For background, I'm an active board member for two charities, am a past board member of CIRA (which runs the .CA domain) and am a graduate non-profit governance essentials course from the Institute of Corporate Directors.

I also built Canada's first crowdfunding website that distributed over $3m to charities from over 115,000 members and in the process interacted with literally hundreds of charities on social media and cause marketing.

Every board member needs to be willing and able to raise funds. I believe that every board member of a small non-profit (less than $250,000 in operating budget) should be able to raise at least 10% of the annual budget.

Also important is values alignment ensuring that the board member understands and agrees with what the organization stands for.

Finally, as much as is possible, ensure that each board member brings a missing skillset. Social Media competency in one, accounting in the other, for example.

Final piece of advice is that good board members should be hard to get. The commitment of time and energy is significant and so therefore, anyone who is willing to join without much convincing or discussion is probably someone who isn't going to be prepared to do the heavy lifting.

Happy to talk to you in a call about board composition or anything else. I have a huge passion for helping the non-profit sector and especially grassroots organizations like yours.