New year offers opportunity to reassess board committees, assignments

• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.31194

Editor: Nicholas King

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New year offers opportunity to reassess

board committees, assignments

The start of the year is an opportune time to

implement planned changes at any organization,

experts say, including a reshuffling of board com-

mittees and assignments.

According to Kari Anderson, founder of Incite!

Consulting Group, the start of the fiscal year—

which often coincides with the calendar year for

many nonprofits—is a good time to take stock of

which committees are needed, which aren’t and

which board members should be serving on them.

“Nonprofits have a habit of thinking that the

people currently assigned to committees are where

they should be, and where they want to be,” she told

Board and Administrator. In reality, she said, the in-

terests of many board members change throughout

their term on the board, and where they may have

been initially a good fit—say, an accountant being

assigned to the finance committee—is no longer

where their passions lie. They may be very interested

and engaged when first assigned to a committee, but

after a while, their engagement ebbs.

It’s a similar issue when looking at board mem-

ber terms in general, she said—when they first

come onto a board, their energy and enthusiasm

tends to be much greater than years later, when

their term is nearing its end and they are looking

at departing from the board.

Not all boards have term limits, nor do all boards

limit the terms served on a particular committee.

But Anderson said it’s smart to have those limits.

“They usually function at a higher level if they

know there’s a set term they will be serving for,”

she said.

The number and purpose of committees should

also be looked at, Anderson said. That’s because

organizations don’t always need the same commit-

tees from year to year, and their needs also change

as organizations mature. Early in the nonprofit

life cycle, for example, a board might need to have

committees that essentially perform the work of

the nonprofit, as staff is usually limited or non-

existent at that stage. But as the organization

matures and is able to bring on staff to take on

the programming aspects of the nonprofit, those

committees are no longer needed.

And there are definite drawbacks to having too

many committees, she said.

“When there’s too many committees, the board

can be stretched too thin, and there’s just too

much to do,” she said. In such situations, things

can get rushed, important considerations can

get missed and decision-making can be nega-

tively impacted. And committee members may get

frustrated at the time commitment required when

serving on multiple committees—it might even

January 2021 Vol. 37, No. 5

continued on page 4

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Enlist board help in thanking donors

following end-of-year fundraising 3

Nonprots nd strategic planning

challenging during pandemic 5

Revamp orientation info to address

virtual meetings 8