Board Recruitment

Introduction

Board recruitment is the essential process of finding and hiring the best-qualified candidate that fits the board.

Why

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This toolkit is useful for you when your organisation:

• needs a well functioning board with a broad array of skills to help the organisation to fulfill its mission and ensure good governance 
• needs to further restructure or develop its board by bringing in new people and phase out non active members.

What you can expect

In seven steps this toolkit guides you to recruite the best board members for your organisation. Here you’ll find a step-by-step guide, tools, examples and other resources for recruiting a board.

Step 1: Establish Need

• Discuss with the leaders of the organisation what the board needs are in terms of size and diversity of board members. Size of board should be based on what the board needs to accomplish, the stage in the organisation's lifecycle, its mission, its fundraising necessities, etc.
• Determine the philosophy of staffing the board.
• Determine the set of priorities, competencies, and expertise that is needed in the board.

In this video, Efua Elens-Edeh, director of Social Impact Consulting (Nigeria) gives her opinion on board recruitment:

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Step 2: Gap Analysis

• Undertake a gap analysis to identify the experiences and competencies that are already in the board and flag the areas that are lacking. Work closely with the existing board members to understand their skills, roles and responsibilities.
• Develop a survey or conduct interviews with the existing board members to analyse the present board.

Step 3: Recruitment Plan

• Set priorities of the skills looking for to have on the board. 
• Create a profile (background, skills, connections, other attributes) of the new members needed on the board.
• Create job descriptions and a recruitment plan. Make sure that steps, roles and responsibilities are clarified and agreed upon.

Step 4: Recruitment Process

• Create a list of potential board members from the organisation’s network, or post calls for members within a larger network. For example at relevant professional foundations.
• Reach out to the candidates, for example by one of the following ways:
  • Have a meeting (lunch/dinner) with all candidates, tell them about the organisation and what it is looking for in board members.
  • Have individual meetings or send letters of interest.
  • Invite potential members to an advisory board before assigning them on to the board.

Step 5: Selection

• Formalise the process. For example by sending an invitation letter and ask the candidate formally to accept the invitation in writing along with his/her CV or have a formal application process with interviews.
• Short assignments or case studies could be given to potential board members before they are formally inducted to the board.

Step 6: Induction and Orientation

• Create an induction and orientation kit for onboarding new board members. The orientation kit should contain organisation contact information, roles and responsibilities of the members, board policies, board meeting schedule calendar and other expectations. It also should include pertinent information about the organisation, strategy, focus and key milestones.
• Make visits to projects part of the induction.

Step 7: Follow-up

• Work together with staff responsible for human resources and the organisation's leader to follow up on timelines and the recruitment process.
• Schedule regular board trainings, retreats, meetings and other activities.

Key To Success

• Volunteers and donors who have already demonstrated commitment and  have knowledge of the organisation's strengths and weaknesses could make good board members.
• When recruiting passion alone is not enough. Board members also must have the time and energy to actively participate in the board. 
• Existing board members may not always be open to new members, hence program manager should be patient in this process of staffing.
• Evaluate skills and cultural fit of new members joining the board.

Challenges

• Organisation may have limited experience, skills and networks to do the staffing of board.