I frequently find in my practice that most members of nonprofit boards struggle with understanding the financial aspects of their nonprofit. Certainly, board members can read and even understand that 1 + 1 = 2, but let's be honest, balance sheets do not easily make sense while income + expense statements do, but get confusing when lined up with the budget especially when there are bunches of line items.
But reading and comprehending financial statements are an important part of a board's fulfilling their duty of care. So what to do? First, every member should have, as part of their orientation, some training about what these two statements mean -- effectively, how to read them. Next, whoever reviews the financial statements at the board meeetings should be sure to review the important numbers (big differences from the budget in particular) and explain why these differences matter. Also, I believe it may be helpful to create a visual like a thermometer with the budget and the actual. This dashboard can be very helpful for lots of good reasons. Oh, and having a member of the finance committee do the report rather than the finance staff person may help increase board members' listening.
Financials do matter and ensuring members understand the numbers is important to supporting members with their duty of care.
Oh, this reminds me -- what do you think about the value of quarterly financial statements over monthly financial statements?