2027 governance outlook: Preparing mission-driven boards

2027 Governance Outlook for Mission-Driven Organizations

Jill Holtz: Welcome to the Leading with Purpose podcast where we share practical advice to help mission driven organisations strengthen governance and lead with confidence. I'm your host, Jill Holtz from Diligent and today we're discussing the newly released 2027 Governance Outlook for Mission Driven Organisations, a new major research report from the Diligent Institute that explores the trends, risks and priorities that are shaping non-profit and public sector boards in the year ahead. There are some fascinating findings and to unpack the research and what it means in practice, I'm joined by two Diligent guests, Kira Ciccarelli from the Diligent Institute and Ellen Glasgow, Senior Vice President at Diligent.

We explore those big challenges that are facing organisations today and discuss practical steps that boards can take to become more strategic, resilient and future ready. And do listen to the end to hear Ellen and Kira's top advice for boards preparing for 2027.

I'm really pleased to be joined, first of all, by Kira Ciccarelli, who's Senior Manager of Research and Programmes for the Diligent Institute. Welcome, Kira.

Kira Ciccarelli: Thanks for having me.

Jill Holtz: And I'm also very pleased to welcome Ellen Glasgow, Senior Vice President for Mission Driven Organisations for Diligent. You're very welcome to the podcast, Ellen.

Ellen Glasgow: Thanks, Jill. I'm thrilled to be here.

Jill Holtz: So I invited you to join me today because we're really excited to be launching the Governance Outlook for 2027 for Mission Driven Organisations. It's our flagship research report that Kira has been working hard on. And Ellen, I wanted your perspective as well as we go through some of the key findings from the report.

The research for the 2027 Governance outlook for mission-driven organizations

So just to kick us off, Kira, can you tell us a bit about the survey we ran? What types of questions? And then secondly, what were mission driven organisations telling you about their biggest priorities and challenges for the year ahead?

Kira Ciccarelli: I think I'll just take a step back briefly for those who might not know. The Diligent Institute is Diligent’s, Corporate Governance, Thought Leadership and Think Tank arm. So we do a lot of surveying of directors, C-suite leaders, general counsel, corporate secretary and other governance practitioners.

Typically, we are looking at the corporate audience, but this, as Jill mentioned, is kind of our flagship report for mission driven organisations. So really excited to be able to bring this report to life. The survey that we ran was in the field from about April to June of this year, and we were able to get over 200 responses from our nonprofit and public sector stakeholders.

Respondents kind of represented a mix of sectors, organisation sizes, roles and regions. We were really able to get a good representative group on this survey. And really, we were looking to find out what were the big priorities and challenges for the year ahead for this audience.

This is kind of similar to some of the other surveys that we run at the Institute. So again, really excited to be able to tap into this audience and be able to do some comparisons there. I'll give you just some of the quick highlights, and then I think we'll dive into each of these more deeply.

Essentially, we were seeing funding and financial pressures are the dominant concern for this audience. We also were seeing a lot about AI, both as a major investment area and agenda topic. But we were kind of seeing the adoption at the governance level remaining pretty limited.

And the other big through line in this survey is that board meetings need a major overhaul. So I'll stop there. And I think we'll, again, dive into each of these a little bit in more detail.

Jill Holtz: That's fascinating to hear. So finance, funding, AI, AI governance, and then board meetings. Not really a surprise, given everything that's going on in the environment, AI being such a hot topic.

And then ultimately, board meetings are what we see all the time with our customers. So, Ellen, from your experience working with nonprofit public sector organizations, where do you see the tension between protecting today's mission delivery and preparing for tomorrow's challenges showing up most clearly?

Ellen Glasgow: To your point, not a huge surprise in some of the themes that bubbled up from the survey. The one that I would like to touch on a little bit more is just the financial pressures. And I think that's a big point of tension where we see organizations when they're under financial pressure, they are really, really, really focused on the today, the immediate.

Where can we cut? Where can we reduce costs? How do we protect this year's budget?

And those are absolutely the right and necessary questions. But it creates this risk when the board is focused on managing today and not creating the space to think about what the organization will need tomorrow. So asking questions like how do we protect the mission today, but also what could change in the environment we're operating in?

How do we prepare for what do we need to do to reduce risk, avoid, manage, minimize those threats that might exist today, tomorrow and into the future? And I think it's also important to think about the distinct difference between the board's role and management's role. The management is understandably focused on execution.

And the board needs to create a space kind of to step back and say, you know, ask the bigger questions. What are we assuming? What could disrupt those assumptions?

And where do we need to invest today so that we're not reacting later?

What the research revealed about financial and funding pressures

Jill Holtz: Kira, let's drill into that topic a little bit more. What did respondents tell us about those financial and funding pressures that are facing them?

Kira Ciccarelli: So this bubbled up in several different questions that we asked. Economic and funding downturns ranked as the top organizational risk. More than half of our respondents did select that one.

Financial conditions and grants ranked as the leading item the boards wanted to talk about in their next meeting. And budget allocation and fiscal management ranked as the most difficult issue to oversee. So 45% of our respondents chose that option.

Relatedly, when we asked about top priorities for the entire organization for the coming year, respondents selected navigating economic and funding uncertainty and also improving operational efficiency, both at 38%. But then directly below that, they were talking about improving board effectiveness and governance practices. So I think what we're seeing, to Ellen's point, is boards are confronting the immediate operating pressure as our management teams, while they're also recognizing that governance quality itself is becoming an issue.

Jill Holtz: So Ellen, you talked a few minutes ago about kind of planning for the future as well as the costs just now. When you have that funding uncertainty and it's affecting programs, staffing, community expectations at the same time, what have you seen effective boards doing to try to maintain that mission focus while making those difficult decisions?

Ellen Glasgow: I think that the most effective boards, they start with getting very, very clear on what is truly mission critical. One of my favorite quotes about strategy is you don't have a strategy until you say no. And when funding is not a concern, it's really easy to say yes to everything.

And really, when you get to a situation where resources become more constrained, you can't really protect everything equally. So it's really, really important to have those tough conversations on what do we need to prioritize and what investments maybe no longer make sense. And so that's a really hard conversation, but the most effective boards are kind of hitting that head on.

And really, it's all about keeping the mission at the center of all decisions. What are we trying to accomplish strategically and how does that decision help or hurt our ability to achieve our mission? That is the question that effective boards are asking.

And I also think transparency is incredibly important, particularly with mission driven organizations who we support. There are a lot of stakeholders, the community members that care deeply about the outcome. This is not just about employees and leadership.

This is communities, donors, taxpayers, families, constituents. And the board needs to understand how the financial implications of their decisions impact the broader trust on the community. And then the overarching goal of making sure the organization preserves the ability to deliver on that mission.

Jill Holtz: Yes, it's a real balance, isn't it? The kind of thinking about the present, thinking about trust, thinking about, but being transparent about that really helps, doesn't it? Telling your community, telling your stakeholders how you're making those decisions and why you made those difficult financial decisions.

People understand that, they understand funding constraints. So if they can have a clear explanation, I think that goes a long way, doesn't it?

Ellen Glasgow: Yeah, I mean, I think to your comment about communication, I think that these hard situations you find yourself present an opportunity to really build trust. If you communicate, people understand, but they don't understand what you're not sharing. So I do think that there is the transparency is the key there. So I agree wholeheartedly with that statement as well.

What the research revealed about board meetings

Jill Holtz: Definitely. So, Kira, one interesting thing I found with the survey was about how boards are currently spending their meeting time. Can you talk about that? And also, how does that compare for mission driven compared to what maybe corporate audience tell you?

Kira Ciccarelli: We asked our respondents to tell us whether, in their view, their board meetings were spent on mostly retrospective activities or whether they were more forward looking. And then the third option was, you know, we're kind of balanced between those two things. Essentially, what we found is that the vast majority of board meetings are not mostly forward looking.

Only 11 percent of respondents said that. 32 percent said that they were mostly retrospective and 56 percent described them as balanced between those two things. Now, you might look at that response and say, you know, that's pretty good.

56 percent of our respondents think that they're balanced. But what we've kind of been hearing from our director audience is that they really want to be shifting things more in the direction of their meetings being more forward looking. This is something that we saw in the what directors think results as well, which is our companion survey and report looking at similar topics before our corporate audience, specifically for U.S. public company directors and U.S. public company directors, public companies based in the U.S. This might be a group that you sometimes look at and think maybe they're more advanced or they're further ahead on some of these things.

But this is an area where we saw pretty similar results. They also want their meetings to be mostly forward looking and they currently are not. So it was about the same percentage, actually, that said that their meetings were mostly forward looking.

Where we saw a difference is that fewer U.S. public company directors described their meetings as mostly retrospective. So a much larger portion of them fell into that balanced category. But I think the headline is this is part of a much larger and bigger trend where we're seeing governance become more of an exercise in risk management and boards want to be able to think more strategically and to see around the corners.

On a related note, when we asked directors and other respondents to the survey how their board meetings could be improved, the most common option selected was more time for strategic planning. This was also something where we saw the same issue in the public company environment. So boards are recognizing that they need to spend more of their meeting time thinking about the future strategy, but they haven't really redesigned their meeting structures yet enough to create that opportunity.

Jill Holtz: And maybe part of the problem lies in taking the same agenda over and over again. So, Ellen, as a follow up to that, in nonprofit and public sector settings, what are some realistic ways the boards can move beyond the back facing way, the look into reporting presentations and more about creating the time for that strategic future discussion?

Ellen Glasgow: The responses were very, very interesting to me. The one thing that I kind of lasered in on was that only 11% of respondents said meetings are mostly forward looking. That coupled with some of the commentary around the desire to have more a strategic planning focus, et cetera, kind of those two things stuck out the most to me.

And I think the first step is recognizing that information and governance are not the same thing. And boards absolutely need to have good information, the right information, timely information to provide effective oversight, to make the best decisions, you know, to practice good governance. But the meeting should be a space where board members ask questions and challenge assumptions and identify implications and make decisions.

And so, if you're leveraging a technology and you're getting information out ahead of time, the information should be consumed in advance so board members can come prepared to have a conversation about the future. And so, to your comment, Jill, also about agendas. I think, you know, a lot of boards that I talk with, they have an agenda and they have a template and they've used it forever and ever and they haven't really evolved.

I am really excited about an initiative that we're doing for our nonprofit customers where we're going to be able to gather peer insight so you can see, you know, challenge what used to work. So, how do my agendas and my time allocation compare to peer organizations or highly effective mission driven organizations? How does my board composition compare?

How do, you know, how do we approach term limits? How, you know, our board content, our board decks, are we providing the right information, the right level of oversight before? There is what happens in the meeting, but there's what also happens before and after the meeting as well.

And how do we leverage technology and how do we also leverage peer insights so that we can ask the question or boards can ask the question, what are organizations like ours doing differently? And is there something we should learn from that? Because that 11% of meetings are only forward looking stat.

I would love to see the governance landscape evolve to that number being a much higher representation of boards that are looking into the future versus taking a retrospective look at, okay, I can review this report on what we've done the last six months, but so what?

Jill Holtz: I think that's fascinating and I'm really excited to hear about that new kind of peer insights, because I think maybe unlike the commercial sector where they're a bit, can I say, wary about sharing things that might be commercially sensitive, I think in our space for mission driven, one of the nice things is really learning what your peers are doing, what's working and best practice. And that's another reason I really love this governance outlook, because it's really sharing what are the leaders in the space talking about. One of you mentioned, I think it was Kira or Ellen, about governance is now managing risks.

A really effective way of kind of thinking about the future that we've touched on and managing risks is scenario planning.

What the research revealed about scenario planning

Jill Holtz: So I wanted to pick that up. Kira, what did the survey reveal about how are mission driven boards using scenario planning? Are they using it today?

Kira Ciccarelli: This was one area of the survey where I was really surprised to see the findings. Ellen and Jill, you might not have been as surprised as me, because as I mentioned, this was kind of our first real deep dive into this audience at the Institute. But I think that if one finding from the survey points to sort of a governance gap, it is the scenario planning question.

So 43% of our respondents said that their board does not currently do scenario planning. Another 29% said that it's primarily conducted by management, sort of limited board involvement there. And then as far as looking at how scenario planning is evolving, only 21% said that their board has broadened the range and scope of the scenarios considered.

Just 18% said that the time spent on scenario planning has increased over the past five years. This was an area where we saw a huge difference between that and what our U.S. public company director audience had to say about it. In that survey, 85% said that they had upgraded their scenario planning practices in the last five years, and it was across a whole range of areas.

So they were spending more time on it. They were looking at a broader range of scenarios. They were looking at each of the scenarios that they do scenario plan for and going deeper on what some of the outcomes of those events might have been.

Jill Holtz: That's so interesting. So as you say, a real gap. Ellen, what kinds of scenarios do you think are useful for nonprofit public sector boards to consider and how can they make that exercise practical really resonate rather than just this theoretical thing?

Ellen Glasgow: And again, I was also slightly surprised by some of these stats. I'm not too terribly surprised that there is a delta between how the commercial organizations are reporting versus mission driven organizations. But the kind of the stat that I'm lasering in on that I'm hearing from you here is that 43% don't do scenario planning.

And I think that really my view on scenario planning is how can we make our organization resilient to be able to weather scenarios that we maybe haven't contemplated yet or we haven't contemplated in the future? So really, if something like this happened, how prepared would we actually be? And I think that for mission driven organizations, it's really, really important to start with scenarios that can materially impact your ability to achieve or deliver your mission.

And I would keep the scenario planning exercise very, very focused. So you don't need 10 scenarios. Pick two or three that could really change the trajectory of your organization and work through them.

What would happen to our programs? What decisions would we need to make? What information would we need for management?

What does the board need to know? How quickly could we respond? What are some of the early warning indicators that we should be watching now?

The objective is not to predict the future. It's to make sure that you're less surprised by it. And another thing that is a useful scenario planning exercise is just turning this into an annual exercise.

It's just something that just naturally should inform your governance throughout the year. And this doesn't need to be a massive undertaking. Even just one thoughtful scenario exercise each year can really start building that muscle for your board.

One of the things that we talk about, the old days of the SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. I used to do strategic planning consulting, and we'd spend a lot of time on opportunities and threats. And you don't know what you don't know.

But one interesting kind of shift, and I'll speak a little bit more to our public sector market here, is that there has been a recent regulatory change with the Department of Justice mandate that public sector entities must meet accessibility requirements as set from the WCAG. And the goal of that is to create more accessibility and greater transparency, which is a great and wonderful thing. But that compliance comes with an operational and financial implication.

And the boards need to understand that early. And so there's a regulation that comes out that is indication of a trend. And how do we prepare and plan for that so that we are compliant and we're also meeting the needs of our broad constituent or community group?

So it's not, are we compliant today? It's, do we have a plan in place? Do we have the resources?

Do we have the right tools to make sure that we get there? For me, I'm really, really excited for this one in particular, that we have partnered with an integration tool that's going to allow our public sector customers to be compliant as they are facing this. So we're actually partnering with them to help them be more resilient to this mandate.

But it's just really, really great to continue to build that muscle and plan for the future.

What the research said about risk oversight

Jill Holtz: I absolutely love that building a muscle and strengthening your risk oversight, your discipline around that. So Kira, what improvements did respondents say would make risk oversight more effective for their organization?

Kira Ciccarelli: A lot of things, but the top ones, respondents most often chose more frequent and structured risk discussions at the full board level. So I think that goes back to the point about building the muscle in your board meetings. They also want clearer linkage between risk oversight and strategy.

So that goes back to what I was saying a little bit earlier about governance becoming this exercise in risk management. And they also want clearer definitions of what is the role of the board versus what is the role of management in this regard. We also asked a companion question about how governance processes in general can be improved.

I mentioned this earlier, but a lot want more time for that strategic planning. 37% said that they want better tools and processes. This is potentially where AI-powered tools kind of link into this conversation when it comes to managing agendas, materials, minutes, follow-up actions, things like that.

Another third said that they want fewer presentations and more discussion. So I think just getting a little bit more granular about how they want to shift that balance to be more strategic in conversation. 28% said that they wanted clearer governance policies.

And then we're also seeing things come up like mandatory director training, access to AI-powered board tools. So I'm really looking at this as kind of like a three-pronged answer. So our respondents are saying that they kind of want the structure and processes to be improved.

They're also looking at kind of the individual and the human element and where can we get smarter, where can we upskill. And then I think the third leg of that stool is the technological capabilities and how maybe upgrading there can help boards do their jobs a little bit better.

Jill Holtz: That's really interesting. And I think that the three things, you know, really work together well, don't they? Ellen, from your sector experience, where do boards most often struggle with risk ownership?

But also role clarity comes into this. You know, a board isn't supposed to do things, are they? They're just, but they have oversight responsibility.

They have policy responsibility, don't they?

Ellen Glasgow: I also want to piggyback on something Kira said earlier. And this shift of governance being now really just an exercise in risk management. I think you mentioned that earlier and I wholeheartedly agree.

I mean, the thing about risk is it doesn't fit neatly into an organizational box. A cybersecurity issue might be operational, financial, reputational, strategic all in one. A funding issue risk might be financial but quickly become a program, staffing or community issue.

And so it really kind of risk crosses all aspects of the organization. And that can really create ambiguity on to your point on who actually owns the risk. The boards that are most effective are very, very explicit about role clarity.

Management owns managing the organization and executing the response. You know, you can leverage communities to go deeper on particular areas. But at the end of the day, the full board needs to understand what risks are significant, that they require board level visibility, discussion and strategic direction.

I also think it's really an effective when risk connects directly to strategy. So instead of having a risk report that is essentially a list of everything that could go wrong, you know, ask the question, you know, what risk could prevent us from achieving our mission? Just start there.

And in environments that involve, you know, elected officials or other stakeholders, clarity becomes even more important because there can be multiple sources of influence and accountability. So the organization needs to be really, really clear about who has the authority to make the decisions and where the board's oversight begins and ends.

Jill Holtz: And I don't think it's necessary for board members, whether they're elected or volunteer, to be risk experts. What it's really about is that they can ask the right questions at the right time and also have the information given to them to allow them to ask those questions.

What the research revealed about AI and governance

Jill Holtz: Let's talk about AI. AI was obviously one of the hot topics. Kira, what did the survey reveal about the gap, I guess, between boards' interest in AI but their actual use of it in oversight and strategic decision making?

Kira Ciccarelli: Yeah, so on one hand, 26% of respondents identified deploying AI technology across the organization as a top strategic priority. It was coming up pretty high on that list. It was also coming up really high on the list of leading investment areas for the year ahead.

25% said that AI and digital risks were one of the most pressing board agenda topics. So we're seeing it crop up in a lot of places. And it does make it clear that AI is a high visibility issue area for mission driven boards.

But on the other hand, I think we're seeing this big gap between boards thinking about it and wanting to talk about it more and then the actual use and integration. So only 14% said that their board is using AI regularly alongside traditional approaches when it comes to strategic oversight and decision making. 26% said that the use is minimal here and 52% said that they're not using it at all.

Only one respondent said that AI is fully embedded in oversight and strategic decision making. So maybe we'll have to track that person down and interview them, see what they're doing there. But I think broadly speaking, most of our respondents say that their boards are still in the exploratory or kind of observational phase rather than it being kind of fully embedded.

I will add a caveat though. And this is kind of based on what we've been seeing in our other surveys at Diligent Institute. Doesn't necessarily mean that your mission driven organization board members are not using AI tools at all.

I think a lot of corporate board members we've seen have admitted to kind of using the tools, not necessarily enterprise grade tools. So maybe they're not using it specifically for what they would call strategy oversight and decision making. But it doesn't mean that they're not being used.

So I know that's a whole can of worms and I'll stop there

Jill Holtz: But I think this is a really good point to bring, Ellen. And then, you know, as you say, board members could be putting sensitive information into ChatGPT, for example, on open one. So what should boards be thinking about?

What should they be asking about before using AI and governance? You know, what are the issues there and the risk of relying on tools that don't have strong governance built in?

Ellen Glasgow: Yes, I did smile when you when you shared your caveat there, because I was also struck by the self report of 52 percent say their board does not use AI for strategic oversight. I would challenge that because I don't think the question is, is your board member using AI period?

Is it are they using it responsibly? Are they using it in a framework that you are comfortable with? Another question should be instead of how do we use AI, but rather what problems are we trying to solve?

You know, I can be extremely powerful, but it's important for boards to be careful not to adopt technology simply because it's available. I think it needs to we need to understand how it can genuinely improve the quality, speed or depth of governance. And I think some of the fundamental questions and Jill, and you touched on this as well, is like what data is being used?

Is confidential or sensitive information being protected? You know, how is the output generated? Can we explain it?

You know, who remains accountable for the decision? These are all questions we should be having. I think it's really important to focus on board literacy.

You know, directors don't need to be AI engineers, but they need to understand enough to ask intelligent questions about the technology, its limitations and understand the risk. So, you know, AI is a very hot topic. I am very excited about AI.

I think that we should be having these conversations. I don't think we should assume our board members are not using AI. And at the end of the day, the message around AI is we need to get the governance foundation right and then use AI to make that foundation stronger and not to compensate for weaknesses in it.

Jill Holtz: Absolutely. And I suppose one of the nice things at Diligent, yes, we sell technology, but we sell technology that helps mission driven organizations be better at governance. And that includes ring fenced AI capabilities, particularly on BoardEffect or nonprofit, so that they can feel confident if they're discussing board business and using the AI tools in the software, that those aren't going into an open LLM to be shared.

The other thing is just to touch a little bit on onboarding is a good time to set those precedents, isn't it? With new members, maybe you've got new elected board members or you've taken on new board members onto your volunteer board.

What the research revealed about board evaluation and development

So, Kira, I was interested to ask you, what did the survey reveal about how do boards evaluate their own performance and invest in board development?

Kira Ciccarelli: We're really seeing mixed levels of maturity when it comes to this aspect. Self-assessments were the most common mechanism for evaluation. Fifty three percent said that they were doing self-assessments. About a third said that they're using more informal chair to member feedback. Nearly a third say that they don't conduct board evaluations at all.

For the boards that do evaluations, annual review is sort of the normal cadence at 56 percent. Thirty six percent said that they're evaluating less often than annually. Only small percentages said that they were doing so twice a year or quarterly. So really what we're seeing here is that evaluation is fairly common across this audience.

But I think the worry is that it's not really frequent or rigorous enough to really drive improvement.

Jill Holtz: And Ellen, what's your perspective on the importance of doing those evaluations and then investing in board development?

Ellen Glasgow: Yeah, I think that the evaluation should be a cornerstone to how you operate. I mean it if the doing it annually should be the low bar. I mean having a continuous feedback loop. I love hearing there are some that are doing this, you know, more frequently than annually.

I think also with boards where you have elected officials or, you know, there are volunteers, it's just a different type of composition and makeup than you see with corporate boards. I think that assessment and that feedback loop helps facilitate those tough conversations that absent that feedback and that, you know, kind of well rounded view would be harder, harder to have those conversations.

Jill Holtz: And I should just mention as well, one of the nice things that Diligent brings when you're on our platform is that you have access to different certifications so that you can help upskill board members around AI and ethics or cybersecurity, etc. So do look into those from us.

Advice for mission-driven boards planning for 2027

So I'm really conscious of time, and you're both really busy people. So I want to kind of finish up today's conversation about the report with a question to both of you. So if I could start with you, Ellen. Ellen, if you were advising a board that wants to become more strategic and better prepared for 2027, which one or two changes would you encourage the board to make first?

Ellen Glasgow: I would recommend two things. The first one would be, you know, think about how your board is spending their time. And the second one would be is how are you thinking about the future? And so if we think about how your board is spending their time, I would start with the agenda and think about maybe reimagining or redesigning that agenda. Look back at your last several meetings and ask yourself how much time was spent looking backward versus how much time was spent actually making decisions or discussing strategy or thinking about what could change.

And that just opens up a space for more strategic discussion and you go and transition from more routine reporting that is very, very focused in emphasizing pre-reads versus spending your meeting time on discussions and decisions. And then on how you're thinking about the future, we talked a little bit earlier about scenario planning and the importance of doing that and building that muscle. And so I would really want to be purposeful on, you know, creating a real scenario planning and risk cadence.

As I mentioned earlier, you don't have to pick 10, pick one, two, three risks. And, you know, it could be a funding disruption or technology or a regulatory change that you feel that is coming. and just walk through what would do, what impact would that have on your organization if that risk was realized? And you know, the bigger message I take from this initiative, which I'm very excited to have this this survey be published and some of the insights that I'm just learning from you real time, Kira.

What I'm taking away from this is that boards don't necessarily need more information. They just need to be able to better use the information they already have. And so that's in my mind what I think what makes really, really strong governance.

Jill Holtz: Excellent advice, Ellen.

Kira, if you were advising a board that wants to become more strategic and better prepared for 2027, what one or two changes would you encourage it to make first?

Kira Ciccarelli: Definitely first want to co-sign everything Ellen said about reimagining how your time is actually spent and then also investing in scenario planning. One thing maybe I'll add is take a look at how AI is currently being used at the board level. And then the second piece is think about how it could be used better. So I think step one is find out from your board members how are they using it currently, because it might not be

It might not be being used in the board meeting. It doesn't mean directors are not using it. Find that out. Set a board use policy for how it should be being used. And then invest in enterprise grade tools. So find out from your board members what are we spending a lot of time on that's tedious or manual or retrospective that we could potentially use AI tools to shorten the amount of time that that's taking so that we can spend more time on strategic conversation. And how can AI help us with scenario planning, with thinking more strategically about future goals and whether or not we're on track to meet them. So I think that would be my big takeaway.

Jill Holtz: Love that. Love that, Kira. Thank you so much. So thank you very much, both of you, for coming on to talk to me today. as we launch the 2027 Governance Outlook for Mission Driven Organizations, we're excited to share that and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Thank you both.

Kira Ciccarelli: Thank you.

Ellen Glasgow: Thanks Jill, thanks Kira.

Jill Holtz: Thank you for listening to this episode of Leading with Purpose. I hope you found today's conversation with Kira and Ellen as fascinating as I did, to hear what the research is saying and what organisations need to be thinking about. One of the strongest standouts for me was that effective governance requires looking beyond today's operational pressures to focus on the future. Whether that's dedicating more board time to strategic discussions, check your agenda, strengthening scenario planning.

Looking at risk oversight or adopting AI more thoughtfully, boards do have an opportunity to become more resilient and better prepared for whatever comes next. If you'd like to explore the research findings in more detail, I'll include a link to the report in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be really grateful if you could rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. It does help more mission-driven leaders discover these conversations and learn from the experiences of their peers.

Thanks again for tuning in, and I look forward to bringing you more practical advice for purpose-driven governance on the next episode of Leading with Purpose.