Building a Better Board: A Q&A with Anne Wallestad

By Samantha Cart

Anne Wallestad. Photo by Gale Force Images.

A foundation of any kind is only as strong as the leadership behind it. According to Anne Wallestad, president and CEO of BoardSource, a globally recognized nonprofit focused on strengthening nonprofit leadership at the highest level, building a diverse, dynamic board of directors is one of the best ways to create overall organizational success. Here, Wallestad helps define what makes a strong, engaged board for foundations of every size and focus. 

WVE: What makes a strong and effective grantmaking foundation board?  

AW: It’s not any one thing, but, instead, a combination of people, practices and culture. Boards need to have individuals who bring the expertise and perspective needed to partner with staff on strategy. They need practices that support thoughtful and intentional oversight, and they need to cultivate a culture that enables them to proactively and productively address challenges, hold disagreements and share power in a way that builds collective engagement and shared accountability. 

WVE: What are the most important duties of a grantmaking foundation’s board members?  

AW: Generally, foundation boards—and all social sector boards—are responsible for three things: setting direction, providing oversight and ensuring resources. Each of those roles is critical, but most important is the board’s role in setting direction, which is the foundation for all the organization is and does. It encompasses defining purpose and values and also partnering with the staff to build and guide strategy.  

WVE: What expertise and talents should be recruited to serve on the board? 

AW: The board needs to include board members who are well-positioned to do the board’s work, which includes its roles in strategy, oversight and ensuring resources. At BoardSource, we believe that is not just about professional expertise and skills but also about perspective and understanding of the issues the foundation is seeking to address. Boards need to be populated to ensure that the board’s decision-making and prioritization are informed by the life experiences and perspectives relevant to the work the organization is doing. Only this ensures they are making good, grounded decisions that will be trusted by those they seek to serve and support. 

WVE: What is the best way to ensure those recruited are effective in their fiscal and legal duties of carrying out grantmaking to serve the community and stewardship of the foundation? 

AW: It starts with effective board recruitment and orientation. Boards should not assume that individual board members are knowledgeable about the roles and responsibilities of board membership and should invest in a thoughtful and robust orientation process.  

WVE: How should a foundation board lead with equity—including rural, economic, racial and gender equity —to best serve its community?  

AW: This is a big and important question that each and every foundation board should be asking itself. Because of that, there is no one set path for establishing and realizing a commitment to equity. However, I think it starts with a conversation about what equity means in the context of the foundation’s work. Sometimes, it can be helpful to look at community data about the current state of things—to what extent equity does or does not exist currently. That can be a starting point for board-level thinking about the foundation’s role in achieving greater equity and what that will require from the foundation and its board to achieve. 

WVE: What is the right number of foundation board members?  

AW: There truly is no magic number, but a board that is too small may not have enough external perspectives to provide meaningful input on organizational strategy and may not enable the organization to reach important networks for purposes of advocacy, fundraising and collaboration. It also may be too insular to provide effective oversight, and the executive may wield too much power. 

A board that is too big may struggle to meaningfully engage all of its board members, find it difficult to effectively discuss important issues and make decisions as a full group, have an executive committee that is too powerful and functions as the governing body for the organization or have an executive who wields too much power. 

Boards that are wondering about what the right board size might be for their foundation should reflect on whether or not any of these indicators are true of their board currently and consider growing or shrinking the board over time to recalibrate. 

WVE: How should a foundation navigate its legal duties and any conflicts of interest, especially in rural communities when people volunteer for many local organizations? 

AW: Conflicts of interest are natural and overlapping engagement across the organizational ecosystem isn’t necessarily bad and can actually be quite helpful. That’s why, from BoardSource’s perspective, it’s less about avoiding conflicts of interest and more about managing them effectively. This means having a thoughtful and regular practice of disclosing potential conflicts of interest, having a rigorous and independent process for reviewing potential conflicts of interest and committing to appropriate management of conflicts when they could impact or appear to impact the board’s decision-making.  

WVE: How should a foundation board prepare for generational transitions?  

AW: When thinking about any transition or change, it can be helpful to reflect on organizational values and purpose as a board. This helps the board cultivate a shared understanding about what is most important and a common language around why. Those can then become touchpoints to ground and center conversations through change, even as new perspectives and relationships are introduced.  

WVE: How should a foundation board practice transparency and trust-based philanthropy?  

AW: I endorse the key principles of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, which are to: 

• Give multi-year, unrestricted funding
• Do the homework to learn about grantees
• Simplify and streamline paperwork
• Be transparent and responsive
• Solicit and act on feedback 
• Offer support beyond the check 

WVE: What are missteps or mistakes a foundation board should avoid?  

AW: That’s a tough one to answer, as there are a lot of ways foundation boards can make mistakes—they are a group of humans. I think what I’d offer instead is advice to individual board members and that is to maintain a sense of humility and curiosity about everything you do as a board member. If you are open and curious with yourself, your board colleagues, your chief executive and the larger staff team and bring a sense of humility to all you do, you will recover from the mistakes you may make with more grace and less harm.