Health Care Governance
Community leadership volunteers serving on health care organization and foundation boards have significant responsibilities for advancing the mission. However, many trustees and foundation boards do not have access to the infrastructure, information and tools that position them to be optimally successful. Accordant elevates health care governance by helping organizations define roles and responsibilities while enabling best practice governance.
Board Design & Development
Board members bring outsize influence and critical insights to support the work of the health care organization or health care foundation. Board members face a complex and dynamic environment in which to fulfill their governance role. Board members also conduct their work in a time of heightened scrutiny. Therefore, supporting community volunteer leaders in successfully fulfilling their roles, responsibilities and fiduciary obligations is an endeavor worth proactive attention.
Accordant helps organizations structure, build, refine and develop health care governing boards and health care foundation boards. We advance evaluation, facilitate design and create infrastructure to support board leaders in effectively and confidently leading in this complex environment. We collaborate to create structures, role descriptions, policies, communications pathways, educational opportunities, accountability systems and more. We enable organizations to elevate board experience, improve recruitment and strengthen efficiency. Ultimately, our aim is to ensure work is not only aligned with prevailing best practice in health care governance but also is agile and consistent with the culture and opportunity within the organization.
Foundation & Governing Board Education
Foundation and governing board leaders bring gravitas, credibility, skills, access and insight that are not duplicated anywhere else in the health organization, providing a significant source of competitive advantage. To harness the individual and collective influence of board leaders in advancing your mission, you must take a deliberate approach to educating and engaging these valuable community leadership volunteers.
Accordant has been recognized for our progressive and research-driven approach to board education and engagement through high-energy, high-impact and high-interaction training experiences. Accordant provides leaders with the insights and understandings to place their valuable role in context. Our experts illuminate key strategic issues and opportunities in health care and health philanthropy to show board members how they can activate solutions to support success. Our consultants provide board leaders with strategies that leverage their individual preferences, skills and intention to comfortably and confidently advocate for and raise charitable funds for the health care mission.
Accordant designs customized educational experiences that meet the unique needs and opportunities of your board. Sessions may be offered either onsite or through video conference. Educational content can be delivered in sessions from 30 minutes to 6 hours. Each board session is based upon our deep bench of research-driven board content on subjects that include, but are not limited to:
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Understanding the financial rationale for philanthropy in health care
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Discovering the unique areas of competitive advantage for board members
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Exploring the strategic priorities of high performance health philanthropy organizations
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Building a better board–from role design to member selection to better meetings
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Selecting strategically aligned projects for philanthropic support
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Supporting investment in new priorities from community impact to innovation
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Fostering powerful and productive collaborations with other organizational allies
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Designing and positioning the health care board in an era of systemization
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Leading the progressive and accountable board organization
Board Evaluation
Great boards commit to regular board evaluation to illuminate opportunities that improve both board and organizational performance, as well as enhance the board experience. Most boards advance this process on an annual basis to explore issues at both the collective board level and the individual board member level to uncover specific growth opportunities. This provides insights into competencies, accomplishments and shortcomings to identify and prioritize opportunities for growth.
Committing to a routine board evaluation is similar to making a commitment to “preventive” care rather than “sick” care: it 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. Information from board surveys is shared in aggregate and is not linked to specific names, encouraging forthrightness and productive feedback. Candid responses enable an honest and actionable snapshot of board performance and areas of opportunity.
Accordant utilizes a standard set of core questions that provide comparative benchmarks to other organizations. These provide the ability to select from a broad battery of additional questions that enable organizations to customize their board survey, exploring the organization’s most pressing and most promising issues. Surveys are delivered in an electronic format to create a simple and accessible user experience.
Accordant’s board evaluation service includes customization of the survey tool, analysis and prioritized recommendations for the board development action plan. Organizations may optionally request to have an Accordant expert present their results in a video-based or live presentation.
Being intentional about using ongoing board evaluation as a tool to measure and to refine actions and priorities enables the board to be optimally effective in its role.