How do board members of public interest organizations make themselves useful? One way is by reviewing management’s performance. While management may not crave a performance review, a nonprofit board is not free to shirk the task. The performance review is a learning opportunity and an occasion for establishing expectations and holding management to account. Board stewardship of the mission requires no less.
In the spirit of the season, I offer as a gift to the readers of this corner of The Legal a model of a performance review: the dialogue as I imagine transpired between the Pennsylvania Innocence Project’s transcendent legal director, Marissa Bluestine, and the organization’s president as 2013 drew to a close.
