Everton hope the appointment of Marcel Brands to a boardroom role will provide significant help with their long-term vision of challenging at the top of the Premier League.
Brands arrived at Goodison Park last summer as the club's director of football but his role will now expand, seeing him in charge of Everton's entire football strategy from Academy to first team.
The appointment was confirmed at Everton's Annual General Meeting on Tuesday evening during a speech made by their chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale.
She said: "We were thrilled to appoint Marcel this summer and he is now responsible and accountable for delivering the long-term, holistic, football strategy and principles from Academy through to first-team.
"Marcel has begun his work delivering the club's long-term permanent football strategy, working closely with Academy director Joel Waldron and head of football strategy Richard Battle.
"It fills me with great pride to announce Marcel's appointment to the Everton board. This appointment further cements the importance and permanence of the position of Director of Football within our structure."
Brand's boardroom appointment forms part of Everton's ambitious long-term vision, also announced by Barrett-Baxendale on Tuesday, which encompasses the next decade.
That decade could also see the club leave their historic Goodison Park home for a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock.
She added: "Ultimately, this means challenging for domestic titles and trophies, not only to win cups but to win Premier League titles too.
"It means competing regularly in the Champions League, and it means doing this in a world-class, world-renowned football stadium.
"This is an extremely challenging goal. I want to emphasise it will take time, commitment and an incredible amount of hard work.
"It is very much a long-term goal for our club but it is vital we are ambitious and that we deliver performance on and off the pitch that drives our club forward to achieve our ambitions.
"As a result of the progress made on our foundations during the past six months, it is my belief that we are now well positioned to build a club that can compete with the best.
"We are starting 2019 from a position of real strength. To build on this we have set ourselves challenging ambitions and we have a plan in place to deliver on these long-term ambitions - we are making great progress."
Everton's deputy chairman Keith Harris was positive about both the club's finances and the prospect of playing in a new stadium, targeting football away from Goodison Park within three years.
"It is a hard task to build a stadium," said Mr Harris. "Tottenham, which we are very aware of and particularly cautious when making any forecast, took 18 years to where they are today and they still cannot boast a first-team game.
"In the past few months much has been going on. We are having very advanced discussions with the financial community and it is very encouraging.
"I cannot promise an end date because we haven't yet broken ground.
"We are on track with our work to apply for planning and hope to put a spade in the ground early next year and it would be wonderful if we could compete this in two years.
"We should certainly be in a position to complete it in three years."