CAUSE EFFECTIVE BOARD TRAINING: GOVERNANCE WITH AN EQUITY LENS
Cause Effective’s Governance Equity Intensive highlights how to create a W.I.D.E.R. (welcoming, inclusive, diverse, equitable and representative) board table. Content includes ways to strengthen the board’s strategic, ambassadorship and compliance roles, as well as to create a healthy staff-board partnership in which each member compliments and supports the other’s performance. Topics discussed include board culture, cohesion, and board relationships that reflect power dynamics within class/race/gender intersections.
The first session, ENGAGEMENT, focuses on what board members are doing as part of their board service and how a productive partnership with staff can be organized. Topics covered include skills-building around general board responsibilities; productive committee structures; and strengthening the board’s role in financial oversight and fundraising.
The second session, INCLUSION, focuses on board culture – both what organizations nurture internally, and what they project externally. Topics covered include how to facilitate cohesion and team-building culture; and using tools to address the power dynamics that come up in donor and board relationships.
The third session, COMPOSITION, focuses on how to recruit beyond the known circle; address insularity vs. inclusivity in prospect identification; enlist board members to act as change agents; and consider how class, gender and generational dynamics affect the prospecting pipeline.
This training focuses on how best practices for board recruitment that reflect an approach to inclusion, diversity, equity and access (IDEA) principles can be implemented in real time, so that executive directors and boards are clear how growing and diversifying their ranks can help to improve their board’s overall performance.
Cause Effective delivers this content to boards in a series or one half-day training focused on laying the groundwork for ongoing attention to the topic of governance as it intersects board demographics and a board’s intention to pursue diverse composition.
Following the training, Cause Effective will provide organizations with customized follow-up support of one meeting/training, tailored to help nonprofits to break through to a new level of board engagement, productivity and inclusivity.
Cause Effective’s Governance with an Equity Lens training prepares board members to be more knowledgeable and ready to fully step into their governance roles – and to deploy new board members productively, based on the full spectrum of diversity, skills and talents.
TIMING AND COST
Cause Effective customized board trainings can be scheduled individually, and range from $4,000-$8,000 depending on the length of the training and extent of follow-up coaching involved. Cause Effective is able to provide a customized experience for partner grantee organizations, each topic is delivered within an equity framework, and a combination of topics can be combined into a clinic package or selected as individual workshops.
Contact Cause Effective’s Director of Programs, Janay Daniel at janay@causeeffective.org to discuss these offerings in more detail.
