Governance

Is your board best equipped and structured to fulfill its governance role? We lead board assessments as part of board development engagement and, more often, in the context of strategic planning. We customarily survey and interview your board members, executive leadership, and other stakeholders. Informed by our experience and research, these discussions offer a useful point of departure for boards to discuss and discover how they might improve their functionality.

Our tailored assessments explore your board’s composition, size, structure, practices, engagement, financial oversight, involvement in fundraising, role in organizational development, programmatic and policy oversight, and external relationships. Following an assessment—in which we often compare your board’s capacity to others—we guide you in making changes to improve your governance capacity. Some changes might include:

• Bringing new skills and expertise on the board;
• Strengthening the board members’ roles as ambassadors;
• Revising governance policies, practices, bylaws, or committee charters;
• Developing board engagement strategies;

Board dynamics—and the relationships among leaders—are often personal as well as professional. We understand that there’s a lot of nuance to board governance, and your organization is unique.

That is why, although we benchmark and apply proven methods to strengthen nonprofit and funder governance, we don’t rely on a simple list of best practices. Our approach is targeted and tailored to the unique relationships and needs of your organization.

We provide thoughtful board facilitation through targeted retreats and workshops. We regularly conduct one-day board team-building activities, and we also advise boards on an ongoing basis to provide strategic planning and improve governance practices over time.

At TCC Group we work with you to strengthen your board at any stage of development. We help build boards from scratch and work with mature boards to fine-tune their committee structure and performance.

We also help companies spin off corporate foundations and build internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments—setting up the appropriate governance structure for any mission.

Often, governance is a role taken on by many groups beyond the board of directors.

At TCC Group we work with organizations to strengthen community advisory councils, succession planning groups, advisory committees, company committees with a voice in corporate grantmaking, and other structures that have governance-related roles and partner with the board on strategy work.