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Boards + Governance

Community leadership volunteers can provide significant leverage in advancing philanthropy, advocacy and governance for the health care foundation. However, many foundation boards and councils not only fail to add value commensurate with the time it takes to manage and engage them but also struggle to fulfill their core responsibilities.​

That’s why BoardAdvance provides practical and actionable consulting, training, publications, tools and templates with a keen focus on advancing philanthropy and advocacy as well as areas such as:

Function
Roles, responsibilities and decision rights 

 

Governance
Legal and fiduciary responsibilities 

Membership

Selection, recruitment, orientation, onboarding

 

Experience

Culture, communications, meetings, calendars

Performance
Evaluation, metrics and accountability 

 

Innovation
Evolving trends, issues and opportunities

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Our comprehensive program, BoardAdvance, provides practical and actionable training and tools as well as custom board manuals to empower board leaders in the following areas: 

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BoardWise

Accordant recognizes the power of generative discussion, productive debate and continuous learning around the health foundation board table. Curated BoardWise papers and discussion prompts help to spur board development, increased awareness of strategic issues and informed board engagement.

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Board Member Handbooks

Spend more time engaging your board and less time managing it with our Foundation Board Member Handbooks, written specifically to support and educate board leaders. Based on more than 30 years of experience and customized solutions to meet your unique needs and situations.

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Board Training

Accordant provides substantive, actionable and high energy board education and retreat experiences. Organizations can choose from a deep bench of content areas and interactive elements to create a unique event tailored to the organization’s needs and opportunities. 

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Selection, Recruitment, Orientation & Onboarding

Diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) must be considered when recruiting and selecting board members. Accordant works with health leaders not only to ensure these are prioritized but they are also considered during onboarding, orientation and beyond. Our proprietary tool, CoreCentric® enhances the onboarding processes by identifying board members’ talents and preferences that prompts philanthropy leadership to best utilize and align board member service, while building confidence in engagement and mission elevation.

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Design, Structure & Function

Accordant advances board evaluation, facilitates board design and creates an infrastructure with organizations that support board leaders in effectively and confidently leading in this complex environment. We collaborate with health care leaders to create structures, role descriptions, values-based culture, meeting agendas and calendars that ensure a positive board experience.

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Roles, Responsibilities & Decision Rights

Board members face a complex environment and heightened scrutiny while fulfilling their governance roles. Accordant collaborates with leaders to ensure board responsibilities align with the organization as well as the fiduciary and legal regulations.

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Training & Development

Training and development are crucial to ensure ongoing engagement, active involvement and maximum impact of board members. Through workshops, retreats and our proprietary BoardAdvance training, membership and board member manuals, Accordant works with organizations to ensure engaging philanthropy and advocacy to elevate organization mission through board participation.

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Evaluation & Accountability

Committing to a routine board evaluation is a hallmark of a healthy organization. The intentional board embraces board evaluation as a positive and proactive process to uncover opportunity and refine performance rather than a tool to be critical or punitive. Accordant collaborates with organizations to hand select predetermined questions to customize our board evaluation survey tool to align with organizational values, and extend our services to include survey analysis and prioritized recommendations for the board development action plan. 

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Collaboration with Executives & Staff

An engaged and committed board starts with the philanthropy team that guides them. Accordant provides education and training not only for board members but also for philanthropy teams. We collaborate to develop strategies and education that align team members, leadership, board members and organizational values.

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