Town of Banff

Board Development

Throughout the year, several training opportunities are offered to provide information on being a board member or chair. Some of these include: being a part of productive and successful meetings, group facilitation, governance and leadership and strategic thinking. Sessions can also be tailor-made to address the needs of your board. Conflict resolution, mediation and mentoring support is also available.

Non-Profit organizations,including the volunteers, staff, and senior staff that comprise them, require strong leadership from their Board in order to successfully carry out their work. While poor organizational performance is not necessarily an indication of poor board governance, it is difficult for organizations to succeed if they lack sound direction from their Board.

The Role of the Board is to:

• establish and evaluate the organization’s vision, mission and direction
• ensure the financial health of the organization
• ensure the organization has sufficient and appropriate human resources
• direct organizational operations
• maintain effective relations with the community and other stakeholders.

Individual Board members are expected to:

• understand the organization’s mission and mandate, be aware of issues that are relevant to the organization, and keep up to date on trends in the community that might affect these issues
• understand and, if necessary, query all financial budgetary matters
• ensure that the organization’s legal affairs are in order-know the board’s legal obligations and make sure they are upheld
• keep board discussions confidential
• bring their own training, skills and experience to all board decisions.

8 Things A Great Board Always Does

1. Focuses on improving and strengthening itself through frequent self-assessment, ongoing education and active recruitment of new members.
2. Ensures the organization has a strategic plan that sets the broad directions of the organization toward accomplishing its mission.
3. Is inclusive and transparent in its work, informing and involving the executive director as a respected advisor and partner in planning and monitoring and decision- making.
4. Supports, acknowledges and appraises the performance of the executive director.
5. Know its role as a corporate entity, as individual members within the group, and in relation to the staff of the organization.
6. Creates relationships with stakeholders and the community to further the organization’s mission, to create financial support and to increase board awareness of unmet needs or issues in the community.
7. Speaks with one voice. The board bases its decisions on consensus, which is confirmed through motions and majority vote.
8. Responds to emerging problems proactively and to crises with a deliberate, reasoned and collective response.

How Can We Help?

The Community Development staff helps in the building of great boards through:

• Providing training opportunities throughout the year on topics such as productive and successful meetings, group facilitation, governance. We can also tailor these and other topics to assist the needs of a particular board.
• Support the board with conflict resolution, mediation and mentoring.
• Attending a board meeting to support and provide feedback.