MPI's Board of Directors
Roles and Expectations

The Board of Directors provides strategic vision and oversight to ensure that Manna Project International, Inc. (MPI) pursues its mission in an ambitious and responsible manner. The Board of Directors acts on behalf of current and past MPI staff and volunteers, the international communities MPI works with, and MPI’s funders, and has the legal responsibility and authority to oversee the affairs of MPI to ensure that MPI:

  • Achieves appropriate results, for appropriate persons, at appropriate costs; and

  • Avoids unacceptable actions and situations.

Board Role:

The Board’s role is four-fold:

  1. Linkage to ownership—the Board acts in trusteeship for the ownership and serves as the legitimizing connection between this base and the organization.

  2. Establish governing policies—the Board establishes and guides the values and perspectives of the organization through the enunciation of broad policies.

  3. Assurance of successful organizational performance—the Board ensures the organization achieves its “Ends” goals effectively and ethically by establishing and upholding the “Executive Limitations” for the Executive Director’s performance.

  4. Fiscal health of the organization—the Board oversees the organization’s finances, including adopting the budget, ensuring that financial safeguards are in place, and coordinating with the Executive Director to ensure adequate resources are available for organizational operations and growth (including contributing and fundraising).

Board Expectations & Member Outputs:

Each Board Director is expected to fulfill and deliver the following expectations and outputs to ensure that the board fulfills its strategic, legal, and representative responsibilities. Overall, the expectations and outputs of a Board Director require approximately 8-10 hours per month.

Overarching:

Directors are expected to:

  • Keep strict confidentiality regarding sensitive topics concerning the organization or its staff and volunteers.

  • Attend regularly scheduled board meetings/calls. Mandatory calls are currently held approximately every 6 weeks with adjustments as necessary. All members are expected to maintain live access to the online meeting agenda and updated minutes during meetings.

  • Attend MPI’s annual board retreat in person.

  • Stay updated and to respond promptly to board discussions via email and/or other modes of communication. This generally requires a few hours of time per month.

Linkage to Ownership:

Expectations: Directors are expected to:

  • Support and be responsive to the Executive Director, staff, and volunteers. MPI seeks, as much as possible, to foster a non-hierarchical organization, where good ideas are fostered and acted on regardless of where in the organization they originate. Therefore, Directors are encouraged to maintain regular communication with the Executive Director, staff, and volunteers and to solicit their feedback and suggestions regarding the state and direction of the organization and specific initiatives.

  • Proactively build and maintain MPI’s relationships with strategic partners, including partner organizations, universities, industry groups, foundations, individual donors, thought leaders, and others.

  • Represent MPI in relevant industry organizations and at relevant industry conferences, conventions, and events.

  • Stay abreast of trends in issue areas (e.g. volunteer development, international issues, education programming) that are relevant to MPI’s mission, organization, and programming.

  • Promote MPI in their personal and professional networks, the media, and to the general public to raise MPI’s public profile.

Specific Annual Outputs:

  • The Board will gather and evaluate feedback from MPI’s staff, volunteers, and alumni at least once annually.

  • Each Director will be actively involved with the search, pursuit, development or evaluation of at least one strategic partner.

  • Each Director will serve as MPI’s representative to at least one organizationally relevant external organization (e.g Building Bridges Coalition, Catachafire).

  • Each Director will attend and represent MPI at least one relevant conference, convention, or networking event.

Establish governing policies:

Expectations: Directors are expected to:

  • Establish and maintain the organization’s overarching policies by which the organization’s vision and values are defined and the organization’s performance is evaluated. Policies are broken into the following four categories:

  • Ends (Org goals)

  • Executive Limitations (ED regulations)

  • Governance Process (Board operations)

  • Management Delegation (ED-Board relationship)

Specific Annual Outputs:

  • The Board will annually review, evaluate, and update all organizational policies based on feedback received from the collective ownership of MPI.

Assurance of successful organizational performance:

Expectations: Directors are expected to:

  • Actively monitor the Executive Director through compliance reports at a frequency and schedule defined and agreed on by the Board and ED.

  • Provide strategic guidance to MPI (Board, staff, & other relevant parties) based on active engagement and updated knowledge of industry trends (international development, volunteerism, professional development).

  • Ensure that MPI provides a relevant value proposition and maintains an organizational strategy that positions MPI as a leader in its field.

  • Hire, evaluate, and when necessary, terminate, the Executive Director.

Specific Annual Outputs:

  • Each Director will dedicate 2-5 hours per month gaining updated knowledge of specific industry trends according to their “expertise” or assigned field/area.

  • Each Director will chair special projects, both on an ongoing and ad hoc basis. (e.g. overseeing MPI’s annual audit, contributing oversight to a fundraising event, serving as the board liaison to the proposed alumni board.

Fiscal health of the organization

Expectation: The Board is expected to:

  • Oversee the finances, including adopting the budget and ensuring that financial safeguards are in place.

  • Contribute, raise, and/or make provisions to have adequate resources available for organizational operations and growth.

Specific Annual Outputs:

  • The Board will review and approve MPI’s annual budget no later than February of the given fiscal year.

  • Each Director will fundraise and/or donate an amount annually towards MPI’s General Funds. The specific amount will be established by all board members collectively during the budget approval process but the amount historically has ranged between $4,000 and $5,000 annually per board member.

  • The Board will collectively seek financial support for board-sponsored initiatives, including strategic changes that originate at the board level which require extraordinary financial investment.