Board Member Applications: Guide and Resources

Written by Max | Edited by Rory Hart
Sections of this topic
    Group of People Having a Meeting

    McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

    The vast majority of content
    on this topic applies to for-profits and nonprofits. This book also covers this topic.

    Developing, Operating and Restoring Your Nonprofit Board - Book Cover

    Adapted from the Field Guide to Developing and Operating Your Nonprofit Board of Directors. Also, see Carter’s Board Blog (for for-profits and nonprofits).

    Benefits of Using Board Applications

    There are several benefits to having potential Board members complete an application to join the Board, including:

    1. It requires the potential member to carefully think about his or her decision
      to join the Board, when completing the application.
    2. It can collect important information that otherwise might be forgotten to be collected, for example, why they want to join the Board, other affiliations they have that might cause a conflict of interest, what skills they have to bring to the Board, and what they would like to get out of joining the Board.
    3. It also makes the potential member affirm their agreement to certain terms of membership, for example, the number of Board meetings to attend over a certain time period, and adherence to a certain code of conduct.

    Below are a variety of samples of Board applications. Any Board should customize a sample to suit the nature of the needs of their own organization.

    Samples of Board Member Applications

    Return to Recruiting and Orienting New Board Members

    For the Category of Boards of Directors:

    To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

    Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.


    Max