“How many Board members does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
Sure, you’ve heard some version of the “light bulb” joke a million times, in many walks of life. The joke works because it reflects what clearly happens when an organization or group loses track of its real work. Too many people put in too much effort for far too few results.
As Board President, make sure your Board isn’t “spinning”—from its own or the school community’s perspective—and that you have the right number of Trustees to accomplish your school’s goals. Here are our own recommended cures for "lost-Board" disease.
- Center the Board’s work on strategic planning. Create a plan that meets the ISM criteria (covers a five- to six-year span, deals with viability-related items and the financial consequences of those items, displays hard-income and expense gradients, and is in constant use by the Board and administrative leadership). Communicate the plan to all constituents so everyone in your community understands the strategic plan and “the work of the Board.”
- Create a Committee of Trustees that will craft a Board profile. This profile describes the characteristics and skills required to move your school’s strategic plan forward. Judge potential Board members according to this periodically revised profile.
- Revise your bylaws on the issue of Board size. Nearly all articles of incorporation for private schools mention some minimum number of Trustees. Be careful to adhere to this minimum number.
Bear in mind that Board committees develop proposals. The Board as a whole accepts or rejects those committee recommendations, and thus establishes policies, plans, and strategies.
Your bylaws might read roughly as follows:
The total number of Board members and Board committee members will, at any given time, be equal to the number necessary to carry out the annual Board agenda. The exact number of Trustees will range from x to y, depending on the implications of the current strategic plan, the current Board profile, and other pertinent organizational factors (e.g., the school charter; statutory constraints, if any).
These three steps, done well, ought to eliminate any chance your Board might come to be seen as “lost,” superfluous, or drifting. And, in the paragraph above, you can replace the “x” and “y” with almost any numbers that you are comfortable with, provided you keep in mind these obvious points.
- If your Board has too few members (say, fewer than eight members), it will lack the diversity—intellectual, professional, age, ethnic, etc.—and richness of perspective that leads to sound governance.
- If your Board is extremely large (say, more than 22), it will become unwieldy, difficult to lead, and likely to suffer from a reduction in individual members’ sense of personal commitment to the governance challenges you face.
The crucial number on which to focus, however, is the total number of Trustees plus the additional committee members that, together, do the required work of the Board during a given year. You’ll probably find that, to operate effectively, you need to have a group of at least 17–22 people involved.
Fewer than that and your Trustees may become overworked. More than that and your Board may not be acting as a strategic entity.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Trustees Vol. 14 No. 2 Remedies for a ‘Fractured’ Board
Additional ISM resources for Gold members:
I&P Vol. 40 No. 15 Revisit Your Bylaws: How Strategic Are They?
I&P Vol. 41 No. 2 The Board Profile as a Strategic Document
