Club governance guide

What a Boys & Girls Club board of directors is responsible for

Nonprofit Liaison Team5 min readLast reviewed 13 September 2026

Practitioner-written governance guidance

A local Boys & Girls Club is an independently incorporated 501(c)(3) nonprofit, chartered by and affiliated with Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Its governing board of directors hires and evaluates the chief executive, approves the budget and strategic plan, oversees finances and the audit, sets policy, leads fundraising, and is accountable for the Club's obligations as a chartered member organization — including the youth-safety standards that come with serving children.

Because a Club serves youth, its board carries a responsibility most nonprofit boards don't: oversight of child safety. That single fact shapes much of what follows.

Last reviewed 13 September 2026. General information, not legal advice — confirm specifics against your charter, your bylaws, and current BGCA membership requirements.

The governing board vs. advisory and youth boards

A Club's structure often includes more than one kind of board, and only one of them governs:

The board of directors (governing board) holds fiduciary authority. It is legally responsible for the organization — its finances, its compliance, and its chief executive.
Advisory boards or councils advise, open doors, and build community support, but do not hold fiduciary authority.
Youth boards / Keystone-style youth leadership groups give young people a governance voice and leadership experience; they are developmental, not fiduciary.
Alumni boards engage former members in support and fundraising.

Keeping these distinct matters. When an advisory board starts making binding decisions, or the governing board treats itself as advisory, accountability blurs. Only the governing board can approve a budget, hire the CPO, or bind the organization.

The board and the Chief Professional Officer

At most Clubs the chief executive is the Chief Professional Officer (CPO). The relationship follows the standard governance line: the board governs, the CPO manages. The board hires and evaluates the CPO, sets direction, and holds them accountable; the CPO runs the Club — staff, programs, and day-to-day operations. The board's one employee is the CPO. Directors who begin directing staff, or a board that rubber-stamps whatever the CPO brings, are the two ways this line fails. (This is the same executive-and-board relationship every nonprofit navigates.)

The board's core responsibilities

Fiduciary duties. Like any nonprofit director, a Club board member owes duties of care, loyalty, and obedience — acting with reasonable diligence, putting the Club's interest ahead of their own (backed by a conflict-of-interest policy), and staying true to the mission and the law.

Financial oversight. Approve the annual budget, monitor results against it, oversee the independent audit, and review the Form 990 before filing. Part VI of the 990 asks publicly about your governance practices, including whether the board reviewed the return.

Hire, support, and evaluate the CPO. The highest-stakes decision a board makes, followed by an honest annual evaluation against agreed goals.

Fundraising. Board members are expected to give and to help raise the resources the Club runs on — for many Clubs, the annual campaign is a board-led effort.

Program outcomes. The board sets direction and watches whether the Club is achieving its mission for young people — commonly framed around academic success, healthy lifestyles, and good character and citizenship — without managing the programs themselves.

Compliance and the charter. A chartered Club agrees to meet membership requirements to keep its charter in good standing. The board is ultimately accountable that those obligations are met.

The responsibility that makes a Club board different: youth safety

This is where a Club board's job diverges from a typical nonprofit board. Serving children raises safety to a board-level duty — the board is responsible for seeing that the Club has strong child-safety practices and that they are actually followed. In practice that means overseeing safety policies, ensuring the organization screens the people with access to youth, and treating safety as a standing item, not an occasional one.

For many Clubs, screening extends to the board itself: directors with access to youth or to sensitive information may be subject to background checks, often renewed on a schedule. Because a lapsed check is easy to miss in a spreadsheet, tracking directors' checks and their expiry dates as part of the governance record is a practical safeguard. We cover this in depth in board-member background checks and youth-safety governance. Confirm your Club's specific obligations against your charter and current BGCA membership requirements.

Frequently asked questions

Are Boys & Girls Club board members paid? No. Club directors are volunteers and receive no salary, like nonprofit board members generally. Club staff, including the CPO, are compensated employees; directors are not.

Is a local Club part of a national organization? Each local Club is its own independent 501(c)(3), chartered by and affiliated with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and agrees to meet membership requirements to keep that charter. Governance and liability sit with the local board, not the national organization.

What's the difference between the board and the CPO? The board governs — strategy, oversight, and hiring/evaluating the chief executive. The Chief Professional Officer manages the Club day to day. The board holds the CPO accountable; the CPO runs operations.

Do board members need background checks? Often, yes — youth-serving organizations commonly screen people with access to youth, and many Clubs extend that to directors, sometimes on an annual basis. Confirm your Club's requirements against your charter and current BGCA membership requirements.

Related guides

Board Liaison for Clubs keeps the packet, minutes, committees, conflict-of-interest records and each director's background-check status in one place — the governance a youth charter depends on. Request a walkthrough.