What should the Board do?

Board-level decision-making should be strategic in nature. The Board's primary functions should be to determine strategy, to effectively communicate strategy to other decision-making nodes within the organization, and to oversee these other decision-making nodes to insure that their actions are consistent with overall strategy.

All decisions on all levels should be made with regards to higher-level strategic goals. When decision-making is informed by strategy, then all actions will work towards common purposes. This is true even when there are many different decision-making nodes, each acting more or less independently. Uncoordinated by common strategy, different decisions will be basically random. Having clearly defined strategic goals is necessary for distribution of decision-making authority - which is necessary if the organization is going to grow without being overwhelmed by bureaucracy.

The Board should delegate decision-making authority to nodes such as committees and chapters, each with a clearly defined role. It is the Board's job to understand which nodes are needed, to create these, and to clarify what the role of each node is and how it relates to the broader strategic goals. The Board should have expectations about what each node ought to be accomplishing, and should review the actions of each node periodically to insure it is conforming to its strategic purpose.

Every member of the Board, of each committee, of each chapter, and of each other decision-making node that might exist, should be able to give consistent answers to questions such as, "What is the role of this node and how does it relate to the Foundation's broader strategic goals?"