Your nonprofit is only as good as its governing board. So it's imperative that you recruit the right people, with the right skills, talents and connections, and that they get the right training, orientation and information to govern effectively.
Great board development requires skills in several levels: 
- Building the board: recruiting the right people, and providing effective orientation to them.
- Using mutually agreed-upon principles and ethics.
- Setting direction for the organization.
- Understanding and participating appropriately in development efforts.
- Maintaining accountability over operations and finance.
Easy to say, but not so easy to do. Your nonprofit organization needs to invest in the development of its board, and its board members, with as much dedication and investment as you do for your executives, professional staff and clinical team.
BSG services for board development include:
- The Board's Role in Fundraising©. This short workshop may be presented at the board's annual planning retreat, or even during a regularly scheduled board meeting. The workshop shows board members how to set income targets, maintain accountabililty over income and expenses, and even improve their ability to act as peer solicitors. The Board's Role in Fundraising will help your board understand the principles of Fundraising the SMART Way™ and participate in it effectively.
- Board Skills & Talents Matrix. A mechanism for ensuring that the governing board contains an appropriate mix of talents, skills, networks of connections, representation of special-interest groups, and so forth. Some of our nonprofit clients have even created Board Recruitment Scorecards, based on Fundraising the SMART Way™.
- Strategic Planning Services. Strategic planning retreats and plan-implementation projects, based on our state-of-the-art methods for instituting effective long-term planning processes.
Policy Governance. Founder Ellen Bristol is an experienced facilitator of the Policy Governance® model developed by John Carver. BSG solutions for Policy Governance include Introduction to Policy Governance, a half-day workshop, and long-term projects to implement the Policy Governance model.