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Association and nonprofit organization board members play a key role in an organization’s success. The board is often involved in strategizing, fundraising, overseeing finances, ensuring legal and ethical compliance, and more.
Adding training through a learning management system (LMS) can be a great place to start. We’ll provide everything you should know about board service in the rest of this article to help you create a successful program. You can also refer to our guide answering “What are the top LMS options for associations?” to help you choose the right software.
Keep reading as we dive into association and nonprofit board member training 101 with all the details you need for success.
Introduction: Why Board Member Training Matters
Board members are highly influential in an association’s direction, so training them effectively is crucial. Some of the key benefits you’ll get out of an effective training program are:
- They’ll gain a better understanding of your mission: Your organization likely has a strong mission, vision, and goals you want to achieve. Training will provide your board members with enough background so they can see that vision and better understand how their decisions will impact it.
- It ensures board members know their roles: Board members must understand their roles and responsibilities within the organization. A good training program will help them understand who’s in charge of each task so they can work together effectively.
- Legal obligations get covered thoroughly: Training will provide a thorough overview of your organization’s legal responsibilities and ethical considerations. It’ll help you maintain compliance and avoid any legal complications that can occur with mismanagement.
- It improves organizational performance: When board members understand their roles and know how to work together, it can improve your organization’s performance and help you make a bigger impact on your community.
Growing Needs For Online Training
Many organizations are looking for a guide to board member training online since a growing number of association and nonprofit boards consist of remote members from several locations.
A well-thought-out digital training system will help individual board members work together in remote settings while learning the technology and tools that help your organization run smoothly. Technology like an LMS can help you adapt to those needs, allowing you to create comprehensive training that new board members can access from anywhere at any time.
What Training Should The Board Of Directors Have?
Since this is an important group that oversees an organization’s operations, board of directors training courses should take a well-rounded approach to teach leadership, risk management, organizational vision, and other core concepts. Here’s a quick checklist of core elements that you should have in association or nonprofit board of directors training programs:
- Core corporate governance and leadership: The board of directors should understand their role as leaders and how they can provide oversight for the organization.
- Legal and ethical obligations: As mentioned earlier, associations and nonprofits have many legal considerations that the board of directors should be aware of in all decisions.
- Financial oversight: You want your board of directors to be able to manage the organization’s funds effectively while making strategic decisions that grow your impact on the community.
- Risk management: All big decisions can have risks, such as the need to evaluate how investing in a new community program will impact donor relations. You’ll want your board to be able to assess these types of decisions to minimize risk while maximizing benefits for the organization.
- Organizational mission and vision: Effective decision-making requires being able to look at the big picture and determine if a choice is moving the organization toward its goals. Learning about the organization's mission and how decisions impact your direction is crucial for the board of directors.
As your association evolves, it’s a good idea to update your training course modules to reflect any big changes. Adding refresher courses or programs can also help keep longstanding fellow board members in the right mindset for informed decision-making.
What Are The 3 W’s You Should Look For In A Prospective Board Member?
In addition to effective onboarding and training, you’ll also want to select the right board members for your organization. The 3 W’s are an evaluative strategy that can help. They go as follows:
- Wealth: Board members should be able or willing to contribute funds or fundraise. Funding plays a big role in an association’s or nonprofit’s success and ability to make an impact, so it’s important to consider this aspect while selecting your board.
- Work: Your board members should bring relevant skills and expertise and be willing to work. While you can provide training for core concepts, you still want your board members to have a solid background that will help them make good decisions and understand your industry.
- Wisdom: Board members should have experience, good judgment, and a solid understanding of the association or nonprofit landscape. Your board will have to make tough decisions, so they should bring the right knowledge to the table to navigate those choices successfully.
Reflect on these qualities as you review candidates to ensure you set your board and organization up for long-term success.
How Do You Train New Board Members?
Now that we’ve covered the core concepts of board training, you’re still probably looking for specifics to put together a program that gets new board members on the right track. Here’s a detailed overview of everything involved.
Onboarding Checklist For New Board Members
As your new board members are getting started, there will be a lot of information they’ll need to know. Here’s a checklist of things you should do and information to provide:
- Introductions: Introduce your new members to the current other board members and any other staff or organizational leaders they should get to know right away.
- Review roles and responsibilities: You should provide new members with a quick overview of their roles and responsibilities so they know what they’ll be managing.
- Organization’s history and mission: Learning about your history and mission will help new board members become effective ambassadors for what you’re doing.
- Staff and board member chart: Put together a chart with names, roles, and contact information for all relevant board and staff members that new board members can refer to.
- List of board committees and members of each: It’s also helpful for new members to have a list of committees and who sits on each.
- Program highlights for year to date: List any events, accomplishments, or activities that have happened so far this year that new board members should know about.
- List of upcoming meetings and events: This allows new board members to mark their calendars and align their schedules as soon as possible.
- The organization’s bylaws: Any information about your organization’s regulations, code of conduct, or compliance requirements.
- Financial information: You should provide new board members with financial details like the organization’s budget for the year, current progress toward fundraising goals, expenses, revenue sources, and information about any recent audits.
- Fundraising information: You should make new board members aware of whether there is a fundraising obligation and provide a list of ways that they can meet that obligation.
This is a lot of information to provide new board members, so it’s okay to go through each of these steps with them slowly to avoid overwhelming them with a ton of details on day one.
Top Strategies For Effective Onboarding And Training Programs
Here are some great strategies you can implement as you’re building your onboarding and training program:
- Create an organized list with access to essential information: Ideally, you should create an online portal where board members can easily find and access information like your organization’s bylaws, staff member directory, and upcoming meetings and events. It’ll help keep all those essential details organized.
- Build an online training program or course: You can use an LMS to create core training modules for your new board members that they can access anytime. Our Elevate LMS at Cadmium is a great option for this since it’s built for associations and nonprofits with small teams to create courses with a low learning curve involved.
- Add interactive workshops and scenario-based learning: Many skills get ingrained when you can apply them hands-on or in interactive ways. You can host in-person workshops, livestream them for virtual attendance, or offer scenario-based training through courses on an LMS.
- Provide mentoring or buddy systems: Peer support can help new board members feel welcomed while knowing who they can go to when they need help or have questions. It’s a great way to make them feel like they aren’t going through the process on their own.
- Offer ongoing feedback and support: Provide constructive feedback and support so board members can grow in their role and keep improving over time.
Best Resources: Board Member Training Online & Free Options
As you’re looking for board member training options, you may see a lot of courses to train board members with essential skills already prepared. For instance, you may find free training for nonprofit board members or a guide to board member training for free.
While there are courses online that are already prepared that may be low-cost or free, they can have their limitations.
One of the main downsides is that these courses are often very generic, and they won’t be customized to what your organization does. It can lead to your new board members not feeling very knowledgeable about the specific operations of your nonprofit.
You also usually won’t be able to add your branding, offer as much support during the learning process, and free options may limit how many course participants you can register.
The Better Option
Usually, the better option for success is creating a full board member training program in an LMS that you can make accessible to all new members.
It does require more work and investment to create your own training program, but it’s worthwhile when it allows you to provide more specific instruction that benefits your organization.
An LMS will help you create training programs that include:
- Your branding and the organization’s information
- Details on specific tasks and responsibilities your board members hold
- Real, in-depth training based on your industry and what your association or nonprofit does
- An easy step-by-step learning system that your team creates, that you can update and optimize as needed
Rather than sending your new board members through a generic training system where the information may or may not apply to their responsibilities, you can create your own to ensure the training has a real impact.
Conclusion: Building A Smarter, Stronger Board
You can build a strong board with the right skills to help your organization achieve its goals when you have the right training system in place. Finding an LMS with a low learning curve to create and distribute your training program can be a great place to start.
If your nonprofit or association is looking for options, Cadmium’s award-winning LMS for associations can help.
You can use Elevate to create a center for knowledge, customize learning to your organization’s needs, answer questions when learners get stuck, and measure and track results. You can even use it beyond board member training by creating continuing education courses that your association’s members can benefit from, too.
Training sessions that emphasize governance principles, governance practices, financial literacy, board governance, fiduciary duties, board's responsibility, and the leadership roles of the board chair, vice chair, board secretary, committee chairs, chief financial officer, chief executive, and corporate directors will greatly enhance overall board effectiveness and improve the board's review process.
Click here to learn more about how Elevate helps create successful learning programs.
