Assessing the Effectiveness of your Outward Bound Board

Good business organizations, as a matter of routine, take periodic inventory of operations, personnel, and finances. Outward Bound organizations should periodically do no less. It is one of the best methods of insuring an alert, focused, and continuously useful program. Perhaps the following questions, or a set more specifically adapted to your purpose, might constitute the basis of discussion at early board meetings:

A. Purpose: As a nonprofit organization, we should be aiming towards certain specific accomplishments; what are they?

B. Specific Activities: What program activities are we currently operating? Are the results what they should be?

C. Relationship to Comparable Services: What comparable services (nonprofit, governmental, or commercial) are being conducted for the same general group in our community? Is there duplication or conflict?

D. Unmet Needs: What gaps in our type of service exist within our community and who should be meeting them?

E. Finances: In our fund raising, are we meticulously honest with contributors and the community at large? Are our financial reports audited and published? Is our budgeting procedure sound?

F. Organizational Weaknesses: What are our most outstanding weaknesses as an organization? Board, administration or method, staff, equipment, community interpretation, financing, location?

G. Economies: Are there any sound economies of time and money that can and should be made in our trusteeship?

H. Safety and Quality: Are the programs we are offering operating with good risk management and quality standards? Do we have effective systems in place to handle emergencies?

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