You know your board is a problem, but board problems are not one thing, and the fix for a board that does nothing is the opposite of the fix for a board that does too much.
This finds which board problem you actually have and hands you an ordered plan, so you work the right one first instead of the loudest one. It is a sorting instrument, not a fix. It will not clarify roles, reset your board, or build oversight. It is not a scorecard to grade your board members, and it is not a place to vent. It is a short, honest read that ends with a written plan, and it takes about ninety minutes.
A resignation threat, a legal dispute, a suspected breach of duty: handle that first with the right professional, a nonprofit attorney or accountant, not with a plan. Then come back to this. Naming that is not this failing; it is being honest about where its edge is.
You cannot diagnose a board from its charter. You diagnose it from what it did last year. Snapshot the board as it is, size, terms, officers, who actually shows up and speaks, and write down its last three real decisions: did the board decide, or ratify what leadership had already decided, and was anyone accountable for the outcome.
Open the Board Reality Snapshot →Now place your trouble in one of the recognizable forms, because the form decides the guide. Answer each of these the way the board really behaves, not the way the minutes read.
A board rated from inside its own meetings looks better than it is. Ask one honest question of yourself, the board chair, and one other member, separately, and compare the answers. Where the honest answer is worse than the rating, trust the honest answer.
Open the Governance Reality Check →Turn the finding into a plan that names your first guide, what follows, and a start date. Where more than one is true, the order is clarity, then engagement, then oversight, then composition, because a board cannot reset behavior against a line nobody drew, cannot build oversight it is not willing to do, and cannot be well developed before it knows its job.
Open the Board Priority Plan →Two moments here call for someone outside these pages. If this surfaced an active fiduciary, legal, or tax problem, a suspected breach, a lawsuit, a lapsed filing, a question about your tax-exempt standing, that goes to a nonprofit attorney or accountant this week, not into a plan. And if the board conflict has become a genuine legal dispute between board and leadership, that needs counsel before any reset.
You can say, in one plain sentence, whether your board problem is clarity, engagement, oversight, or who is on it. You have a written plan naming a first guide and a date. And you could describe the problem to a trusted peer without blaming individuals, because you are looking at the governance, not the personalities.
Once the acute problem is handled and the board is functioning, it is worth stepping back to look at the whole organization, not just the board. There is a short whole-organization check-up waiting when you are ready. That is not a pitch. It is the next honest thing to look at. The whole-organization check-up →