About the Board of Directors

PeerWorks has a governance type board whose activities include:

• establishing long term strategic plans, based on member identified needs,
• identifying annual goals and objectives for the organization,
• overseeing fiscal accountabilities to membership and funder(s) and reporting of same
• engaging/evaluating an Executive Director who is accountable to the Board, and who in turn is responsible engages/evaluates staff who are accountable to the ED
• bringing forward information about members needs and interests to inform PeerWorks positions

Directors are not involved in day to day operations and management of the organization.

PeerWorks’s board model focuses on being “skills-based” as opposed to “representative”. We use a Skills and Diversity Matrix to identify experiences that contribute to the interests of the organization and its members and to assess our bench strength for the nomination process. Although the directors’ role is not to represent specific groups or regions, we aim to reflect the geographic and demographic diversity of our member groups – groups which may operate in urban, rural or remote settings and whose levels of empowerment range from complete independence, through various degrees of autonomy, to being small programs within mainstream mental health service organizations or institutions.

PeerWorks has nine directors who are elected to two-year terms of office and may be re-elected for up to three terms. The exception to this is when vacant positions are appointed mid-term by the Board. We attach expiry dates to positions in an attempt to facilitate succession and achieve balance between newer and longer serving directors.

Board applicants must be members in good standing of an PeerWorks member organization. One director may come from the Associate membership. Director applications are considered by a nominating committee which invites applications, conducts interviews, and recommends a slate to the Board which is in turn moved to members at the Annual General Meeting. The Executive (President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary) are elected by the Board just after the AGM.

The Board’s current meeting schedule includes two day face to face “retreats” on a quarterly basis, usually at weekends, plus teleconferences as needed. For timely handling of issues we also use email discussion threads and electronic voting where appropriate and possible, with any e-votes ratified at the next board meeting.

We welcome and encourage our members to bring good candidates to the attention of the nominating committee by emailing info@peerworks.ca or by speaking to a member of the Board.

Board Members