Building a board that includes a wide variety of perspectives can help your nonprofit make smarter decisions, diversify its donors, and even better serve your community. Yet nearly 85 percent of charity trustees are white, research shows, and more than a quarter of boards lack a single person of color.
To assemble a more diverse board at your organization, experts recommend codifying diversity policies into the bylaws so they’ll remain a priority even as trustees come and go.
For example, the Consumer Health Foundation drew up diversity goals that its leaders use during annual planning meetings and as a general guide to decision making, such as when hiring new vendors.
The foundation also uses a matrix, which you can download, to determine whether its board is living up to its diversity standards. Some recommended policies include:
- Requiring trustees to sit on at least one committee, to ensure that all members participate meaningfully in governing
- Holding periodic self-evaluations on whether the board is equitable
For further guidance, consult this collection of Chronicle resources.
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AdviceTips for Creating a More Diverse Board
Three grant makers share proven tactics for adding trustees from different age groups as well as economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. -
Advice
Why and How to Build a Diverse Nonprofit Board
Making nonprofits better reflect the communities they serve starts at the board level. -
Advice
A Tool One Foundation Uses to Ensure Diversity
Developing guidelines about diversity can help your nonprofit maintain those policies even as staff and board members change. -
Advice
Quota Question: Picking a Diverse Board
The nonprofit Sage set flexible goals for the number of trustees who are transgender, straight, disabled, young, old, and so forth — but stopped short of creating strict floors or ceilings. -
Advice
How to Make Socioeconomic Diversity a Priority in Your Board Search
Finding qualified board members who come from different economic backgrounds takes time, thoughtfulness, and strategy -
Grant Making
$4 Million From Ford, Mellon, and Alice Walton Fund Goes to Promote Diversity on Museum Boards
A board-member matching service to identify and train candidates of color — and assess groups’ readiness to engage people of different backgrounds — will be key to change. Today, nearly half of all museum boards are made up entirely of white people. -
Opinion
Opinion: Diverse Boards Make Better Decisions. So Why Are So Many So White?
We’re not making any progress by arguing about justice, important as it is. So let’s look at why nonprofits need a mix of people to govern their organizations.
