Note: anything in this post that you think is me subtweeting your organization is actually about, like, at least 3 organizations. (I'm currently on 4 boards in addition to Open Philanthropy's; I've served on a bunch of other boards in the past; and more than half of my takes on boards are not based on any of this, but rather on my interactions with boards I'm not on via the many grants made by Open Philanthropy.)

Writing about ideal governance reminded me of how weird my experiences with nonprofit boards (as in "board of directors" - the set of people who formally control a nonprofit) have been.

I thought that was a pretty good intro. The rest of this piece will:

Try to articulate what's so weird about nonprofit boards, fundamentally. I think a lot of it is the combination of great power, unclear responsibility, and ~zero accountability; additionally, I haven't been able to find much in the way of clear, widely accepted statements of what makes a good board member.
Give my own thoughts on what makes a good board member: which core duties they should be trying to do really well, the importance of "staying out of the way" on other things, and some potentially helpful practices.

I am experienced with nonprofit boards but not with for-profit boards. I'm guessing that roughly half the things I say below will apply to for-profit boards, and that for-profit boards are roughly half as weird overall (so still quite weird), but I haven't put much effort into disentangling these things; I'm writing about what I've seen.

I can't really give real-life examples here (for reasons I think will be pretty clear) so this is just going to be me opining in the abstract.

Why nonprofit boards are weird

Here's how a nonprofit board works:

There are usually 3-10 people on the board (though sometimes much more). Most of them don't work for the nonprofit (they have other jobs).
They meet every few months. Nonprofit employees (especially the CEO¹) do a lot of the agenda-setting for the meeting. Employees present general updates and ask for the board's approval on various things the board needs to approve, such as the budget.
A majority vote of the directors can do anything: fire the CEO, dissolve the nonprofit, add and remove directors, etc. You can think of the board as the "owner" of the nonprofit - formally, it has final say in every decision.
In practi

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Sami Cunningham

Sami Cunningham

Sami Cunningham

Sami Cunningham