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Board Academy

The first 30 days as a new director

What to read, what to ask for, and what to check before you vote on anything, written for a volunteer who has just been elected.

You were elected, you were congratulated, and nobody handed you anything. This is the list.

Ask for these documents

The declaration, the bylaws and the rules. The current budget and the most recent financial statements. The most recent reserve fund study and its funding plan. The insurance certificates. The minutes of the last twelve board meetings. The list of contracts in force with their renewal and cancellation dates.

That is the whole file. A board that cannot produce it in a week has a records problem you have now inherited.

Do your training

Ontario directors take the Condominium Authority of Ontario course; Florida directors complete a state approved certification or file the written statement the statute allows. Both are counted from the day you took office, and in both places the consequence of missing it falls on you personally rather than on the corporation.

Read the minutes backwards

Start with the most recent and read back. You are looking for decisions that were taken and never closed out, matters that keep reappearing, and any spending that has no decision behind it.

Check three things before your first vote

Whether the corporation is current on its statutory filings. Whether the reserve contribution in the budget matches the funding plan. Whether any contract renews automatically before the next meeting.

Each of those has cost a board money in the month after an election somewhere this year.

Understand what you are personally exposed to

Directors and officers liability covers you for decisions made honestly and in the corporation's interest. It does not cover you for failing to do the thing the statute puts on you by name, and it does not cover you for a conflict you did not disclose.

Disclose interests the first time, in writing, in the minutes. It is the cheapest protection available to you.

The matching playbook is in the product

Board Butler carries this as a workflow beside the job itself, so the guidance arrives when the work does rather than when somebody goes looking for it.