Is that a Responsibility of the Board or the Executive Director? Understanding Roles & Responsibilities within your Non-Profit Organization

Boards serve an important function in non-profit organizations. However, there is often a lot of confusion about what the responsibilities of the Board should be versus what the responsibilities of the Executive Director should be. For example, if there is a problem with a staff member, whose responsibility is it to take care of it? (Answer: The Executive Director). If there is a PR issue, who should the spokesperson of the organization be? (Answer: Both the Board President and Executive Director can represent the organization publicly).

As part of The Gravely Group’s Board Training, we cover the separate roles and responsibilities of the Board and the CEO in detail. We use the following chart in our trainings, to help make it easier to understand the distinct roles:

Roles & Responsibilities

Responsibilities	Board	Executive Director
Policy	Establish Policy	Execute Policy
Mission	Establish Mission	Achieve the Mission
Performance Targets	Set Performance Targets	Achieve the Targets
Financial Health	Approves Funding Strategy Approves Budget	Develops Funding Strategy Develops and Manages Budget
Strategic Planning	Establish Strategic Direction	Implement Strategic Plan
Personnel	Supervises Executive Director	Supervises all other staff
Programs	Approve Programs	Implement, Evaluate and Improve Programs
Risk Management	Approve Risk Management Plan	Develop and Implement Risk Management Plan
Personnel	Approve Personnel Policies	Implement Personnel Policies

 
Think about a nonprofit organization as having a structure similar to the government. The Board acts as Congress, which makes the laws. The Executive Director acts like the President/Executive Branch, executing and enforcing the laws as set by the Board. As you can probably guess, it is typically not advised to have the Executive Director sit on the board due to potential conflicts of interest.

For more information about Boards, read our “What Makes Effective Head Start Boards.”

Tags: board training