Board composition matrix, the template and how to use it without offending anyone

Your board was recruited by friendship, one dinner at a time. The governance committee meets when there is a seat to fill and not otherwise. The chair wants “more diversity” and has not said what kind, and nobody wants to be the person who scores a colleague.

What you are building

Build a spreadsheet with one row per board member and about fifteen columns: skills, networks, lived experience, a giving band, and the date each term ends. Score every cell 0 to 2 from what you already know, then let each member correct only their own row. Sum the columns, set a target for each from your strategic plan, and the gaps write your recruitment brief. Share the totals with the board, never the grid. The template on this page does the arithmetic.

This is the recruiting piece of the Board and Governance hub. It pairs with Board retreat agenda that produces decisions and Board member fundraising expectations that hold.

What a matrix is for and what it is not

A matrix is a recruiting tool. It tells the governance committee who to look for next, and why. BoardSource’s recommended practices describe it in those terms: a matrix “facilitates the board’s strategic recruitment efforts”. Nothing in that sentence is about judging the people already in the room.

The evidence that it works is about ease. In BoardSource’s 2021 Leading with Intent survey, 60% of organizations had defined the mix of skills, connections, and diversity they wanted. Among boards that compared current composition to that target, 37% called recruiting easy, against 25% of boards that did not compare.

The default alternative is the one you already have. 95.7% of chief executives said they use board members’ own networks to find new members. The same survey found 49% of chief executives did not have the right board members to establish trust with the communities they serve. Those two numbers describe one board. Friends of the board look like the board.

The matrix is not a performance review, and not a document the executive director owns, because the executive director cannot ask a member to leave. It is not a reason to grow the board either. The IRS warns that very large boards “may have a more difficult time getting down to business”, in the same guidance that asks for members “selected with the organization’s needs in mind.”

The matrix describes what the board needs, not what any member is worth.

The columns that matter, and the ones that do not

Fifteen columns is the ceiling. Past that, nobody fills it in. Every column below has a rule two people would apply the same way. If you cannot write that rule, drop the column.

The examples the IRS gives of the expertise a board should hold are shorter than your list: members selected for “accounting, finance, compensation, and ethics”. Finance appears twice for that reason, as a skill and as the treasurer’s role.

Leave out passion for the mission. 98% of boards already rate it a high or medium recruiting priority, so it separates nobody. Leave out “leadership” and “strategic thinking”, because no two people score them the same way. Leave out a per-person grid of race, age, and gender. Ask for that once, anonymously, in aggregate. A person’s identity is not a 0 to 2.

Leave out independence as a scored column, but check it. Form 990 Part VI asks for the number of independent voting members under a four-part test covering compensation, contractor payments over $10,000, and family transactions. Put a yes or no in the notes and move on.

How to fill it in without a survey nobody answers

Do not send a survey. The members who answer a survey are the ones you already know well, and the gaps are among the ones who do not. Fill the grid yourself first.

The executive director and the governance committee chair sit down for ninety minutes with the board bios, LinkedIn, the CRM giving history, and last year’s Form 990. Score every cell. Where you are guessing, put a question mark.

Then send each member their own row, with the scoring rules, and ask them to correct it in fifteen minutes. Nobody sees another member’s row. Most people fix a cell or two and add a network you missed. Lived experience is theirs alone to fill, and “declined” is an accepted answer.

Fill term end from the bylaws and the minutes, not from memory. 73% of boards use three-year terms and 54% cap the number of terms, so every seat comes up for a decision within three years whether anyone plans for it or not. BoardSource’s most common structure is two consecutive three-year terms.

Reading the gaps

Sum each column. Then set a target per column from what the next three years of the strategic plan will ask of the board, not from a wish for balance. A capital campaign makes fundraising and funder network the biggest targets. A merger makes legal and finance the biggest. A new site in a community you have not served makes lived experience the biggest.

Here is a hypothetical fifteen-member board of a $9M youth mental health organization about to open a second site. Scores are summed across all fifteen members, so the ceiling is 30.

Three readings come out of that table, and the first is not the biggest number.

Depth beats total. The only member who scores 2 on program expertise leaves in 14 months. On paper the gap is 3. In 14 months it is 5, and a board opening a second site will have nobody who has run one. Any column whose points all sit with members leaving inside 18 months is a gap now.

Surplus is information. Business network scores 15 against a target of 6. That is the friendship recruiting pattern in one row. It is not a reason to ask anyone to leave, only a reason the next three seats do not need it.

The largest raw gap is lived experience at 5, and it is the one boards talk around. Stanford’s 2015 survey of 924 nonprofit directors found 27% did not believe fellow members understood the mission and strategy well. Members who have lived the problem close that gap faster than a briefing pack.

Turning gaps into a recruitment brief

Take the three biggest gaps after the depth adjustment. In the example, that is lived experience, program expertise, and technology and data. Write one paragraph for each. The paragraph is a job description, not a wish.

Each brief names the work the person will do in year one, the committee they will join, the hours per month, and the giving expectation in the same words every other member received. 76.8% of chief executives said their board requires a personal gift from every member, so say the number the way Board member fundraising expectations that hold lays out, and say it before the first meeting.

Then name where you will look, somewhere other than the board’s own contacts: community organization leaders, alumni of your programs, program officers who know the field, the professional association for the skill. 58% of chief executives and 81% of chairs said the hard part of recruiting was finding the skill set. A brief that names the skill and the place to look is the whole fix.

Give each brief an owner on the governance committee and a date. A brief with no owner is a paragraph.

The conversation with current members

This is where boards get hurt, and the rules are short.

Nobody sees the grid. The board sees the column totals, the target row, and the three briefs. Individual rows go to the individual and the governance committee chair, nowhere else. The moment a member can see their own low score beside a colleague’s high one, the tool becomes a ranking, and the next year of meetings is about that.

Present the totals as a description of the board’s need. The sentence to use is on this page: the matrix describes what the board needs, not what any member is worth. Say it at the start, and again when someone jokes about their zero in technology.

The chair presents, not the executive director and not staff. The chair is the only person in the room who can be asked “so are you saying I should go” and answer it. The executive director says nothing about individuals.

Use the term end column as the sequencing tool, because nobody argues with it. “Five terms end in the next 18 months, and here is what we will look for in those seats” is a sentence about the future. It asks nobody to leave and stops renewal by reflex.

Expect one member to read a low column as a hint. Have a sentence ready that says what you will ask of them next year. If the answer is nothing, the chair has a different conversation to have, and the matrix is not the place for it. Do it at the retreat, in a 45 minute slot, with the totals on one page. Board retreat agenda that produces decisions has the slot built in.

When not to do this

Skip the matrix when the board has fewer than six members, or where the founder still chairs and recruited every member personally. The IRS notes small boards risk “lacking the required skills and other resources required to effectively govern”, and a matrix will show you a wall of zeros you already knew about. Recruit three people you can name today, then build it next year.

Skip it when no chair or committee will own it. A matrix presented by the executive director is a staff document about the board, and will be received as one.

Skip it during an executive transition or a deficit year. The board needs to make one decision well, not audit itself. Come back in twelve months.

Skip it when the real problem is one member who should leave. A matrix removes nobody. The chair conversation does, and the matrix delays it a year while everyone pretends the columns are the issue.

And skip the scored version when your bylaws fix the seats. Membership organizations and boards with seats appointed by a parent body do not recruit against gaps. Keep the term end and officer columns and use the rest to brief whoever appoints.