How Many Board Committees Should We Have?

(Note: This was originally posted to the ChangeMatters LinkedIn page on June 20th, 2016.)

When I was teaching workplace writing for social entrepreneurship to college juniors and seniors, the one question I had little patience for was How many pages does the final project need to be? 

In the case of this course, each final project was unique and developed by each individual student — ideally to suit his or her career interests and abilities. And as in real-world work writing everywhere, their papers needed to be just as long as they needed to be to get the job done. 

Similarly, board committees.

Q: How many board committees should our nonprofit have?

A: As few as you need.

Lots of Executive Directors and Board Chairs make what turns out to be a burdensome mistake by setting up a traditional board structure with lots of committees. There’s Finance, Development, the Executive Committee, the Audit Committee, and Board Recruitment and Development, and then sometimes a Gala Committee, the Program Committee, an Advisory Board, and more. Especially in organizations with just a few paid staff, what often happens is that board members get spread thin, you get a lot of “committees” of one or two, and everyone loses track of purpose and focus. Just way too many moving (or dragging) parts.

Instead, consider a structure in which the ED and Board Chair are tracking a small number of focused committees in which the purpose and the short-term objectives are clear, a volunteer committee chair takes responsibility for setting the right number and frequency of meetings — and reports key recommendations back to the board. 

Of course for volunteer-run organizations with zero staff, committees may need to do a lot of the “staff” work as volunteers, as well as governance. But assuming that your organization has at least one or two staff members, consider something streamlined, perhaps like this: 

Finance Committee chaired by the Treasurer and staffed by the CFO or ED. Try to include at least one person who doesn’t self-identify as a “numbers person” to deepen financial understanding on the board and to build in common sense critique of the financial choices.

Development and External Engagement Committee chaired by another board member and staffed by the CDO or ED, to guide fundraising, partnerships, and marketing strategy. You might not even need this one if your whole board can provide sufficient guidance and support to these functions.

Governance Committee that guides the board’s own operations and improvement (e.g. recruitment, orientation, finance and fundraising training) chaired by another board member.

Executive Committee that meets only when needed, and around Executive Director support and performance assessment. Chaired by the Board Chair.

In addition to a small number of standing committees, you can reserve the option to create temporary Working Groups or Tasks Forces when needed. See Boards Should Only Have Three Committees (LaPiana) and Is it Time to Abolish Board Committees? (Blue Avocado) for a couple of classic and short reads that could be useful discussion starts for your next board meeting.