Building Stronger Boards: Why I Became BoardSource-Certified in Nonprofit Board Consulting

I’m excited to share that I've completed BoardSource’s Certificate in Nonprofit Board Consulting. This certification deepens the board development work I’ve been doing with clients—and reflects something I’ve learned over two decades in this sector: fundraising strategy and board effectiveness are interconnected systems.

Increasingly, clients engage us for fundraising issues that ultimately reflect deeper organizational questions about board development and leadership:

• We’re fiscally sponsored right now, but we’re ready to incorporate. How do we recruit our first board?

• Our founding board members are great cheerleaders, but we need people who can actually govern. How do we transition?

• Our board won’t fundraise. How can we encourage more participation and energy?

• Our ED and board chair are in conflict. It’s affecting everything, including our fundraising.

• We need to diversify our board, but we don't want to tokenize people. How do we recruit authentically?

• We need strategic direction before we can ask for major gifts. Can you facilitate our planning process?

These aren’t just fundraising concerns. They’re board development challenges—questions about how boards are built, recruited, developed, and engaged throughout an organization’s lifecycle. I’ve been helping clients navigate them—facilitating board retreats, supporting board recruitment, helping boards clarify their role and build healthier dynamics. But I wanted to formalize that expertise.

What BoardSource's Training Taught Me

BoardSource’s approach centers on purpose-driven leadership—the idea that effective boards govern for the mission the organization exists to serve. 

What deepened for me:

No organization works in isolation. Effective boards see themselves as part of an ecosystem of organizations working toward shared goals. This means collaboration over competition, collective impact over organizational ego. The pie is big enough for everyone to get a slice.

Who has the authority to speak for the community being served? Whose voices need to be at the table? This goes beyond diversity metrics to questions of authorized voice and power, representation, and who gets to make decisions that affect communities.

Boards need the capacity to do sensemaking together—to engage in genuine collective analysis of what’s happening in the environment and what the organization should do about it. This requires trust, curiosity, and the ability to think together, as a collective. 

When a client says "our board won't fundraise," that’s a symptom, not the problem. The real issue might be: they don’t understand their role, they don’t trust the ED, they lack the context to represent the organization’s priorities confidently, aren’t deeply connected to the mission, can’t articulate the strategy (or the strategy isn’t clear), are bringing their own complicated relationship with money into the organization’s context, or simply have never been taught how to ask. BoardSource helped me explore new ways to think about the root issues rather than treating the symptoms.

Some ideas that came up in the training that resonated with me, based on my experience with clients: 

• How many governance challenges stem from founders or long-tenured EDs who haven't clarified the board’s evolving role as the organization matures

• How often “board problems” are actually symptoms of unclear strategy or mission drift—when boards don't know where the organization is going, they can’t govern effectively

• That board development is inherently change management work—helping boards evolve requires meeting them where they are, not where you wish they were

How This Changes Our Work with Clients

BoardSource certification changes how deeply Collective Agency can support organizations at every stage of their board’s development—and more importantly, how we approach that work.

I aim to help boards think strategically as collectives, to center purpose and community, and to see themselves as part of ecosystems. And critically: I believe grassroots organizations deserve the same board infrastructure and development support as well-funded institutions. Too often, governance expertise is only accessible to organizations with significant budgets—the ones who can afford expensive consultants or multi-day retreats. Meanwhile, grassroots leaders—the people doing the most important work in their communities—are expected to figure out board development on their own.

That's backwards. The organizations with the least resources often need the strongest governance infrastructure precisely because they’re operating with fewer safety nets. BoardSource certification allows me to bring the same rigor, frameworks, and strategic support to grassroots organizations that large institutions take for granted.

BoardSource certification gives me a stronger foundation to engage clients with budgets of all sizes, and to support boards at varying levels of maturity.

Whether you’re just starting out and need to recruit your first board, growing and need to mature your founding board, established and need to strengthen governance, planning a major initiative and need board readiness, or experiencing board-staff tension and need facilitation—let’s talk. I’d love to explore how we can support you.