August 20, 2021

Dynamic Board Retreats: 3 Questions CEOs Ask to Build Them

It’s time to plan your board retreat. You want the retreat to benefit your nonprofit, the board, and frankly, to make your job easier. You don’t want any board retreat. You want a dynamic board retreat.

Creating an effective board retreat is not easy.

You may have been disappointed or even embarrassed by retreats. Undoubtedly, you attended board retreats that missed their mark. These retreats achieved little. Either the board failed to make decisions, or they were unhealthy, short-sighted, or shallow when the board made them.

This article guides nonprofit CEOs, executive directors, and board chairs on how to clarify board retreat goals, so you achieve them at your event. We’ll do this by focusing on the heart of board retreats: their objectives, measures, and value. These three items are the framework of dynamic board retreats and prepare you to develop a board retreat you will lead internally or work with an advisor to partner with you to design your event.

1. Board Retreat Objectives

What Are Your Board Retreat Goals?

Answer this question by writing down all your board retreat goals.

Why list all of the goals? To achieve more of them! Optimal board retreats check off multiple boxes. By capturing what you want, you begin with the end in mind. Counterintuitively, starting at the end allows you to find the express lane to reach your objectives.

You might set your retreat goals yourself. However, it’s genius to ask your board members what they would like to achieve.

Why is this so smart? When you include their objectives in your invitation, you increase attendance. Moreover, often your goals will overlap with the board members’ desires, so you create more buy-in for retreat activities. (Watch 5 Ways to Turn Off Your Nonprofit Board Members.)

Now that you’ve identified your goals, let’s get clear on how you’ll know you achieved them.

2. Board Retreat Measures

How Will You Know Your Board Retreat Succeeded?

For every goal listed, create a tangible measurement. Remember SMART goals?

Answering this question moves you from “we want to have a great board retreat” to specific, quantifiable outcomes. What are measurable results? Stuff you can measure. You can’t measure “a great board retreat.” You can measure a retreat that identified six innovative program improvements ideas and left the board with a plan of action.

Getting Specific about Retreat Success

What will a successful board retreat look like for you? Review your goals. Consider and revise further to answer these additional questions.

Are your goals specific? For instance, you list: improve board members’ relationships. That’s pretty broad. Consider: Help board members have one-on-one conversations with two people they don’t know that well.

Are your goals practical? That is, during a retreat can you move forward on the challenge? For example, you had a budget shortfall for five years. Unless someone writes a check at the retreat, it’s unlikely you will close it during the event. Instead, a practical goal is to identify three solutions plus a concrete plan to pilot the top idea to close your deficit.

Star the priorities. Which goal is the retreat’s key priority? For instance, your budget shortfall is more important than the facilities review. Yes, your facilities impact your budget, and you can probably do both tasks in a retreat. However, since the budget shortfall is the priority, you need to start it to remind you to build your retreat around it.

You may be thinking, egads, this is a lot of work, but bear with me. Getting granular about what you want streamlines your retreat planning and makes your event worthy of everyone’s investment in it.

(BTW, If your first thought answering this question, how will you know your retreat succeeded, was that you survived and that no one came to blows, please reconsider if a board retreat is the best way forward. If the board is toxic or in conflict, retreats carry a high risk.)

3 . Board Retreat Values

What value will the board retreat provide?

For every goal, identify the value of reaching it.

Why do you need to know the why? Retreats take energy, time, and money; resources you might invest elsewhere. If you can’t establish a value that motivates you and drives board attendance, rethink your retreat concept and choose another option.

You already know that organizing a board retreat is more complex than holding a regular board meeting. Answering this question focuses on your board retreat motivation.

What value do you see your nonprofit, your board members, and you gain from a successful board retreat? What will a successful board retreat mean to your future revenue? Nonprofit branding? Outcomes? Your work?

How to Determine Value

For each goal, identify one or more values as applicable and apply a price tag to it. For example, if your budget shortfall is $25,000, and you identify ways to close it at the event, the value of your retreat is at least $25,000 the first year. Say the board micromanages, and the retreat changes this behavior; the value could be 10 percent or more of the budget. Well-functioning boards reduce turnover. Perhaps you have a disengaged board, and the retreat leaves them energized and actively recruiting prospective donors. In this case, you decided the value of the retreat will increase your contributions income by 25 percent over three years.

When I work with clients, the value of board retreats exceeds their costs, often by ten or twenty times the investments. Their potential value is why board retreats have remained very popular.

Once you know the value, how might you share it?

With . . .

Board members, when you invite them to enlist their support and engagement and
Staff and yourself to keep retreat tasks front and center in your jam-packed schedules.
Your retreat planning team, so you achieve your goals.

Dynamic Board Retreats

You can create a board retreat that meets and exceeds your objectives and launches your nonprofit to the next level.

How will you know you created succeeded? Effective board retreats leave everyone tired and thrilled. In the parking lot or at the end of virtual sessions, everyone concurs they worked hard and that the future never looked brighter.

Dynamic board retreats don’t happen by accident. You create them by planning what you want to happen during them in advance.

Need more help with your board retreat? Karen is available for a mini-consult to answer these questions or more. Click here to email or here to set a time to chat.

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Author

Karen Eber Davis

Karen Eber Davis provides customized advising and coaching around nonprofit strategy and board development. People leaders hire her to bring clarity to sticky situations, break through barriers that seem insurmountable, and align people for better futures. She is the author of 7 Nonprofit Income Streams and Let's Raise Nonprofit Millions Together.