Starboard’s Blog

As boards begin to get strategic about their recruitment (see my earlier posting: “Why me?”) it makes sense to start using a tool that most describe as a “nominating grid.”  The grid can be as simple or complex as you want to make it, but the goal is to show on a single page what board skills, abilities, and experience you’ve identified as being essential and where the gaps are.  Used correctly, it brings real focus to the nominating process.

Some easy instructions:

1. List down the left side of the spreadsheet the skills, abilities, and experiences that you’ll need in the coming 3-5 years in order to move your strategic plan forward.  List items like “legislative experience, fund raising skills, etc.,” rather than “banker, accountant, lawyer.”  You want attributes, not job titles.  Also list any other key factors to which you would like to pay attention, like the number of men and women and other diversity factors that may be appropriate to your board.
2. Across the top, list your current board members, grouped by when their terms end.  This will help you see what skills, abilities and experiences you may be losing each year.
3. Ideally, a board survey or inventory filled-out by each board member in advance will help you identify what strengths each of your board members have (reflected in the spreadsheet with an X), but this can be done by one or more members of the nominating committee, or the executive director, in a pinch.
4. Review the spreadsheet as a committee to identify where the gaps are (or will be), and identify where the focus of the recruitment effort should be.  Only after completing this process should the group start generating names of potential board members.

It is always amazing to me to see how a simple tool like this can change the conversation from “I know a guy in my neighborhood who would be great,” to a much, much more strategic discussion about what the board and the organization really needs.  Just be sure to develop your own criteria for the left side of the page (that is the essential strategic discussion) and take the time to review it annually.

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