Q:

 I have been the ED at a small nonprofit for the past six years. During that time, I’ve only had one performance review, in my first year, and it was basically just a conversation with the board chair where they told me I was doing a good job. Since then, I’ve requested a performance review several times, but it’s never happened. There are no big issues with my board, but I think it’s an important part of their role that they are just ignoring. And personally, I would love some constructive feedback to help me grow. How can I get my board to take this seriously?

A:

It’s one thing to convince your board that ED performance evaluation is important. But the only thing worse than no performance evaluation is a crappy performance evaluation; a rushed, vague, or adversarial process can create mistrust and leave everyone worse off. 

In the last issue of Board Stories, we explored why boards avoid executive performance evaluation, and how to move them beyond that impasse. In this issue, I’ll talk about the next part: how to build an ED evaluation process that is fair and effective, and actually strengthens your organization’s overall governance foundation. (If your board is ready to take this work further, I’ve developed a free online training module and some helpful resources on Nonprofit Executive Performance Management.)

Why Effective ED Performance Evaluation Matters

When done well, ED evaluation is a powerful tool to strengthen leadership, clarify priorities, and advance organizational purpose. Like many aspects of governance, it calls for a balance  between administrative oversight with strategic and relational approaches. And this is where I see most processes fall short; boards often focus exclusively on providing direct feedback to EDs on their ‘leadership style’, rather than looking at the big picture of the ED’s role in the organization. This is because most of us only have experience with individualized performance assessments from a manager, which is not what we’re aiming for in an ED review. A strong ED performance management and evaluation process should focus on meeting three core objectives:

• Advancing progress on the organization’s strategic or impact goals
• Ensuring that the organization is being managed appropriately and effectively
• Strengthening the organization’s leadership (this includes both Board and Executive leadership!)

Objective 1: Advance Progress on Strategic and Impact Goals

The board’s ultimate role is to steward the organization’s purpose. Alongside the ED, the board will set (or approve) strategic goals, and then the implementation of those goals gets delegated to the ED. The ED’s job is to translate that strategy into action; the board’s job is to monitor whether those goals are being advanced in ways that are effective and sustainable.

What’s challenging about this part:

• Strategic goals are often too broad or vague, making it hard to measure progress.
• Many organizations skip defining clear indicators of success.
• Boards may not have the operational context to interpret day-to-day progress.
• EDs can feel defensive if external factors (like funding shifts or systemic barriers) slow things down.

How to approach it successfully:

• Define specific, measurable goals with indicators and success metrics.
• Revisit metrics as needed; plans should evolve as context changes.
• Make evaluation a dialogue, not a one-time judgment.
• Keep the focus on organizational impact, not subjective impressions.
• Recognize and name systemic barriers, and work together to address them.

What I think is really important here is that the board and ED are collaborators in this area; often, I see boards take an adversarial approach to monitoring the ED’s progress on strategic goals, which is counterproductive. You’re in this together!  

Objective 2: Ensure Oversight of Operations and Management

Beyond strategy, the board has a fiduciary duty to ensure the organization is well-managed; what that looks like from one organization to another will vary, but generally we’re looking for strong financial controls, ethically-sound and legally compliant operations, and responsible stewardship of organizational assets (including things like staffing, reputation and relationships). The ED is at the center of this work, but the board is ultimately accountable, so it’s essential to the board (and often reassuring to the ED) that a thorough monitoring process is in place.

What’s challenging about this part:

• Many nonprofits lack a solid, up-to-date policy framework to set expectations and guide practice.
• Boards struggle to evaluate areas they can’t observe directly.
• Oversight can be misinterpreted by the ED as mistrust or micromanagement.
• Misused or poorly designed “360 reviews” often miss the mark, doing more harm than good.

How to approach it successfully:

• Recognize that oversight is already happening through existing board routines (e.g. quarterly financial reports, annual audit, monthly ED reports).
• Keep the ED’s role description and core policies up to date; review and sign off  on core policies annually.
• Use organization-wide surveys to capture feedback from staff, volunteers, and stakeholders on a regular basis, as data that benefits the whole organization, not just the evaluation.
• Ensure an internal complaints process and whistleblower policy are in place to escalate serious concerns to the board as needed.
• Use scenario planning to ensure that the organization has adequate policies and practices that can help prevent and address risk scenarios.

This is the area where many board directors tend to lose sleep - because there is no feasible way to supervise the ED on a daily basis. The good news is that you don’t have to! Having a strong policy framework, and regular, thoughtful checks and balances will suffice. The truth is that no board can ensure, with complete certainty, that their ED is going to do the right thing all the time. But you can ensure that you’ve taken reasonable steps to prevent the wrong thing from happening, and that if a ‘worst-case scenario’ ever arises, you have the appropriate infrastructure to notice and respond to the issue in a timely manner.

Objective 3: Strengthen Leadership and the Board/ED Relationship

A performance review isn’t just about accountability, it’s also about support. Boards are responsible for ensuring the ED is set up for success, with the right scope, resources, and opportunities to grow. And there is no way to fairly assess the ED’s performance without also considering the board’s role in their successes and failures; so it’s important for boards to take a reflective approach that assesses their own performance, and their relationship with the ED, with the end goal of strengthening leadership across the entire governance system.

What’s challenging about this part:

• Evaluations often look backward instead of investing in future growth.
• Feedback tends to flow one way, from board to ED, rather than creating dialogue between both parties.
• Boards rarely reflect on how their own performance shapes the ED’s success (and often resist feedback on this area from EDs).

How to approach it successfully:

• Include a board evaluation process alongside the ED evaluation.
• Create ongoing opportunities for meaningful dialogue between the board and ED.
• Support the ED’s professional development with clear goals, time, and resources.
• Establish a fair, transparent process for addressing performance concerns as they arise.

Many boards follow the conventional approach of delegating board-ED communications to the Chair. This often seems like a practical approach, but I have seen this practice lead to all sorts of problems for organizations; it can create information bottlenecks and create unnecessary risk. It’s important to ensure that the board as a whole is aware of all direction and feedback shared with the ED, and that the ED is able to bring any questions, concerns or suggestions directly to the full board. As a helpful practice, I think it can be beneficial for boards to delegate the management of HR matters relating to the ED to a small committee, rather than any one individual on the board.

Effective ED Evaluation is Win-Win-Win

When boards avoid ED evaluation, they miss a huge opportunity to build trust, clarity, and alignment. But a crappy ED evaluation process can actually be worse - it can have a detrimental effect on the critical relationship between the board and ED. A thoughtful process, centered on these three objectives - advancing strategic impact, monitoring management practices and strengthening leadership - ensures that evaluation strengthens, rather than strains, the board/ED relationship, and will enable the organization to better advance its core purpose. 

If your board is ready to put this into action, explore the Executive Performance Management Hub, a toolkit with policies, templates, and free board training to help you build out a fair and effective ED evaluation process, step-by-step.

Big Takeaways:

• A crappy ED evaluation can be harmful.  A poorly designed process can damage trust and limit dialogue between the board and ED.  
• Make it a dialogue, not a verdict. The best evaluations are more than just a performance scorecard; they open up space for complex conversations between the board and ED.
• Support and accountability go hand in hand. Setting the ED up for success is just as important as holding the ED accountable for their performance.