Board Orientation Page

For new and continuing AIS board members as well as anyone considering becoming a board member. This is based on Joan Garry's "A Template For A Great Board Orientation".

At the bare minimum, the contents of this binder should include the following.

• History One Pager: Outlines the history of the organization. You can get someone to cut and paste from the website. It would be nice if this language was inspirational and reminds the new board member why they want to be an ambassador for the organization.
• Staff Organizational Chart: If you’re a one-person staff, this will be awfully easy to put together.
• Program Highlights for the Year To Date: A brief document that gets new board members excited about accomplishments and new initiatives underway.
• Board Roles and Responsibilities: If you don’t have these, that’s a flag on the field. There are dozens of good resources online for templates. Here’s one I like. Please have a board discussion to customize it. Share it during the interview and put it in The Binder.
• List of All Current Board Members: In an ideal world, the document should tell a new board member what each fellow board member does for a living. An intern (if you have one) could reach out to board members for a brief bio and photo. This would be especially generous to include.
• List of Board Committees, Charge, and Members of Each: I am painfully aware that boards frequently fail to develop real charges for their committees – why do they exist? How do they move the work of the organization forward? That’s a sad reality. If no charges, just show a list of committees and who sits on each.
• List of Upcoming Meetings: Anything you can do to promote attendance with lots of notice, the less complaining you will do.
• Mark Your Calendars!: This is a list of upcoming events, either programmatic or development related, to give the new folks ample notice to add to the calendar.
• Any Strategic Planning Document: Overall and top line only. Usually there is an executive summary or a vision document.
• Approved Budget for the Calendar Year:
• Most Recently Monthly Financials: To help a new board member understand the organization’s actual revenue and expense vs. budget.
• Most Recent Audited Financial Statement: Here a new board member has a sense of the financial stability of the organization through the eyes of an expert objective third party.
• A Copy of the Organization’s By-Laws
• Fundraising One Pager – here you want to emphasize that there IS a fundraising obligation, a board approved give/get (if you have one) and a list of some of the many ways the obligation can be met. Here your goal is two fold – to make it clear that they have an obligation and to give new members comfort about how that goal can be met with staff support and ideas.
• Board Meeting Minutes – I would suggest at least 3 meetings back. More may be overkill.
• Agenda for the First Board Meeting – often these orientations precede board meetings so including the agenda can make sense

-- WayneMesser - 22 Nov 2019