Responsibilities of nonprofit boards

A nonprofit board is responsible for the high-level direction and oversight of an organization. At the most fundamental level, a nonprofit board is responsible for providing financial oversight to help an organization deliver on its mission. On top of that, nonprofit boards play an important role in developing an organization’s culture, maintaining strategic focus, and participating in external efforts like fundraising, advocacy, and community outreach.

Nonprofit boards may also be responsible for:

Nonprofit board roles

In addition to your board’s general responsibilities, individual members of your board will hold specific, formal roles. These include a board chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer.

Board chair

Your board chair (also commonly referred to as a chairperson or board president) is the leader of your board. As such, they are responsible for keeping the board and its activities on track, facilitating meetings, setting objectives for the board, and serving as the main point of contact for other board members.

Vice chair

Consider the vice chair (or vice president) your board’s second in command. Their main job is to support the board chair and other leadership, as well as transfer the knowledge and history they’ll need to prepare to step into the board chair position when the time arises.

Secretary

The board secretary is responsible for making sure board operations run smoothly. This includes scheduling and notifying board members of upcoming meetings, making sure meeting agendas and materials are prepped and distributed before meetings, recording meeting minutes, and holding other board members accountable for their tasks.

Treasurer

Your board treasurer oversees your organization’s finances. They make important budgetary decisions, produce financial statements, reconciles bank accounts and financial statements, and ensures tax documents are filed on time.

Setting clear expectations for your board

While some board responsibilities are formal requirements of the role, its still important to set expectations for how you want your board members to engage. If you expect your board to show up to meetings consistently, engage in discussions, serve on committees, and provide asynchronous support outside of meetings, make those expectations clear. It can also be helpful to establish official rules of engagement which outline specific rules such as attendance requirements or meeting protocols.

Ultimately, the expectations you set will inform the culture of your board, so be intentional about your approach. Changing an existing culture is much harder than cultivating a healthy one in the first place.

Annual board assessments

Annual performance assessments help ensure your nonprofit and your board are healthy and working effectively. Ideally, assessments should go both ways—your board needs to evaluate the executive team’s performance, but you need to evaluate their performance as a board too.

This ensures that every member of your board and leadership teams is fulfilling the responsibilities of their particular role and provides an opportunity to share feedback if expectations aren’t being met.

While it can feel uncomfortable to give feedback (especially if its negative), it’s ultimately your job to make sure your board is working well, so hold everyone accountable and don’t be afraid to share honest, constructive feedback.

Using an asynchronous survey tool (we’re biased, but we have a great one!) can be a helpful way to make the evaluation process less awkward and stressful.

Sample board assessment questions