Why clarity around responsibility and authority matters
One of the quickest ways to create frustration inside an organization is to make it unclear who actually owns what. Who gets to decide? Who needs to be consulted? Who is responsible for doing the work? And who simply needs to know what happened?
When those answers are fuzzy, you see it pretty quickly. Decisions take too long. Everything gets brought to a meeting. Two people do the same work. Nobody does something because everyone thought somebody else was handling it. Or someone makes a decision they did not actually have the authority to make.
Most of the time, the problem is not bad intentions. It is a lack of clarity.
This Is Where Friction Starts
In nonprofits, one of the most common places this shows up is between the Board and the CEO or Executive Director. Sometimes a new executive comes into an organization with a long-established Board and has to navigate years of history and expectations. Sometimes the organization is changing strategically and not everyone agrees on the direction.
And sometimes a smaller organization hires its first professional staff leader after years of being run primarily by volunteers. That transition can be especially difficult.
The Board may be used to selecting vendors, planning events, writing communications, managing volunteers, and making all kinds of operational decisions. Then someone is hired to lead the organization, but nobody really talks about which responsibilities should shift.
The organization changes. The way decisions get made does not. That is where conflict starts.
The Board still has real responsibilities. It approves the budget and strategic plan. It hires and evaluates the CEO. It provides financial oversight and fulfills its fiduciary responsibilities.
But that does not mean every decision belongs to the Board.
I once watched a Development Director give a Board an update on an upcoming fundraising campaign. Within minutes, Board members were debating the messaging, who should receive the appeal, and what the ask should be.
Board members absolutely have a role in fundraising. That does not mean twelve Board members should collectively write the fall appeal.
The same thing happens with events. If the Board approved a budget that includes an annual gala, it probably does not need to vote on the venue or caterer. At some point, the people responsible for executing the work need the authority to execute it.
And individual Board members should not be assigning projects to employees or acting as their supervisors. The Board hires the CEO. The CEO manages the organization.
But delegation cannot mean disappearing
There is an opposite problem too. Sometimes Boards hear “staff manages” and interpret that as “staff does everything.”
That is not healthy either.
Fundraising is a good example. Staff may develop the strategy, manage donor communications, and execute the campaign. But Board members still have relationships, networks, and a responsibility to help bring resources into the organization.
Board recruitment is another. Staff can support the process, but the Board should not outsource responsibility for building its own leadership.
A Board that tries to manage everything creates problems. A Board that disengages from everything creates different ones. The question is not whether the Board should be involved. It is how the Board should be involved.
This comes up with Board Chairs too. I see the Chair as a partner to the CEO, not the CEO’s individual boss. A strong Chair and CEO should communicate regularly about what the Board needs to know, what issues need Board attention, and where the CEO already has authority to move forward.
But the Chair cannot make decisions for the full Board simply because they are Chair.
The same principle applies throughout an organization: having a title does not automatically mean you own every decision connected to the work.
Sometimes one person is also wearing multiple hats. A Board member might govern at a meeting on Tuesday and volunteer at an event on Thursday. That is perfectly fine, but their authority is different in those two settings.
I once saw a Board member volunteering at an event give venue staff permission to keep the bar open longer. They were trying to be helpful. They also committed the organization to spending more money without checking with the Executive Director.
Being a Board member did not give them authority to make that call.
Ask four simple questions
One exercise I use with organizations is a responsibility and authority matrix. Take the decisions and responsibilities that come up regularly and ask:
Who leads? Who recommends or advises? Who approves or decides? Who simply needs to be informed?
The goal is not for every organization to answer those questions the same way. Your staffing, structure, bylaws, capacity, and history all matter. A volunteer-led organization will look very different from one with a professional staff.
What matters is that the people inside your organization understand the answers.
I actually like having the CEO, Board Chair, and Board members complete the exercise separately and then compare. The disagreements are usually the most interesting part.
If three people think they own the same decision, talk about it. If the CEO believes they have authority and the Board believes approval is required, talk about it. If nobody seems to own something important, definitely talk about it.
That is the value of the exercise. It makes assumptions visible.
You do not necessarily need another policy or 20-page governance manual. You need people to know what they are responsible for, what authority comes with that responsibility, when they need input, and when they can simply move forward.
And as an organization grows, those answers should change too.
If your leadership team and Board are not sure they would answer “Who owns what?” the same way, that is probably a conversation worth having.
And if you need someone to help facilitate that conversation, I’m here to help. This is exactly the kind of work I love doing with Boards and leadership teams: getting the assumptions out on the table, finding the places where people see things differently, and creating enough clarity that everyone can get back to doing the work.
Sometimes getting unstuck really does start with four simple questions: Who leads? Who advises? Who decides? And who needs to know?