Managing a not-for profit association sure isn’t easy. As we’ve seen, a good board helps. You’ll need an effective Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a committed group of professional staff too. But even with those things in place, there are plenty of things that can go wrong that will prevent an organization from maximizing its potential.

So you’ve established your board and made sure they know their stuff – the legal and financial duties the work involves, the training they’ve had or will be getting, the code of conduct they’re expected to uphold etc. etc. (for more on this, see my last post). But what do effective boards actually do?

Last time round we talked about how to build a high performance organization and concluded that it can’t be done without a good board. So how about that board? I hear you cry. Who should be on it? What training will they need? What specialist knowledge should they have?