BOARD MEMBER ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
Board Member Job Description
As a partner to the Executive Director, Board members will provide leadership to Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary (“WSWS”). The Board of Directors will support and sustain the work of WSWS and provide governance, leadership, and strategic fundraising support.
Specific responsibilities include:
Leadership, Governance, and Oversight
- Being a trusted advisor to the Executive Director as he/she develops and implements the organization’s strategic plan
- Developing and managing relationships and communicating with: funders, partners, and other stakeholders
- Approving WSWS’ annual budget, audit reports, and material business decisions; being informed of and meeting all legal and fiduciary responsibilities
- Reviewing outcomes and metrics created by WSWS for evaluating its impact, and regularly measuring its performance and effectiveness using those metrics
- Coordinating an annual performance evaluation of the Executive Director
- Participating in the recruitment of new Board members
- Periodically consulting with Board members on their roles and helping them assess their performance
- Planning, presiding over, and facilitating Board meetings; partnering with the Executive Director to ensure that Board resolutions are carried out
- Acting as an ambassador for the organization
- Ensuring WSWS’ commitment to a diverse Board and staff that reflects the communities the organization seeks to serve
Fundraising
- In collaboration with the Executive Director and other Board members, generating substantial annual revenue and fostering WSWS’ overall financial health
- Personally treating WSWS as a top philanthropic priority reflected in an annual financial gift
- Ensuring that 100% of WSWS’ Board members make an annual contribution
- Identifying, qualifying, cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding major individual donors, corporate, and/or foundation gifts
Board Term Length
Per the Board of Directors Bylaws.
Qualifications
This is an extraordinary opportunity for an individual who is passionate about the mission of WSWS and who has a track record of board participation and leadership. The selected candidate will have achieved leadership stature in business, government, philanthropy, animal care, and/or within the non-profit sector. His/her accomplishments will allow him/her to attract other well-qualified, high-performing Board members.
Ideal candidates will have the following qualifications:
- Extensive professional experience with significant executive leadership accomplishments in business, government, philanthropy, or the animal care or non-profit sector
- Demonstrated success as a non-profit Board member or officer
- Track record of building credibility in the funding community that may have resulted in major gifts to a non-profit or other organization
- Savvy diplomatic skills and a natural affinity for cultivating relationships and persuading, convening, facilitating, and building consensus among diverse individuals
- Excellent written and oral communication skills coupled with natural affinity for public speaking
- A commitment to and understanding of WSWS’s mission and vision
- Personal qualities of integrity, credibility, and a passion for improving the lives of WSWS’s beneficiaries
Service on WSWS’s Board of Directors is without remuneration.
Board Member
- Regularly attends Board meetings and important related meetings.
- Makes serious commitment to participate actively in committee work, should they be assigned.
- Volunteers for and willingly accepts assignments and completes them thoroughly and on time.
- Stays informed about committee matters, prepares themselves well for meetings, and reviews and comments on minutes and reports.
- Gets to know other Board and committee members and builds a collegial working relationship that contributes to consensus.
- Is an active participant in the Board and/or committee’s annual evaluation and planning efforts.
- Participates in fundraising for the organization.
- In consultation with other Board members, formally evaluates the performance of and sets the compensation rate for the Executive Director.
- Performs other responsibilities as assigned by the Board.