The interview I did a couple weeks ago with the executive director and board president of award-winning Cape Fear Literacy Council reminded me of the need to do a show about board learning again. The most common trait of the successful organizations I’ve interviewed is that the staff and board are always learning: they evaluate what’s working and not working about their programs and services. They measure the impact of what they’re doing. They pay for training. And most do a board self-assessment of some kind at least annually.

On this show, my guest and I talk about why you should do a board assessment and then we review a number of possible assessment tools so you don’t have to start from scratch. The idea is to select one or put two of them together that you think will end up giving you useful information to make your board better.

My guest is Dr. Debra Beck, a consultant and author with nearly 30 years experience serving on, and consulting with, nonprofit boards. Debra is based in Laramie, Wyoming and she started a blog called the Laramie Board Learning Project to encourage community leaders to embrace their responsibilities and shape the future of their organizations.

This is another “show and tell” show which means we’re going to send you to a website where you can follow along with us as we review the various assessment tools. So, please go to the Laramie Board Learning Project at boardlearning.org to review the October 29 blog post where Debra lists and links to a number of assessment tools. Enjoy.