Good Governance: What's The Problem?

By Stephen Robcraft @ 2025-09-09T09:18 (+8)

This post is part of the Unweirding Boards sequence and a close partner to An Outcomes-First Case, in which I began to outline a Theory of Change (ToC) for the good governance of EA organisations.

A Model of Governance

While The Good Governance Project has so far focused on formal governance of EA organisations (through Boards of Trustees), I think it's worth thinking about an expanded model of governance that looks a bit like:

Based on conversations with ~30 people (founders/execs/board members) since spring 2025, my sense is something like: 

• EA does 'compliance', 'norms' and 'allocating resources' really well
• EA orgs often don't do 'oversight'
  • at all (not required when fiscally sponsored, or for certain types of entity)
  • very well (board members recruited from within closed networks, very few boards are well-run)
• People are concerned about the extent to which 'accountability' happens (more so than I expected, but about as much as I am!)
• 'Performance monitoring' is done less than in traditional non-profits - a high-trust culture and belief that setting norms and allocating resources effectively are enough means this kind of thing is less relied upon 

What Could Go Wrong?

When I first shared this model, and an observation that the current state was a "a recipe for not good things", @calebp prompted me to share:

a specific fictional story of failure that [I] think is:

• realistic (e.g. [I]'d be willing to bet at unfavourable odds that something similar has happened in the last year)
• seems very bad (e.g. worth say 25%+ of the org's budget to fix)
• is handled well at more mature charities with better governance
• stems from things like 'orgs and individuals held to account' and 'performance monitoring'

I suggested that 'oversight' should be considered and offered two stories. I'll use the rest of this post to re-share these and offer several more stories that illustrate the problem with insufficient governance.

Bets I'd take

The following are all things I would bet on having happened in the last year (as per @calebp's criteria). I don't think they are worth 25% of an organisation's budget to fix, but then I also don't think it takes that much to mitigate against these problems through good governance. 

In each example, I think good governance looks like:

Oversight - With a well-run Board of Trustees (made up of impartial, experienced, connected and credentialed people) overseeing work and holding the team to account, the problem can be mitigated or effectively identified and addressed.

Performance monitoring - With more performance monitoring from a board and/or funder, everyone realises much earlier when things aren't going well. Boards and Funders can step in and support teams where needed, (re)set expectations, or really take any other action that makes sense to try and maximise the impact of the resource that has been invested.

Accountability - I'd argue that there's nothing much here that will mitigate against or address the problems I've identified. But it seems to me that being transparent about what happened would be in keeping with EA principles, and would support others in the community making a judgment about supporting projects/individuals in the future.

Organisations under-deliver on targets

A new-ish EA project has received 12 months of funding to do [something]. At the end of the 12 months, [something] has not been achieved but the money has been spent.

In this story, the funder has accepted that they are making a bet, that there's some level of experimentation going on, that there are lots of uncertainties and assumptions etc. However, in this story, it was perfectly possible for [something] to be delivered, or for some equally impactful [something else] to be identified and delivered. Neither happened, but the team has spent most, if not all, of its funding and has just failed to deliver. They might have a compelling story about what they'll do next year and get more funding, they might not. 

It's reasonable to imagine that with 'oversight' and 'performance monitoring', the team gets clearer, faster about their objectives and how to deliver on these; more effectively monitors and responds to information about their progress during the year; more likely notices the ways in which they might change course in pursuit of impact; and so on. 

Organisations leak funds

There's an organisation going along just fine, doing impactful community-building work. But they are leaking small amounts of money through lax management accounting. The amounts are small but not inconsequential when you consider the principle of cost-effectiveness and the counterfactual impact of the money being wasted.

In this story, the organisation has grown over the last few years and seen founders move on, key staff members move, junior team members step up and just a lot of change and turnover in general. Their financial accounting is absolutely fine (they outsource this to accountants), but rarely (if ever) have they reviewed management accounts to get a handle on where money is going. Why would they? No one has asked them to.

They have Zoom subscriptions that nobody uses because they have a Google Workspace account and just default to Google Meet. That Google Workspace account hasn't had a non-profit discount applied. They have an Airtable team plan, with 27 collaborators who no longer work at the organisation, or who only looked at some data once, two years ago. They buy Huel for the office every week but aren't really clear on who's drinking it or how it contributes to their Theory of Change. 

All in all, $1000s a year are being wasted. I'd accept that implementing 'oversight' and 'performance monitoring' to stop this kind of thing is a bit over the top - after all, this is just an issue with performance/competence/attention that can be fixed by having the right people and systems in place. But then it's 'oversight' that puts the right people in place and both 'oversight' and 'performance monitoring' that can incentivise and/or require that attention is on the right things.

Decision-making is sub-optimal

An organisation in the EA community is making important decisions that are not easily reversed. These decisions might be programmatic (eg regarding the design of an intervention) or operational (eg 'where to register', 'how to scale'). The decisions are sub-optimal, as is the process by which the decisions are made.

In this story, the staff team is trying to do things for the first time - no-one has prior experience of piloting a health intervention with local government in Sub-Saharan Africa, of setting up a charitable entity, or of scaling an organisation from 2-15 FTE in 12 months. They seek advice where they can, and pay for contractor support where it's available, but have to reason through many decisions by themselves.

A well-constructed board (with suitably experienced, connected and credentialed individuals) with sufficient context and a structured approach to advising and decision-making can offer invaluable 'oversight' in this situation. 

Leaders underperform

The senior staff member (Founder, CEO or Executive Director) of a small team is not performing but, from the outside, most things look okay. If there was anyone conducting appraisals, they would note that individual targets are regularly not met and/or that feedback from the team highlighted room for significant improvement in their approach to leadership.

In this story, the senior member of staff is (relatively) new to the position. They have previously been successful delivering on projects but have limited experience of managing people, and almost none of leading teams. They are aware that there are some things they could be doing better, and have been open to feedback from others within their team, but are stretched across strategy, fundraising, programme management, people management, operations and more - there is too much on their plate. 

In some versions of this story, nothing ever really changes. Staff get frustrated and move on, if they can. The organisation underperforms, relative to what it could achieve. It carries on doing impactful work but is constrained by its leadership.

It's reasonable to think that a good board, with sufficient 'oversight', would intervene here - by setting clear objectives with the senior staff member and conducting appraisals of their performance, they can identify areas for improvement and put in place 'performance monitoring' measures as appropriate. At the sharp end of things, they could remove a leader if that was in the organisation's best interests. But also, they could support the leader to grow into their new role - identifying training needs, offering coaching and ensuring they prioritise personal development.

Leaders suffer

The senior staff member (Founder, CEO or Executive Director) of a small team is delivering on all fronts - the organisation is thriving, staff are happy and, from the outside, everything looks good. But the senior staff member is struggling.

In this story, the senior member of staff is (relatively) new to the position. They have previously been successful delivering on projects but have limited experience of managing people, and almost none of leading teams. Even though everything is going well, they feel they could be doing better, but are stretched across strategy, fundraising, programme management, people management, operations and more - there is too much on their plate.

In some versions of this story, nothing ever really changes. The organisation does impactful work and the team enjoy working under the senior staff member's leadership. But the leader continues to suffer.

I know, from speaking to dozens of founders/EDs/CEOs that good boards provide peace of mind. It's not a stretch to imagine that well-supported leaders are better able to cope with the demands of the role - if we want to support the wellbeing of those working in the EA community and mitigate against the risk of great people burning out, 'oversight' from good boards can contribute.

A lower-confidence bet I wouldn't take, but that I think is worth mitigating against anyway

Projects close when they should be sustained

A Founder moves on from an early-stage project, and so the project closes. The project could have continued under someone else's leadership and would have been successful.

In this story, a Founder applies the scout mindset to their own project and decides it no longer represents the best use of their time. There's no one else to hand the reins over to, and so the project wraps up - delivering on outstanding commitments and returning unspent funds, but never realising its potential.

I err on the side of 'too many organisations keep going when they should close', but think it's plausible that some projects close earlier than they should. Without a crystal ball, it's impossible to know which organisations are which, but I would argue that good governance (in this instance, from a board) plays an important role in deciding which organisations should continue and which should close.

Channelling the comments in this post, I think the following are all quite different questions - they should be answered by different people and the answers need not agree with each other:

• Should I (as the Founder, ED etc) continue at this organisation?
• Should I (as an EA funder) give funding to this organisation
• Should this organisation continue to exist?

Up Next

In the next post, I'll outline some of the ways in which governance can fail to mitigate against these (and other) problems...