Shared Commitments. Stronger Decisions.

June 2026

I recently led a comprehensive seminar in which one of my training modules focused on how commitment and accountability lead to better decisions.  Clients and training participants I work with lament about the lack of engagement and follow-through by their board members.  As consultants, my peers and I focus on ensuring nonprofit boards understand their roles and responsibilities and how to fulfill them.  What I have learned as I approach improvement from a leadership perspective is that these are not the only necessary agreements.  Performing effectively as a leader requires a mindset shift: recognizing that when you join a board, you are making a commitment to the organization that you must honor.

Examples of challenges shared by my clients include board members who frequently miss meetings, members who serve as a committee chair but do not hold committee meetings, members who receive board materials in advance but do not read the information before the meeting, members who do not make a personal financial contribution, members who do not leverage their connections to support the Chief Executive (i.e., Executive Director or CEO) in resource development, and members who communicate ineffectively among themselves or with the Chief Executive, to name a few.  These challenges create debilitating consequences that often defer and can also damage decision-making.

Look at the following examples of how these challenges show up and the impact they have.

• When members are frequently absent, boards often lack a quorum, which means they cannot propose motions on priorities such as grant funding opportunities, executive performance, salary continuation, or strategic priorities and goals.

• When committees do not meet, boards defer action on priorities because no one has conducted in-depth research or evaluation.

• When board members do not read board materials in advance, precious deliberation and decision-making time is lost as members must be brought up to speed on information that was previously provided. This often causes meetings to run longer than scheduled, disrespecting everyone’s time and leaving other agenda items unaddressed until a later meeting.

• When members do not make a personal financial contribution (either in cash or in-kind), it can signal to funders that the board is not fully invested in the organization, prompting them to question why they should invest.

• When communication among board members or between the board and the Chief Executive devolves into avoided conversations, disrespectful communication, factions on the board, and inappropriate back-channel conversations, a dysfunctional culture emerges that creates uninformed, disengaged members, overtasked engaged members, and incomplete decision-making.

  
  

How does a board fix this? The answer is a shift in mindset.  The above challenges did not necessarily occur because the board members didn't know their roles and responsibilities, or didn’t understand how to fulfill them.  Perhaps the missing component is that they did not operate with a conscientious commitment to what they signed up for when they agreed to serve on the board of directors, which is accountable to its stakeholders.  Sometimes accountability to the commitment may feel like the scorecard in a ball game, with its runs, hits, errors, and strikes, or a report card in elementary school, where you were graded on academics as well as conduct, absences, and participation.  However, ensuring clear measures are in place and enforced creates a culture of commitment and leads to high-functioning boards.

When boards and chief executives clearly articulate commitments, track them consistently, and address slippage transparently, decision-making improves—not because people are perfect, but because there is a system and it is working.  High-functioning boards don’t rely on goodwill alone—they rely on shared commitments made visible.  Using accountability tools like signed board agreements, attendance tracking, dashboards, periodic individual and board self-assessments, exit interviews, giving charts (in total for the board/public, individually for confidential 1:1 conversations), and committee charters, and assigning a designated individual (by position or committee) to hold responsibility for overseeing and enforcing expectations consistently and transparently leads to stronger, and more timely decision-making, particularly when under pressure.

What is your board’s commitment mindset?  Directors may know their responsibilities and may understand how to fulfill them, but when they don’t engage and follow through, what is the root cause?  My mom facetiously says, “Excuses only satisfy the maker.”  My military veteran husband was trained for "No excuses. Get it done." There is, of course, context missing from these quotes, but when someone commits their time, talent, and treasure to a nonprofit organization, how seriously do they take the commitment? Honestly, in the modern world, most of us have competing priorities, multiple commitments, and have overextended ourselves; yet we carry a noble and genuine desire to be leaders and changemakers in our families, jobs, and the community. As such, there is frequently an understandable explanation for why a board member didn’t follow through on something or doesn't engage in active board service as expected (which is why there are allowances and exceptions, such as an excused absence policy or bylaw, for example).  

However, when these challenges persist, violate the policy, and go unaddressed, good decision-making can be compromised, the capacity of the same few members doing the work of the full board diminishes, and the organization's sustainability is weakened. Solutions can include

• Transparently acknowledging that now is not the best time for the board member to continue serving,

• The member verbalizing that they need more support, training, or information in particular areas (from the organization or gathered on their own),

• Filling seat vacancies, expanding the authorized board size, or adding more diverse members,

• Being realistic about how many “priorities” the board or organization really has,

• Recognizing that board performance is a systemic problem that can be resolved through an intentional working partnership between the board and the chief executive.

Work to create a culture that honors accountability and reframes the term as a mechanism for stronger, more timely decision-making to achieve the greatest mission-driven community impact, rather than viewing it as a mundane, punitive protocol.