Healthy Boards: Building Trust in Local Government and Community Organizations

Skill Building

The Healthy Boards (HB) program focuses on issues of critical concern to board members, including: building trust among board members; understanding basic responsibilities and roles; improving accountability; and understanding the connection between board governance and the effective governance of local resources. The HB program has been used with rural hospitals, chambers of commerce, and international agricultural organizations in the rural communities of Louisiana.

The HB program teaches board members principles of healthy governance. Using the case study method, participants work in teams to analyze a local governance case and discuss which principles of healthy governance are lacking. The final part of the program features the discussion of the case among participant teams. The instructor leads the discussion and concludes with the distribution of two additional resources that can assist board members in their quest to become healthy board members.

In this session, participants will be introduced to a mini-version of the workshop. First, participants will learn the healthy governance principles. Then, a brief case study will be used with the audience to illustrate the depth and quality of the HB workshop currently offered in Delta. Preliminary results will be presented illustrating how adoption of the healthy principles can create trust among board members operating in community organizations.