Every nonprofit board wants to be great. But the reality is, few are. It’s one of the great puzzles of governance. How do you mold highly talented individuals with diverse backgrounds, limited time, and no governance expertise into an effective board?

The Strategic Board provides the answer. Drawing on more than twenty years of nonprofit experience, Mark Light outlines a practical model that overcomes the built-in deficiencies of nonprofit boards and guides them to strategic effectiveness. The Strategic Board™ model of governance is a step-by-step, easy-to-implement, multilevel course of action that enables a board to craft a comprehensive Governance Plan™ that:

• Develops a Leadership Plan that determines "Where to go tomorrow?"
• Creates a Delegation Plan that specifies "Who does what?"
• Follows through with a Management Plan that decides "What gets done today?"
• Puts in place a Vigilance Plan to answer the question "Did it happen?"

The Strategic Board approach doesn’t dictate the answers. Rather, it makes sure you ask all the right questions as you outline your goals and focus on achieving them. It’s a uniquely flexible blueprint for better functioning that will at last connect your board’s work about where you go tomorrow with your staff’s work on what gets done today.