What do you do about a board member who stopped showing up?

Someone on your board hasn’t been to a meeting since last fall. They’re on the roster, they’re counted in your board size, and every few months someone asks “has anyone heard from David?” Nobody has. The room moves on to the next agenda item.

The honest answer is: have the conversation you’ve been avoiding for eighteen months. The board’s real failure here is almost never the absent member. It’s that nobody said anything, for a very long time, out of politeness.

Here’s the order that works.

Notice it early — which requires making attendance visible

You cannot address in month three what you don’t see until month fifteen. Most boards genuinely don’t know their own attendance patterns, because attendance lives in the minutes, and the minutes live in a folder.

So put it somewhere a human will see it. A one-page attendance summary in the board packet twice a year is enough — names down the side, meetings across the top, and a percentage. No commentary; the pattern calls itself out. Two consecutive absences from someone reliable is worth a phone call, and it’s a much easier call at two than at seven.

The chair or the governance committee should own this. Someone specific, not “the board.”

Have the chair make a genuinely curious call

Not an email. Not a group text. A phone call from the chair, and the entire posture of that call should be curiosity rather than prosecution.

Something close to: “I’ve noticed you haven’t been able to make the last few meetings, and I wanted to check in — how are you doing?” Then stop talking.

Here’s why the posture matters so much. In most cases the answer is something you’d never guess from the outside. A health crisis, their own or a parent’s. A job change that moved their evenings. Sometimes it’s a quiet embarrassment — they missed a commitment they took on, felt bad about it, skipped a meeting to avoid the moment, and then the avoidance compounded. That last one is far more common than boards expect, and it resolves in about four minutes of a warm conversation. Occasionally they’ve simply lost interest, or disagreed with a board decision and disengaged rather than argue. Those are worth knowing too, and they only surface if the call doesn’t feel like an inquest.

Whatever the answer, don’t solve it on the call. Listen, then offer options.

Offer options that are real

The mistake here is presenting a binary — come back or resign. Give a menu, and mean every item on it:

A leave of absence. Many boards can grant a defined leave, often three to six months, with a specific return date. Check your bylaws for whether it’s permitted and how it affects quorum counts — some let you temporarily reduce the count, and some don’t, which matters enormously (see below). It’s the right answer for a health crisis or a heavy season at work, and it lets a good trustee come back without a story to explain.

A reduced role. Off the committees, still at board meetings. Or off the board and onto a committee, where the commitment is lighter and the contribution is real. Committee service is an honorable landing place, not a demotion.

A graceful resignation, with public thanks. Say it out loud: “If this isn’t the right season, we’d rather have you leave well than fade out. We’d thank you properly at the next meeting.” A lot of disengaged trustees are stuck precisely because they don’t know how to exit without it looking like failure. Handing them a dignified door also tells everyone watching that leaving this board is a normal thing that happens to good people.

A re-engagement plan. If they want back in, make it concrete. One committee, one task, the next three meeting dates on their calendar today, and a check-in from the chair in six weeks. “I’ll do better” is not a plan.

The attendance policy that makes this impersonal

The reason these conversations feel so awkward is that they’re improvised, one person at a time, which makes them feel personal — because they are.

Adopt a written attendance policy instead, in a calm year, before you need it. A common form: trustees are expected to attend a stated share of meetings; missing three consecutive meetings, or more than half in a year, triggers a conversation with the chair; continued absence beyond that may lead to a removal recommendation, following whatever your bylaws require.

Two rules make it work. Adopt it in advance — a policy written the month you have a problem is a policy about a person. And apply it to everyone, including the treasurer, including the founder, including the person whose family name is on the building. A policy with exceptions is not a policy; it’s a preference, and every board member can tell the difference.

Removal is the genuine last resort

Sometimes none of it works. Someone won’t take the call, won’t resign, won’t come.

Removal of a director is governed by your bylaws and, in most states, by nonprofit corporation law. Who may remove a director, what vote is required, whether the member body rather than the board holds that power, what notice is owed: all of it varies by state and by document. Read your own bylaws carefully, follow them exactly, document what you did, and talk to counsel before you act. A removal done sloppily can be challenged, and the challenge is worse than the original problem.

Also worth knowing: some bylaws include an automatic-resignation provision tied to attendance, which handles this without a vote at all. If yours doesn’t, adding one is a reasonable thing for a governance committee to propose, through whatever amendment process your bylaws require.

Why waiting isn’t neutral

Boards tolerate long absences because doing nothing feels like the kind option. It isn’t, and here’s the arithmetic.

Quorum is usually a share of trustees in office, not trustees who show up. A trustee who never attends still counts toward that denominator. On a fifteen-member board with a simple-majority quorum, you need eight in the room. Two permanently absent members mean the remaining thirteen must produce eight — and one snowstorm turns into a canceled meeting and a decision delayed a month.

That cost lands on the people who did show up. An absent member isn’t neutral. They’re a standing tax on everyone else’s attendance.

The one-sentence version

Make attendance visible, have the chair call early and kindly, offer a leave, a smaller role, or a dignified exit — and let a policy you adopted in a calm year do the part that would otherwise feel personal.