Opportunity Through Our Board

Easterseals DC MD VA’s Board of Directors has been recognized by the Center for Nonprofit Advancement with its Excellence in Board Leadership Award. This reflects our commitment to best practices, including our intentional efforts to recruit Board members who bring a variety of perspectives and life experiences — qualities shown to strengthen an organization. We are committed to building an exceptional Board that engages the hearts and minds of members in a way that results in the growth and development of Easterseals. To that end, our minimum expectations for Board service are set with the belief that those expectations will be exceeded.

What We're Doing & Why

We deliberately cultivate a Board whose members bring personal experience with our service areas – those who have a disability, serve as a caregiver, or are a veteran or military family member. We also value those who are or have been of low to moderate income.

Goal:

At least 50% of our Board represent our target service populations.

Current Metrics:

Currently, 77% of our current Board maintains at least one connection to the Easterseals mission:

Goal:

A least 33% of our Board be members of a minority group (Black/African American, Asian or Asian American, American Indian/Native American or Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic). 

Current Metric: 27%

Goal:

No gender should represent more than 65% of our Board. 

Current Metric:

Assessing Our Progress

During Board meetings, conversation leaders are careful to ensure that innovative and dissenting points of view are heard, understood, and respected. Our goal is to stoke collective learning that benefits the organization. We measure our progress in this area through a Board survey administered after each meeting. Following the most recent meeting, 100% of Board members agreed with the following two metrics:

• “I felt members participated responsibly (a diversity of opinions was expressed, issues were dealt with in a respectful manner, and we avoided getting into administrative / management details).”
• “If I had questions or concerns, I felt comfortable raising them.”