For many people, especially those new to board work, the belief is that the main work of the board takes place at official, formal meetings. In fact, a great deal of important work takes place outside of board meetings. Nevertheless, boards are required to hold formal meetings and the quality of those meetings can make a considerable difference to board effectiveness. Meetings that are poorly organized, go on too long,, go off on tangents instead of sticking to the point, or feature too many personalities can turn off even the most dedicated member and can cause serious damage by leading to poorly considered decisions. In this podcast, Profs Cafik and Murray explores board effectiveness in the board meeting context, challenges boards commonly experience with meetings, why they persist, and the research on what boards have changed to increase meeting effectiveness.

All boards have some formality that specifies and supports the way the board governs and operates. Once structures and procedures are in place they often come to be taken for granted and their influence on the board goes unrecognized. The result is that they are rarely reviewed in assessments of board performance and updated. This episode explores board structures and procedures, defining what they are and the role they play in board governance. The episode also explores common challenges boards experience with structures and procedures, why they occur, and change boards have implemented in response to them.

Effectively performing the board's role in fundraising and developing resources for the organization is the most common challenge reported by both board members and those with whom they interact. Dissatisfaction can come from lack of clarity of the board's role in fundraising, activities related to fundraising, and/or lack of capability to engage in fundraising. This webinar explores the main reasons for dissatisfaction with the board's role, how to diagnose fundraising challenges, and what boards have done about them to increase success.