by Jeff Smith | Jul 22, 2026 | Board Governance
Every nonprofit board is either assembled or built. Assembled boards happen by accident. Someone knew someone, a seat was open, and now here we all are. Built boards happen on purpose. The difference shows up in how the board thinks, plans, and interacts. So how do...
by Jeff Smith | Jun 23, 2026 | Board Governance
Every executive director I’ve talked to has lived some version of this standoff. You need the board to be more involved in fundraising. So you bring it up at a meeting, gently, and you watch the room go quiet. A few people nod. Nobody volunteers. And at the next...
by Jeff Smith | Jun 5, 2026 | Board Governance
Boards govern. Executive Directors run the day-to-day. Most people in nonprofit leadership can recite that definition, but it can be difficult to know exactly where one job ends and the other starts. To simplify it, I like to use the analogy of planning a trip. Think...
by Jeff Smith | May 26, 2026 | Board Governance, Nonprofits and AI
OnBoard’s Governance Insight Gap report, released earlier this year, surveyed 387 board professionals across North America, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand on how their boards access governance insights, and where the blind spots are. Each board in the survey...
by Jeff Smith | Apr 6, 2026 | Board Governance
BoardSource’s 2023 Leading with Intent report found that more than a third of nonprofit organizations have not formally defined what their board’s composition should look like. They’ve never sat down and identified the mix of expertise,...
by Jeff Smith | Mar 25, 2026 | Board Governance, Nonprofit Strategy
When a nonprofit board loses an executive director, there’s a common instinct: pull up the old job description, update a few lines, and start circulating it. It makes sense. The job description already exists, and the board is anxious to get the search moving....
