Long Story Short
A CEO or ED evaluation, done well, is a gift — real, specific feedback that tells your leader the board is invested, strengthens the relationship, AND gets you both clear on what matters most in the year ahead. We built you a CEO/ED Evaluation Toolkit to get started.
A few years ago I joined a local board, and about a year and a half ago we hired an incredible new CEO. One of the first things she told us was that the board needed to be doing real reviews of her performance. Part of it was about the board: we hadn’t always been close enough to what was happening before she arrived, and she’d walked into a fair amount of cleanup — none of it small. And part of it was about her. She wanted the feedback. She needed it to do her job well.
So I took a turn. I drafted something up, built a couple of different versions, pulled in other board members to advise. We surveyed the board AND the staff, put it all together, talked through it as a board — including a big conversation about what we wanted her to focus on for the coming year — and then I sat down and walked through the whole thing with her. (I’ve shared a cleaned-up version of what I built in the toolkit — a starting point to build on and make your own, not a template to copy.)
There were two takeaways that made me really excited to write this article. The first was how much it matters to just SHOW UP. My instinct on a board is to stay out of the CEO’s way — let her run things, be a support, don’t hover. But the reality is we all need people looking closely and paying attention, and when you’re the leader, you’re the one person who can’t easily get an honest read from your own team. A board that comes in and does this thoughtfully is exactly how you take things to the next level. She deserves that. And it’s part of my job.
The second was the space it opened up — this really beautiful conversation about the year ahead: what we were prioritizing, why, and where she should focus. That could happen in a planning process, sure. But happening HERE — wrapped up in telling her all the places she was doing well AND the places we wanted to keep growing — it landed differently. It’s led to real plans and real action, for her and for the rest of us on the board.
Whether you’re leading an organization and wishing your board would show up like this, or you’re on a board trying to figure out what “doing this well” even looks like — a CEO/ ED evaluation is two things at once. It’s a responsibility we take on when we join a board. AND it’s a gift: a way of telling someone they matter, and that we’re going to spend the time — with them and for them — to give them what they need to lead well.
The person I wish I’d called BEFORE I did the review
By an unfortunate twist of timing, I talked on the phone with Nancy Fournier about ED/CEO reviews the day AFTER I walked our CEO through her review. I spent the whole conversation half-thrilled (the topic was SO relevant and I had done a decent job!), half-wishing I’d talked to her BEFORE. (You may already know Nancy from the Library — she walked us through building a real relationship with your board not long ago.)
Nancy’s a nonprofit leadership coach who’s spent 30+ years working with executive directors — hundreds of them, most of them women — and evaluating leaders is the work that lights her up most. “It is the most impactful intervention I ever see with a nonprofit,” she told me.
It is the most impactful intervention I ever see with a nonprofit.
She only gets to do a handful a year, and it drives her a little crazy, because she’s watched the magic that happens every single time: “The board and the executive director are so much closer. That relationship improves and the mutual respect increases, along with the knowledge of each other’s burdens and strengths.”
Here’s what makes her approach different. Most evaluations, when they happen at all, are a board sending itself a survey about how it feels the ED is doing (her air quotes, not mine). Nancy builds something else entirely: a real instrument, decided WITH the leader, grounded in the data the organization already collects. Four or five priority areas. A couple of goals each. And a genuine partnership on what happens next.
And underneath all of it is a conviction I haven’t stopped thinking about: good leaders are hard to find, and they deserve real feedback — the good AND the growth. Not false praise. Not silence. “If I care about you and you’ve got spinach on your teeth,” Nancy said, “I’m going to tell you you have spinach on your teeth.” That’s not harshness. That’s respect.
The Key Takeaway
A CEO or ED evaluation is a gift — real, specific feedback that says we see you, we value you, and we’re investing in you. Done well, it leaves you with three things: a leader who knows the board is genuinely invested, a stronger relationship on both sides, AND real clarity on the highest priorities to focus on for the year ahead.
Nancy’s CEO/ED Review Approach
If you’re a “just tell me what to do and I’ll get started” kind of person (aka Helia’s COO Libby), Nancy’s CEO/ED Evaluation Toolkit walks you through her full process — her domains/goals/measures template, the board + staff surveys, and the green/yellow/red dashboard she builds at the end. Here’s the short version of how she thinks about it:
- Step 1 — Level-set together on what matters THIS year. Pick the four or five priority areas (Nancy calls them domains) — with the ED in the room. No surprises.
- Step 2 — Turn each domain into two or three goals you can actually measure. Get specific about what “a good job” looks like.
- Step 3 — Use the data, not just how you feel. The data the org already collects is the backbone. Board and staff surveys are one input, not the whole story.
- Step 4 — Evaluate the leader, not the org. There’s a real difference between the health of the organization and the skill of the person leading it.
- Step 5 — Share it as a gift, then commit. ED first. Ask what support actually looks like. Then put something real behind it.
If you’re a “tell me why this works” kind of person (aka our Founder Jess) — read on for the good stuff!
Want Nancy’s own writing on this first? Her overview on nonprofit leader performance reviews and her broader take on performance evaluations are both great places to start.
How these steps make the evaluation land
Step 1 — Level-set together on what matters THIS year
This is Nancy’s favorite part, and honestly it became mine too. Before you evaluate anyone, you sit down — board (or a subcommittee) AND the ED — and decide together the four or five domains that matter most. Fundraising. Strategic leadership. People management. Partner management. Operational effectiveness. The language shifts org to org, but you’re only picking four or five.
“Leadership is about creating priorities,” Nancy told me, “and evaluating a leader is also about creating priorities.” You are not trying to measure everything the ED does. You’re choosing what matters most in this moment.
And the choosing is where the magic happens. “There’s this great aha moment that happens on both sides,” she said. “I think it is one of the best interventions to strengthen a board/executive director relationship.” She’s watched a board decide that facilities and the building are the most important thing — while for the ED that’s dead last, and what’s actually keeping them up at night is a partnership or a collective-impact effort the board barely knows about. She’s watched an ED assume “financial management” meant raise more money, when the board actually wanted something completely different: no federal money left on the table. (If you’ve ever worked with reimbursement grants, you know how easy it is to inadvertently leave money sitting there.) The board wanted to see the drawdowns go up. The ED had no idea.
That conversation — “so illuminating for each side,” as Nancy put it — is where governance stops being mushy words and becomes real. The ED walks out thinking Okay, they get my job. This is cool.
One more thing that makes this work: these priorities are fluid, and that’s the point. This year — say it’s your 100th anniversary — raising money and telling the org’s story well might matter more than anything. Next year there’s a different priority. That’s exactly why you do this every single year. (I felt this one personally. Sitting in a board meeting, I finally said out loud: please don’t spend that much time on the event — $10,000 from a breakfast is not worth 40 meetings with high-net-worth donors. We’d never said it out loud before. For our CEO, that was permission.)
And the whole thing runs on one rule: the ED is in every one of these meetings. No surprises. Ever.
Step 2 — Turn each domain into two or three goals you can actually measure
Once you’ve got your four or five domains, you go one level more specific. Two or three goals per domain, and then — How are we going to measure that?
“You’re usually looking at, in the end, somewhere between 12 to 15 things that you’re measuring on,” Nancy said. Four to five domains, two to three goals each. That’s it.
Take “financial stewardship.” The goal might be Maximize your resources. The measure? You draw down 90% of your money. Now it’s clear. Now everyone knows what good looks like before the year even starts.
Already have a strategic plan or a set of OKRs? Good — that’s your jumping-off point, not your evaluation. Nancy’s clear that a strategic plan is macro, built for the organization. Your job is to pull the pieces out of it that actually tie to the leader. If you’re a housing org and one goal is managing partnerships well, the measure might be: How many public-private housing starts got completed on time? Eighty percent? Thumbs up. You’re not grading the strategic plan. You’re evaluating how someone led.
Step 3 — Use the data, not just how you feel
This is the line I scribbled down mid-conversation and then lost and made her repeat: “Use the data. It’s not just how you feel about things.”
“These folks deserve rigor,” Nancy said. “They deserve more than just impressionistic.” Evaluating a leader purely on how the board feels isn’t just imprecise — it’s a little demeaning. The board usually doesn’t understand all the nuance of the job. So what if the ED is dynamite and one board member just doesn’t click with them? “How the board feels is important,” Nancy said, “but it’s a data point. A data point shouldn’t all be based on that.”
The good news is you’re sitting on a mountain of data already — grant reports, newsletters, client evaluations, turnover numbers, success rates. Nancy rarely creates new metrics; mostly she’s pulling out what already exists. Say your org values diversity and you want your leader to live that. Okay — what does that look like? Do the demographics of your staff mirror your community? Then look at the data. Who’s on staff, who’s leaving, through a racial lens, an age lens. You have that.
Surveys — board and a sample of staff — matter, but Nancy’s firm that they’re maybe a third of your source. Not the whole thing. Quantify what you can.
Nancy’s post on nonprofit leader performance reviews goes deeper on turning what you already collect into a real, data-grounded review.
Step 4 — Evaluate the leader, not the org
This one’s subtle and it’s the thing I see boards get tangled in constantly. “You’ve really got to make that distinction between the health of the organization and the skill of the leader,” Nancy said. “It’s an art and a science to lead.”
It’s not a straight line from a 90% client success rate to “great leader.” So Nancy breaks it down. For an addiction-treatment org, she wouldn’t just point at the outcomes. She’d ask:
- Are the staff credentialed?
- Is there a professional development plan the ED is actually activating?
- Are staff’s behavioral health needs being met so they don’t burn out?
- Is the billing system running so people get paid appropriately?
Those are things you can attach to a leader. Is she setting the tone, building the resources, making sure the pipeline is healthy?
The org’s programmatic outcomes and the leader’s management skills overlap, but they’re not the same thing. Keeping them distinct is what makes the evaluation fair, and what makes it actually useful to the person receiving it.
Step 5 — Share it as a gift, then commit
Here’s where Nancy’s approach differs: the board chair shares the findings with the ED first, before sharing with the full board. Nancy sits down with the leader on her own, walks through what she’s seeing, and gives them room to say wait, you misread that or here’s context you’re missing. Then, together, you decide what to do with it.
And this is where “no surprises” really earns its keep. Nancy gets a steady stream of coaching clients who call and say, I just had my evaluation and all these issues came up and I was blindsided. Her response is always: why were you surprised? Weren’t you involved?
Her favorite (horror) story happened the week we talked — an ED who knew a review was underway but had no idea the board was going to send her staff of four an open-ended questionnaire, then hand her the raw “feedback” un-synthesized, with a verdict that her management skills needed work and she should “get a coach.” That is not the way to do it.
I told Nancy about a moment on my own board. We have a genuinely experienced leader and someone tossed out, “I think we should get her a coach” almost as a throwaway. Kindly meant! But Nancy jumped right on the real question: “How are you determining what that need is? Where is that coming from?” Is it affirmation? Skill development? Knowledge and education? “Those are very different things.” “Give them a coach,” she said, “often means I don’t know what to do.“
The better instinct is to ask. Nancy told me about a national study of court users — huge budget, brilliant people, all bracing for complaints about the system — and the number one thing people were upset about was parking. By simply asking instead of assuming, they saved significant time and money.
“You may think coaching is what she needs,” she said, “and really what she wants is flex time on Thursdays. Maybe that flex time is the difference between her burning out or not.” Another leader she evaluated was doing great but the org had no money for a raise. The board scraped together an extra $1,000, and the ED called Nancy conflicted, because after taxes it was almost nothing. What she actually wanted, sitting in her raggedy old office, was a new desk and chair. If they’d just asked How can we show you we appreciate you?, she’d have told them. “It’s just important to ask.”
So when you land the evaluation, land it as a partnership. Share the strengths out loud and specifically — the formal you did this incredibly well that leaders almost never get. Name the one or two real growth areas. And then the board makes a good-faith commitment to support them: maybe that’s funds for training, maybe it’s an accountant instead of a bookkeeper, maybe it’s a deputy or someone to run social media, maybe it’s coaching that actually fits. You could even just ask: We think you’re fabulous. What would feel like more support to you?
My favorite proof of what this makes possible: Nancy evaluated a brilliant leader who’d taken over from a charismatic, loudest-voice-in-the-room predecessor. This leader was different — the kind of person who doesn’t talk often, but when she does, everyone leans in. In the review, one area came up: she hadn’t yet built the relationships with local media and decision-makers to tell her org’s story. Not framed as a criticism, not a comparison to the guy before her — framed as an investment area, a place to get more confident and build those relationships one-on-one, the way that actually fit who she is. A year later, that was one of her shining strengths. The board got to recalibrate what success even meant. She got to push herself. That’s the gift.
If I care about you and you’ve got spinach on your teeth, I’m going to tell you you have spinach on your teeth.
When to do this yourself vs. bring someone in
You can absolutely run an ED evaluation yourself — Nancy’s the first to say so, and the toolkit is built so you can. The relationships you build doing it are part of the point, and nobody can have those conversations for you.
That said, Nancy’s honest that there’s real value in getting help — especially the first time:
- Your first round. Nancy’s a firm believer you’ll have a stronger instrument if you bring someone in for year one, if only for that initial “what should we even evaluate?” conversation. Then you can run it yourself in the out-years.
- Nobody has the time (or the objectivity). The board member who’s going to run it doesn’t have the hours, or only half the board responds to the survey — and getting half-informed feedback from half your board is, in Nancy’s words, “demoralizing” for an ED. It needs someone who’ll actually do it well.
- You need someone who isn’t scared of the data. Someone who can pull it together and make sense of it.
- You need a genuinely objective voice. It can be a board person, if they’re truly objective — but boards have a lot of subtext, and sometimes an outside facilitator is what keeps it clean.
As Nancy put it, most boards end up doing “a well-intended but kind of half-ass job for this incredibly important way of acknowledging and supporting and retaining your leader.” A one-time investment to get the template and the process right is worth it.
If You Want Help
Nancy Fournier builds and runs CEO/ED evaluations for nonprofits — the whole thing, from level-setting the domains to the final dashboard — and it’s the work she loves most. She brings a data nerd’s rigor and a coach’s warmth, and she’s clear that a good evaluation isn’t a gotcha or a compensation exercise; it’s how a board does one of its core jobs well.
She’s a good fit if:
- You’re doing this for the first time and want to get the instrument and process right from the start
- You want someone objective who isn’t scared of the data and can build the domains/goals/measures with you
- You’ve been burned by an evaluation that was done poorly — and you want to see what “done as a partnership” feels like
- You want a review that leaves your leader feeling invested in, not blindsided
On investment: Nancy scales it to the size of the org. Many boards can cobble together roughly $5–10K to get a strong first round done; for larger organizations she works from about 10% of the ED’s salary. A one-time cost for something you’ll reuse every year.
Connect with Nancy!
Try it Yourself
Start here (free):
- CEO/ED Evaluation Toolkit — Nancy’s domains/goals/measures template and seven-step process, the board + staff surveys, and her green/yellow/red dashboard, plus a real example from Jess’s work.
- Nancy’s writing: performance evaluations, nonprofit leader performance reviews, and board self-assessments
Recommended reads:
- Radical Candor by Kim Scott — on why caring enough to be clear (spinach-in-the-teeth and all) makes all the difference
Questions to Sit With
- When did we last give our leader real, specific feedback — the good AND the growth — rather than a survey about how we “feel” they’re doing?
- What are the four or five things that matter MOST for our leader this year — and have we said them out loud, together, with the ED in the room?
- Where are we leaning on how we feel, when we’re sitting on data that could tell us more?
- Are we evaluating the health of the organization, or the skill of the person leading it — and can we tell the difference?
- The next time someone says “let’s get them a coach,” can we pause and ask: where’s that need actually coming from — affirmation, skill, or knowledge?
- If you’re the leader: what would it feel like to be evaluated as an investment — and what would you want your board to actually see?
Not sure Nancy‘s the right fit? Talk to Helia directly!
This article comes from a coffee chat with Nancy in June 2026. These conversations form the heart of the Helia Library — because we’ve learned the most from doing and from talking with other doers willing to share their wisdom. We don’t need to start from blank pages or do everything alone.
As always, take what’s helpful, leave what’s not, and make it your own.
About Nancy
Before she was a nonprofit leadership coach, Nancy Fournier ran a bed and breakfast in New Orleans and did weddings — which she says was surprisingly good training for coaching executive directors (“your job is to focus on the marriage, not the wedding”). She’s spent 30+ years working with hundreds of EDs, mostly women, and she’s a self-described data nerd who does crossword puzzles for fun and genuinely loves a good funding formula. She’s been practicing radical candor since before it had a name — because if she cares about you, she’s going to tell you about the spinach.
Work with Nancy
