Requirements for the Board

The board should consider what skills and experience it requires in order to properly fulfill its purpose. This will depend on both the organization (particularly its key success factors and strategy) and the role of the board. However, many requirements are applicable to all boards. In particular, we would recommend that every board has:

• at least 1 person with subject matter expertise in the field that the organisation is operating, e.g. an EA global poverty charity should have somebody with international development experience, e.g. J-PAL;

• at least 1 person with a good grasp of accounting, e.g. Big 4;

• at least 1 person with a business strategy background, e.g. Tier 1 strategy consulting;

• at least 1 person with experience of line managing several people; and

• at least 1 person with experience of assessing impact

(note these do not have to be different people)

Then depending on the organisations mission and stage of growth, there will be different key success factors that need to be focused on:

• for a start-up non-profit … at least 1 person with entrepreneurship experience;

• for a non-profit trying to achieve systemic change … at least 1 person with advocacy and/or public policy experience; and

• for a tech solution to a social problem … at least 1 person with tech experience.

(again these do not have to be different people)

The board should also think carefully about other dimensions of diversity:

• at least 1 person of each gender (more if the board is large); and

• for a non-profit working with disadvantaged groups … at least 1 person from that group.

(note that in some legal jurisdictions positive discrimination is illegal so please follow all applicable laws)

We would encourage boards to discuss red lines. Do all board members need to be highly engaged with EA (many board members of GiveWell-recommended charities aren’t)? Do all board members need to be excited about the project or could you invite a value-aligned sceptic to join the board?

Finally, the board should try to avoid potential conflicts. Anticipate problems before they arise and don’t simply assume that they won’t be an issue because everybody’s heart is in the right place.

Capabilities and Performance of Existing Board Members

A proper board assessment should firstly consider the suitability of existing board members:

• Do board members have the capabilities required for the role?

  • This is best assessed against the Requirements for the Board (see previous section). Nobody should be a board member unless they are adding value to the board as a whole.

  • These may have changed since the board member was appointed, e.g. a change in organizational strategy, a new phase of organizational development, a change in the external environment.

  • Our Board Assessment Template contains a grid where capabilities can be mapped to people.

• Are board members performing their function appropriately and adhering to the desired culture of the board, e.g. attending most meetings, reading materials in advance, responding quickly to emails? Is there anything that might change this going forward, e.g. change in personal circumstances?

• Have any board members served on the board for more than 9 years?

  • It is good practice to have specific terms, e.g. 3 years, for board members. This forces a regular review of the composition of the board and makes it easier for the board to decide to remove (i.e. not renew the term of) a board member who is not contributing. Term limits, e.g. 3 terms of 3 years, are also a good idea to ensure the board is regularly refreshed.

Sometimes board members will themselves realize that they are no longer adding value to the board. However, in some cases it will require difficult conversations (likely led by the chair of the board).

Gaps to be Filled by New Board Members

Once you have identified the requirements for the board and assessed the competencies of existing board members, you can work out whether there are any gaps in the board’s collective capabilities. If there are significant gaps, you should consider appointing new board members. However, it is important also to balance the skills required against the size of the board. We recommend a maximum size of 7 people with the ideal being 5 people. If the board is larger than this, it becomes harder to have a fruitful discussion and easier for individual board members to go along with group think.

The rest of this section contains advice about how to recruit new board members. It can be hard to appoint somebody you barely know to a position of great responsibility. However, this should not result in a closed-shop clique. We believe it is important to run a proper process. The next few paragraphs list some things to consider.

It is worth spending time as a board formulating a detailed role description. This should include at a minimum:

• An Overview of the Organization;

  • In order to attract candidates from outside your immediate network, it is important to provide information to candidates about what you do. This will help candidates decide if they want to volunteer their time for the organization and help create a level playing field for the recruitment process;

• The Essential Criteria;

  • This should include both red lines (see above) and critical gaps that need filling.

• The Desirable Criteria; and

  • This should include minor gaps and important capabilities already covered by existing board members that can be strengthened.

• Expectations.

  • We believe it is important to be honest about the required commitment, which is why our Trustee Directory asks every candidate to provide their maximum time commitment. It is also good to include details about the time and location of meetings up front. We also suggest you lay down the expectation that Trustees will serve for at least 3 years.

The next step is to advertise for and proactively seek out candidates. The EA Good Governance Project can help in one of 3 ways:

1. You can view an anonymized list of candidates here (sign up is required for data privacy). We will subsequently provide the contact details of the candidates you are interested inthe .

2. We can email all or a subset of candidates on the directory to advertise your opportunity. To do this, please message us with a short spiel (max 200 words).

3. The EA Good Governance Project can manage the application process. You direct people to our form and we will add a tick box so that they can specifically apply to your organisation. We will provide you with the contact details of everybody who ticks this box. To set this up, please get in touch.

You will need to decide how to select which candidate(s) to appoint. There is no set way of handling a recruitment, but following a systematic process will help reduce favoritism. It is likely that the process will include at least a “CV stage” (where 1-3 people review applications) and an “interview stage” (where 2-5 people ask the candidate questions in a live format). You will likely need to create a recruitment panel for various stages. This may comprise the entire board or a subset of it. It can also include external members, which might be useful if you are looking for a particular skill that existing members lack. Staff involvement should generally be kept to a minimum due to the conflict of interest and the full board should always sign off on the final decision.

A useful framework in decision theory is to think about alignment of both objectives and information. This means that prior to saying which candidate they prefer, each member of the recruitment panel should be aligned in terms of both:

• Objective; and

  • Prior to advertising for the role, it is important to build consensus first on the role specification. If you’ve followed the steps above, you will hopefully have alignment of objective.

• Information.

  • Different members of the recruitment panel will bring different knowledge & expertise, prejudices and prior knowledge of some of candidates. They may have different views on the extent to which each candidate would satisfy the relevant criteria

  • One good method is for each reviewer to independently rate each candidate against each criteria (Google Forms can be a good tool for this). Next the group should spend time discussing responses with a wide range of scores. For example, if one reviewer scores somebody 3/7 on strategic thinking while other reviewers scored the same candidate 6/7, it is a good idea to ask the person who scored them 3/7 to explain their reasoning. It might be a different understanding of the criteria, a different understanding of the individual’s capabilities or even a simple misunderstanding of something the candidate said. You may then allow reviewers to amend their scores.

Throughout the process, you should be willing to judge somebody’s thought process, but not their opinions. Remember that diversity of thought is important, so is somebody approaches a problem in an objective and logical way but reaches a different conclusion, they might be a very good person to join the board. One good way to initiate this discovery is to ask candidates to critique something the organisation is doing (assuming you have helped them develop enough familiarity with the organisation).

Finally, the recruitment process should be two-way. You should give prospective board members an opportunity to ask questions and should be honest about expectations. If possible, a candidate should be invited to observe a board meeting before they commit to join.

Resources

We have developed a Board Assessment Template, which is designed to be a cost-effective solution. For larger organizations (>$1m annual income), we would recommend engaging external expertise to run this process in a professional manner. Please get in touch if you are interested in this service.