!)
Tool #2: Board Nominee Suggestion Form (Avoid the “Friend of a Friend of Cousin Eddie Syndrome”)
Tool #3: Board Nominee Orientation: Table of Contents (Don’t Swallow the Board Myth!)

PART 2: BOARD ASSESSMENTS
Tool #4: Five-Finger Feedback (Fast Feedback in 3 Minutes!)
Tool #5: The Board’s Annual Self-Assessment Survey (Look in the Mirror!)
Tool #6: The Board's Annual Financial Management Audit - 20 True or False Questions! (And…how does the board know if it’s true?)
Tool #7: The Board's Annual Legal Audit (Use This Annual Checklist to Monitor Legal Issues)
Tool #8: The Board's Annual Fundraising Audit (Pop Quiz on Fundraising Practices!)
Tool #9: The Board’s Annual Evaluation of the Top Leader (“Spotting, Catching, or Exiting a Falling CEO”)

PART 3: REPORTING TO THE BOARD
Tool #10: The 5/15 Monthly Report to the Board (Eliminate Hallway Whining!)
Tool #11: Monthly Dashboard Report (What Are Your CEO’s Top-5 Goals This Year?)
Tool #12: Quarterly Board Meeting Agenda & Recommendations (Plan a Robust “Heavy Lifting” Segment at Every Board Meeting)

PART 4: TAKING TIME FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING
Tool #13: Board Retreat Read-and-Reflect Worksheets (Deputize a “Leaders Are Readers Champion")
Tool #14: The Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat (7 Reasons Why Strategic Plans Fail)
Tool #15: Board Retreat Trend-Spotting Exercise (Ostrich or Eagle?)

PART 5: POLICIES AND BOARD RESPONSIBILITIES
Tool #16: Prime Responsibility Chart (Eliminate Fuzziness Between Board and Staff Roles)
Tool #17: Board Policies Manual (BPM) - Policy: The Board’s Chief Occupation—Not an Occasional Board Chore
Tool #18: Job Descriptions for the Top Leader and Board Chair (The Number One Hiring Mistake!)

PART 6: IDEAS FOR BETTER BOARD GOVERNANCE
Tool #19: Ten Minutes for Governance (Lifelong Governance Learning—in 10-Minute Chunks!)
Tool #20: Tent Cards & Tools for Leveraging Board Member Strengths (Inspiring Deep Engagement in the Boardroom)
Tool #21: Board Member Annual Affirmation Statement (We Failed to “Date” a Board Prospect and Now We Have a Loose Cannon!)
Tool #22: Straw Vote Cards (A Quick and Courteous Way to Give Every Board Member a Voice)

The book includes five ways to leverage these tools and templates (see page 248). “Refresh Your Governance Experiences” highlights these five approaches:
1. Refresh your agenda with Tool #12,”Quarterly Board Meeting Agenda & Recommendations.”
2. Refresh your training with Tool #10, “Ten Minutes for Governance.”
3. Refresh your policy with Tool #17, “Board Policies Manual.”
4. Refresh your accountability with Tool #11, “Monthly Dashboard Report.”
5. Refresh your first 30 minutes—with a nod to the book, The Power of Moments. (Click here to read my review.)

Order the tools book from Amazon by clicking on this title: ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Reminder: The book gives you full access to all 22 tools and templates—formatted as Word documents so you can customize the tools for your board’s unique uses.

BOARD DISCUSSION: What tool could we start using TODAY that would save us precious time during this crisis (and perhaps the next crisis) and move us toward more effective and more God-honoring governance? 

MORE RESOURCES: In Lesson 38 for the Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom Blog, Kent Stroman writes, “I love this quote from the U.S. Navy Seals, ‘Under pressure you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That's why we train so hard.’ By being intentional about ongoing board member education, organizations are investing in their own preparation to ‘rise to the occasion’ that will inevitably emerge—at the least expected moment.” Read his guest blog, “Great Boards Delegate Their Reading. Deputize a ‘Leaders Are Readers Champion.’”

Succession Planning: “Wise People Know When to Quit”

Note: This is the seventh of 11 blogs featuring practical wisdom from the new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 4: Succession Planning. Free to ECFA members, you can download the resource and video by clicking here.

Principle No. 7: Trust God and Discern Direction! Wisdom on Ending Well

Here’s a gut-check: “Does our board regularly practice spiritual discernment for fork-in-the-road decisions, or are our prayer practices more superficial than transformational?”

When your CEO retires, resigns (or if necessary, is terminated)…does your board have a culture and adequate competencies for spiritually discerning God’s voice? A time of crisis is a very bad time to play catch-up on how to hear from God.

Don’t wait until the eleventh hour of a succession planning crisis to get on your knees. Practice spiritual discernment early and often! But note this caution from Ruth Haley Barton in Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry:

“It is also important to involve the right people. One very common leadership mistake is to think that we can take a group of undiscerning individuals and expect them to show up in a leadership setting and all of a sudden become discerning!”

A board with spiritual discernment radar will also have wise counsel for their CEO regarding exit plans. In his book, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, Dr. Henry Cloud quotes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” Cloud, a leadership coach and clinical psychologist, also adds, “Wise people know when to quit.”

When boards help their CEOs end well at the right time and in God-honoring ways, they build a healthy foundation for God’s next leader.

The Facilitator Guide includes a resource from Ruth Haley Barton with ten guidelines for “entering into and maintaining a listening posture.” It’s a powerful list!  

Check it out here: 

DOWNLOAD: ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 4: Succession Planning – 11 Principles for Successful Successions: “Every CEO is an Interim CEO.” The toolbox includes 
   • Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide (20 pages) – photocopy for board members
   • Facilitator Guide (10 pages)
   • 4 short videos (4-5 minutes each)
   • Additional resources and succession planning tools

BOARD DISCUSSION: Does our board regularly practice spiritual discernment for fork-in-the-road decisions, or are our prayer practices more superficial than transformational?

MORE RESOURCES: Follow the “40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays.” color commentaries on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Click here.

Battle-ready Boards

In my last blog, I mentioned my running list of what I call “board member temptations.”  Here’s another one:

BOARD MEMBER TEMPTATION: 

“To confuse the three hats of a board member:
governance, volunteer and participant.”

Here are four snapshots of recent conversations:

1) A well-meaning board member prodded others at a board meeting, “But if we’re not volunteering in numerous areas of this ministry—how will we know if our ministry is doing a good job or not?”

2) A board chair whined to me that board members are bringing their “volunteer hat” concerns directly to the board meeting—and not addressing those items through the appropriate staff channels. “Those issues have no place on our board’s agenda,” he said.

3) A CEO grimaced that the board had established a task force to research a topic that is unrelated to the board’s agreed-upon policy governance operating model.

4) Another CEO shared that his board members are hopelessly divided on the governance role of the board. Three board members micro-manage, yet the other board members apparently don’t have the character or the courage to address this dysfunction. (The CEO is seeking to “pastor” them out of this hole, but he will likely hit a dead-end and resign.)

THE SOLUTION? Sooner or later, every board must define roles and responsibilities—for the board, the board chair and the CEO. Some boards are proactive and document their operating philosophy in advance—before trouble hits the fan. 

Other boards, sadly, wait for the crisis before clarifying board roles—but that’s a terrible time to do your best governance work. Peter Drucker said,

“Fortunately or unfortunately,
the one predictable thing in any organization
is the crisis.
That always comes.”  

He added that the job of the leader is to build an organization that is “battle-ready.”

The Christ-centered board knows that a board’s operating style is rooted in its theology, its philosophy and the God-given past experiences of every board member around the table. The confusion over board hats (the governance hat, the volunteer hat, and the participant hat) will only get worse if you ignore the signs (like the four snapshots above).

There’s help!  Order the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 2: Balancing Board Roles (The 3 Hats) and view the 12-minute DVD at your next board meeting. Give the Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide to each board member and leverage the ideas in the Facilitator Guide.  Then pray and discern how your board will specifically eliminate the confusion between the three hats.

QUESTION: When a new board member prospect is interviewing three current board members about your board’s operating style, would all three agree on how you balance the three hats: Governance, Volunteer, and Participant?