​The Chair Project

An experiment in supporting the role we rarely talk about

There’s a leadership role at the center of every nonprofit that we almost never talk about: the Board Chair.  We talk about the CEO. We invest in leaders. We send Executive Directors to coaching, to fellowships, to retreats designed to help them grow, reflect, and try to stay sane. We’ve built entire sub-industries around supporting the person hired to run the organization.

But the person responsible for managing that leader, stewarding the board, shaping the agenda, and holding the organization’s narrative during moments of growth or crisis? That person gets almost nothing. No map. No practice. No coaching. No peer group. Just expectations.

Board Chairs sit at the nexus of strategy and execution, governance and operations, aspiration and capacity. They play an outsized role in:

• CEO morale
• organizational priorities
• board culture
• succession planning
• when to push and when to pause

And yet most Chairs receive zero structured support, feedback, or preparation for what is, arguably, one of the most consequential and complex volunteer roles in the sector. It’s not that Board Chairs are failing; it’s that we’ve never articulated what success looks like.

So I’ve Been Wondering…
What would it look like if Board Chairs had:

• a place to reflect
• someone to normalize the role
• tools for communication and decision-making
• a way to practice leadership instead of improvising it
• a partner who isn’t their Executive Director (a dynamic that’s fraught for obvious reasons)

Introducing The Chair Project: My Next Workswell experiment
This January, I’m exploring what structured support for Board Chairs might look like. Not a curriculum, not a certification, not a set of rules, but a practice and a space to explore what intentionally designed support for Board Chairs might look like.  Over the next few months, I’ll be piloting a small coaching experiment with a handful of Board Chairs to see what emerges when we treat this role with the same intentionality we give executive leadership.

I’m looking for 2–3 Board Chairs (or Executive Directors who want to nominate theirs) to participate in a no-cost, 6-week experiment that will include:

• A Chair Profile conversation
• A partnership alignment session with the ED
• Two short coaching sessions focused on real-time challenges
• Simple templates for meetings, communication, and feedback
• A closing reflection to capture what we learn (shared anonymously)

You don’t need to be struggling.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to be curious.

And Yes, There’s a Tee!  Because no governance experiment should be joyless, each participant in the pilot will receive a (yet-to-be-designed) Chair Project t-shirt - minimalist, elegant, and just cryptic enough to be cool.

Interested? If you’re a Board Chair or an Executive Director who wants to nominate one, send me a note at [email protected] . I’ll share a brief questionnaire to help select participants.  I don’t know exactly what we’ll discover, but I’m excited to do some exploring with other motivated leaders.

​Welcome to The Chair Project.
Let’s see what this seat can do.

---