Board Self-Assessment offers a means for analyzing and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of governance. It is a way for the board to step back and candidly assess its own effectiveness, which can lead to improvements in governance.
Time, planning and engagement of board members are required to develop an effective board evaluation process. The first step is to determine the scope of the evaluation. This could include the entire board, specific committees, and/or directors individually. A good plan will identify the evaluation method. Common methods include surveys, interviews, or facilitation of discussions. Once the scope and evaluation method are established, it’s time to begin creating and distributing questionnaires.
Some boards choose to conduct the evaluation in-house while others enlist the help of a third-party consultant. A third party consultant can help ensure an impartial and thorough analysis, which is crucial in the event that you don’t have the time or resources necessary to conduct the assessment on your own.
While it is crucial for board members to assess themselves, it is equally important for nonprofit boards to look at the group as a whole. It is easy for nonprofit boards and their evaluation facilitators to get caught up in assessing individual responses and not take the time to evaluate the board as a whole.
A successful self-assessment will help boards clarify their expectations of each other, discover gaps in the composition of boards, align board expertise with organizational strategies, address investor concerns about the diversity of boards and their turnover and also increase the effectiveness of their procedures and practices. In a growing number of cases, public companies are releasing results of their board evaluations in their proxy statements.