It’s easy to get to the end of a year on your nonprofit board and realize that you haven’t taken care of essential tasks for your organization. An easy way to keep tabs on all of the tasks of a board of directors is to create a board calendar that you refer to as you develop each board meeting agenda. This will systematize your work and make it much simpler to check off the tasks.
Here are some items for your board calendar. The document itself should be reviewed and updated annually.
- Board meeting dates and retreats
- Committee meetings
- Major organizational events
- Board fundraising tasks
Here is a list of tasks to be done annually. I recommend scheduling a few of these each month so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.
- Review the organization’s 990 filing
- Review and approve the annual budget
- Evaluate executive director
- Board self-evaluation
- Review and update conflicts of interest
- Plan an annual audit (if needed)
- Board member recruitment, elections for members and officers
- Reviews of all other board policies for accuracy and thoroughness
- Strategic planning review
- Risk Management – Review risk areas, and insurance coverage,
- Fundraising/Networking – Review board’s role in fundraising and developing key contacts for the organization.
- Board and Committees – Review the board’s composition and committees. Make changes as appropriate. Discuss board training/development needs.
- Program / mission review
- Succession planning review
Here are two calendar templates that are helpful to get started:
Detailed sample board calendar from Stanford Legal Services. (See their other documents here.)