What It Is 

The Chair Project is a structured, time-limited support engagement for board chairs of nonprofits and social sector organizations. It's not a training program. It's not a board retreat. It's a focused, working relationship — designed to help a chair get sharper, clearer, and more effective in real time, on the real challenges they're facing.
Each engagement includes a combination of:
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• Chair Profile session — a structured intake to understand the chair's context, challenges, and goals​
• Chair–ED alignment calls — facilitated conversations to strengthen the partnership at the top
• Micro-coaching — brief, targeted touchpoints between sessions to address emerging issues
• Reflection memos — written synthesis to help the chair track learning and progress
• Access to The Chair Toolkit — a growing set of frameworks, templates, and field guides

First Seating — What We Learned

The first cohort of The Chair Project — what we call 'First Seating' — concluded in February 2026. We worked with a small group of chairs across different organizational contexts, testing our model, refining our frameworks, and learning a great deal about what chairs actually need.
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The experience confirmed our core hypothesis: chairs want a sharp, neutral, part-time partner — not advice from the sidelines, but someone in the work with them. They want a thinking partner who understands governance without having an agenda. They want to talk through the situations that feel too delicate to surface anywhere else.

Check out the "First Seating Field Memo" at the link below, for a comprehensive report and analysis of The Chair Project's First Seating experiment, 

Field Memo: First Seating

"It solidified my instincts, but also gave me permission (and a structure) to be more intentional about checking in [and] moving board governance processes forward"

- First Seating Participant 

Second Seating

The Chair Project is now opening its second seating! This six-month protocol is designed around what we actually learned from Chairs in the field. This cohort will be small by design - we're capping it at six participants - and it's a paid program. (Application details and pricing are in the registration form linked below.)

What participants can expect:
A Chair Profile conversation to ground the work
A partnership alignment session with your ED
A board assessment session designed to help you co-design the full board experience
Coaching sessions focused on real-time challenges, not hypotheticals
A closing reflection to capture and share what we learn

We're accepting applications on a rolling basis until the cohort is full. If this is for you, we would love to have you join us. 

2nd Seating Registration Form

More Team Members! 

We are thrilled to have Deborah (Deb) Jospin is joining us for the second seating of The Chair Project. Deb brings deep experience in nonprofit strategy, governance, and senior leadership, most recently serving as Chief of Staff at Freedom House (2023–2025), where she managed executive operations and led all board-related work, including governance, strategy, recruitment, and stewardship.

Earlier in her career, Deb was appointed Director of AmeriCorps by President Clinton, having joined the Corporation for National Service in 1993 and risen through roles as Associate General Counsel and Chief of Staff. She has since built a consulting practice serving a wide range of mission-driven organizations—from the Biden Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Women's Law Center.

Deb is the co-author of The Charismatic Organization (Jossey-Bass, 2008) and has served in governance leadership at Tufts University for over two decades, including as Chair of what is now the Tisch College of Civic Life.

She is a graduate of Tufts University, the London School of Economics, and Georgetown University Law Center.

The Chair Toolkit 

​A practical set of frameworks, templates, and guidance for board chairs. Covers everything from running an effective board meeting to navigating a difficult conversation with an ED.

Toolkit: Practice Guide

 ChairPair Pilot 

​A Three-Month Peer Experiment for Board Chairs

The Chair Project is launching ChairPair — a small, time-bound pilot designed to test what structured peer reflection makes possible for Board Chairs.
Across sectors, Chairs describe carrying real responsibility with limited opportunity for preparation or reflection. The role can feel both central and ambiguous — accountable, but not fully in control.
ChairPair is an attempt to introduce light infrastructure around that reality.
The question we are testing:
If Board Chairs have even modest, structured peer reflection over 90 days, does something measurable shift?

Participation is simple and intentionally light. Register as a pair (or small group of three) with another current Board Chair. Meet once per month for 45 minutes - one hour. Use a shared reflection prompt each month. Submit a brief (3–5 minute) confidential reflection following each conversation. Commit to the full three-month pilot. This is not a facilitated cohort.
It is not a training program.
It is a structured peer container.

If you are interested in participating in the ChairPair Pilot, send us an email at [email protected].