Board Basics Cheat Sheet

A quick orientation to board basics to get your board on solid footing, fast. 

Board roles get blurry fast when calendars are full and decisions keep coming.Executive Directors get pulled into governance debates, board members slip into staff decisions, and staff are left guessing whose call it is. Meetings stall in the weeds, follow-up is uneven, and accountability feels personal instead of structural—not because people aren’t capable, but because there’s no shared, plain-language reference for who owns what.

This document is a concise board basics cheat sheet with four parts: a clear overview of governance, a side-by-side breakdown of board versus staff roles, the Big Three fiduciary duties, and a short note on D&O insurance. It helps you reset expectations in the next board meeting, answer “is this board or staff?” in real time, and redirect conversations without friction, so decisions land where they should and work moves forward.