The Joyce Cunningham Award is given to a Public Library Board [or two Public Library Boards that participated in a collaborative effort] that has demonstrated a high level of collaboration and innovation to produce outstanding results.
A high-performance Public Library Board can be defined as a group of people with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, and who consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation to produce superior results.
A high performance Public Library Board is regarded as tight knit, focused on their goal, and have supportive processes that will enable any board member to surmount any barriers in achieving the board’s goals. Within the team, individual board members are highly skilled and are able to interchange their roles. Also, leadership within the team is not vested in a single individual; instead the leadership role is taken up by various team members, according to the need at that moment in time.