Board members are elected for three-year terms, which may be repeated once. After six years of service, they must rotate off for at least one year. Typically, vocational church workers are pastors. All subsidiary and affiliate boards are elected by the BFA Board. Boards may consist of internal staff and non-staff members of the Baptist community.
All directors serve without compensation.
Staff is compensated as employees, but not as directors. In the BFA system, there are five boards with 37 outside directors to whom staff is accountable. BFA is obligated to deliver to the Convention annually its audited financial statements and budgets. The financial statements are audited by Arthur Andersen, BFA's auditor for 14 years. They know where it is invested and with whom it is invested.