Boards have limited time together. This course gives you a concrete playbook to turn those hours into decisions, momentum, and visible results, using a shared language, simple templates, and meeting practices you can apply immediately, so every meeting ends with clear priorities, named owners, and next steps that move the mission forward.
Lead with Clarity and Courage: Understand how to use the three modes of governance to keep oversight tight while making space for strategy and growth.
Make Strategy a Reality: Learn how your strategy can bceome a living cycle, link priorities to budgets, diversify revenue, and use a simple risk method to act with confidence in uncertainty.
Operate as One Leadership System: Strengthen the board and Executive Director partnership, evaluate well, and represent the mission credibly in the community to build trust and open doors.
Learn on your schedule with six focused modules that combine video lessons, interactive exercises, and downloadable board-ready tools. As a Learning Lab participant, you also get access to the Thriving Non-Profits community forum and resource library.
Most boards get stuck in the fiduciary mode, monitoring finances, compliance, and risk. That work is required, but it’s only the starting point. The real value of a board comes when fiduciary work is balanced with strategic direction and generative insight. Together, these three modes form a complete model of governance.
This course explains each mode and provides an annual roadmap for how to use all three modes intentionally, so your board can spend its limited time on the conversations that matter most and lead with clarity.
INCLUDED TEMPLATES AND WORKSHEETS
Take the course individually or select one of our team packages to support your whole leadership team.
Perfect for solo learners.
Best value for small boards
Skill up your full leadership team
This course is perfect for non-profit and charity board members, board chairs, and senior leaders who want to strengthen governance practices and increase their board’s effectiveness. The learning is relevant to organizations of any size and stage.
GOT QUESTIONS?
Have questions about this course? Our FAQ section addresses a few of the key things you might need to know.
This course is designed for non-profit and charity board members, board chairs, and senior leaders who want to strengthen governance practices and increase their board’s effectiveness.
No prior board experience is required. The course is accessible to both new and experienced board members. It provides practical tools and templates that you can adapt to your organization’s needs.
You’ll leave with a whole new perspective on non-profit board leadership, including a clear picture for how to operate in all three modes of governance: Fiduciary, Strategic, and Generative. You'll also get access to a variety of practical templates and worksheets you can put into practice immediately with your current board.
The course is structured in modules that can be completed at your own pace. Most learners spend 1–2 hours per module, including time to apply templates to their board work.
This is a self-paced online course, containing video lessons, text lessons, worksheets, exercises, and quizzes. You’ll also have opportunities to join live learning events and connect with peers in the Community forum for shared learning.
Yes. Many boards find it valuable to learn together. Group access ensures all directors have a shared understanding of governance practices and can apply the templates collectively. Choose one of our group options from the pricing menu on the page to enroll more than one board or staff member.
Yes. You’ll retain access to the course content for 365 days from the date of enrollment. You will retain permanent access to the Thriving Non-Profits platform, community forum, and resource library.
We are confident in the value this course provides, but if you are not satisfied, we offer a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Please refer to our refund policy within our Terms of Use for more details.
We respectfully acknowledge that the offices of Scale Collaborative are located on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples, and the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations who have historical relationships with the land that continue to this day.
Build the foundation for entrepreneurial governance. Learn the three modes of board work, why fiduciary duty is the floor not the ceiling, and how to use limited meeting time to make clear decisions and drive results.
Key learnings include the three governance modes and when to use them, how the legal duties of loyalty, care, and obedience show up in practice, how to structure an annual board calendar that creates space for strategy and generative thinking, and how delegation to the Executive Director works alongside board accountability.
See risk clearly and lead with proportionate action. This module reframes risk as uncertainty you can assess and manage, establishes a healthy risk culture, and equips your board with practical tools to focus attention where it matters.
Key learnings include the duty of care as diligence, not avoidance, a simple likelihood and impact method to compare risks, four response options, retain, reduce, share, or avoid, how to build and use a risk register, and how policy sets boundaries that enable confident action.
Turn strategy from a document into a living decision system. Learn how boards set direction, make focused trade-offs, align people and capital with priorities, and keep strategy alive through a simple cycle of scan, decide, act, learn, and adjust.
Key learnings include designing a fit-for-purpose planning process, distinguishing strategy from a theory of change, aligning budgets to priorities, and creating clarity about what not to do.
Strengthen financial oversight so money follows mission. Learn how boards connect strategy to budget, ask the right questions, and monitor performance without micromanaging.
Key learnings include every director’s duty of financial literacy, the annual oversight rhythm, linking plan and budget, revenue diversification for resilience, a practical budget-review framework, a balanced approach to uncertainty, how to read year-end statements and levels of assurance, and simple policies and quarterly reviews that keep finances on track.
Strengthen the board–ED leadership system. Learn how direction flows through the ED and advice returns to the board, how to provide real support through clarity, responsiveness, and trust, and how to evaluate performance in ways that build alignment and results.
Key learnings include structuring ED reporting and accountability, running respectful evidence-based evaluations, clarifying roles between governance and operations, and using coaching, compensation, and succession planning to sustain leadership over time.
Turn board presence into strategic influence outside the boardroom. Learn how directors represent the mission with clarity, extend visibility and trust, and bring outside signals back to inform strategy.
Key learnings include the board as a bridge to funders, partners, media, and policymakers, four modes of engagement, advocate, represent, connect, listen, and when to use them, how to show up aligned speak appropriately without making commitments, how to avoid conflicts and protect confidentiality, and simple practices that raise your organization’s surface area while keeping governance strong.
