Articles

Evaluating the CEO: essentials for not-for-profit boards

Like any employee, your CEO needs a regular formal evaluation of their performance in the role. It holds the CEO accountable to their role, but also ensures that the board is actively meeting its duties to their organisation. The benefits of doing a proper CEO evaluation are invaluable. Growth Evaluations provide a CEO with an overview of their efforts. It helps them to understand their strengths and weaknesses and gives them direction for areas where they can continue to develop professionally.

Good Governance in remote Australia – it’s closer than you think

There are remote areas all over Australia, across Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and NSW; but the Northern Territory classifies as entirely remote and very remote1. The population of the Territory is small, at around 240,000 people – that’s about the size of Wollongong. There are many highly skilled and experienced board members and potential board members in the Northern Territory. However, the small population and high transience of skilled professionals means that ensuring there is the right mix of skill sets (finance, legal, leadership, marketing, fundraising,) as well as member representation, local level knowledge, content expertise and regular board renewal – it’s a really big ask for many boards.

Keeping Charity and NFP Governance Front of Mind: The Pre- and Post-Merger Quandary

With an increasing number of charities and not-for-profit organisations considering mergers and acquisitions, it is important for directors and management to keep governance front of mind. When governance is strong, it can keep your organisation grounded through the changes and uncertainty that will inevitably arise during merger and acquisition activity. However, with the myriad of factors at play during a transaction and the increased pressures on directors and management, it can be easy for governance considerations to take a back seat or become about ensuring baseline compliance.

Reversing the Onus of Proof: a Proactive Response to Preventing Abuse Within NFPs

Legislation that creates a statutory duty of care is likely to have an important impact on the governance culture of not-for-profit organisations involved in caring and supervising children, but it also presents some challenges if that culture is to change. Background Changes to the law are appearing throughout Australia to create a statutory duty of care for organisations involved with caring and supervising children1. The changes mean that a child abuse survivor does not need to prove that the relevant organisation has a duty of care; instead, the organisation must be able to prove that it took reasonable precautions to avoid liability.

Unlocking the Power of Strategic Thinking and Planning

How do you think and plan strategically to address complex missions while balancing resource and workforce constraints? It’s an important question for the non-profit, philanthropy and social enterprise sector. Being strategic appears to be critical if organisations wish to be sustainable and improve employee and client outcomes, yet many non-profit leaders and staff frequently say that they can’t find the time to think or plan strategically. Clever organisations are overcoming this problem by instilling strategic thinking within their organisational culture.

Developing Deeper and More Strategic Partnerships with Business: A Framework for Moving Forward

Corporations are now interested in social sector partnerships for much more strategic reasons than they have been in the past. How can NFP CEOs take advantage of this trend? For years NFPs have been partnering with corporations, tapping into resources via their philanthropic and social responsibility agendas. However, we are now seeing the emergence of strategic relationships driven by the pressure on companies to find new sources of shareholder value, and this presents game-changing opportunities for NFPs.

The Fundamentals of Good Governance, Post-Hayne

The recent Hayne Royal Commission highlighted some failures in governance in the banking and financial services industry and considered whether banks and financial services organisations had lived up to community expectations. Not-for-profit and for-purpose organisations have much to learn from the recent Royal Commission, as community expectations are crucial to their purpose and their viability. In essence, the Hayne Royal Commission advocates a focus on and a sharpening of good governance fundamentals: governing for purpose, role clarity, improved capability and the importance of culture.

Recruiting for Not-For-Profit Boards: Building Strong Foundations

With the landscape of not-for-profit governance constantly changing, it is crucial that boards recruit appropriately skilled and qualified directors who can help drive the organisation towards its mission and goals. Yet, boards continue to suffer from underperforming directors, ego-driven attitudes, and constant disagreements. While managing performance is an important part of maintaining a high-performing board, it is equally as important to have a clearly defined recruitment process for bringing in new directors.

The Elephant in the (Board)Room

In almost every survey of boards, directors reveal that they are unhappy with the performance of one or more of their boardroom colleagues. They usually then continue to reveal that their board has done nothing to remedy the poor performance. For example, the 2018 PwC Annual Corporate Directors Survey showed that 45% of directors believed that one or more of their board colleagues should have been replaced. The McKinsey Global Governance Survey2 showed that 67% of directors served on a board where one or more directors should have been removed.

The Role of the Critical Friend for Directors

I sit on probably as many boards as you do, and I work with about 20 boards each and every month doing our strategy and innovation work. So, after 25 years, I’ve seen a good few in action, warts and all. My life is probably like yours. Life outside the board meeting is busy enough. Like master logisticians, we have to sort out kids, partners and businesses in order just to get to our board meetings.