Nonprofits boards: Blessing or bullshit

Anyone who has read my blog for any period of time or has been a nonprofit grad student of mine knows how I feel about nonprofit boards. Most are just deplorable – wasting precious staff energies and bringing nothing to the board table.
We need a “Jack Kevorkian” for nonprofit boards – cutting the [...]

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Best practices for nonprofits

The Nonprofit Good Practice Guide, a free online resource, captures and organizes good practices for nonprofits and foundations.
There are thousands of effectiveness-building tips and resources on topics including:

Accountability and Evaluation;
Advocacy;
Communications and Marketing;
Foundations and Grantmaking;
Fundraising and Financial Sustainability;
Governance;
Management and Leadership;
Staff Development and Organizational Capacity;
Technology; and
Volunteer Management.

Source: National Council of Nonprofits

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Teaching Board Members to Raise Money

According to an article in the Jan. 14th issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, nonprofit experts often complain that they can’t get members of their boards to effectively raise money.
But the problem is usually more about the nonprofit organization’s leadership than it is about the motivations of its volunteer board members, writes the anonymous author [...]

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Nonprofit doesn’t mean nonperformance

For those who regularly read my Blog, you already know that I have a near insane obsession that third-sector organizations either produce value or go out of business! And it’s a constant drumbeat in the classes that I teach as well.
Why? Because nonprofits are “on a mission,” and their boards have fiduciary responsibilities [...]

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10 capital sins of nonprofit boards

Nonprofits have organizational missions, and their boards have fiduciary responsibilities to contributors, employees, customers, members, and the environment in which they operate. The most egregiously overlooked problem with nonprofit organizations is that their boards don’t seem to realize that the organization exists for a reason that lies outside of the board meeting room.
Get in [...]

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