Positioning Sustainable Nonprofit Organizations for 2022 & Beyond
By Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Many nonprofits boards have just entered their 2022 fiscal years. From a “25,000 foot viewpoint,” following are three integrated nonprofit board functions that should have special focus to assure stakeholders that the nonprofit has long-term organization sustainability.
By Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Most nonprofit boards are being faced with huge pressures—reduced financial support, challenges in integrating new technologies, recovering from Covid impacts and difficulties in hiring qualified personnel who will consider “nonprofit” wages. To survive long term, board members need to be alert to potential opportunities. These may be far from the comfort zones of current board members, CEOs and staff.
Raising The Bar For Nonprofit Involvement
By Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
It’s no secret that some nonprofit board members cruise through their term of board service with minimal involvement. McKinsey Company, a well-known consulting firm, has suggested five steps that can be used to counteract this passivity in for-profit boards. * With a few tweaks, McKinsey suggestions (in bold) are relevant to the nonprofit board environment where director engagement is often a challenge.
Based on my experiences, following are ways that effective nonprofit boards have established board committees. (more…)
Once Again: How to Keep Nonprofit Board Members Informed.
By: Eugene Fram. Free Digital Image
With high performing nonprofit organizations, board members will rarely be invited by the CEO to participate in operational decisions. As a result, management will always have more information than board members. Yet the board still needs to know that is happening in operations to be able to perform their overview process. The name of the game is for the CEO to communicate the important information and to keep board members informed of significant developments. Still, there’s no need to clutter regular board meetings by reporting endless details about operations.
Once Again: How to Keep Nonprofit Board Members Informed.
By: Eugene Fram. Free Digital Image
With high performing nonprofit organizations, board members will rarely be invited by the CEO to participate in operational decisions. As a result, management will always have more information than board members. Yet the board still needs to know that is happening in operations to be able to perform their overview process.
The name of the game is for the CEO to communicate the important information and to keep board members informed of significant developments. Still, there’s no need to clutter regular board meetings by reporting endless details about operations.
Nonprofit Board Members—Are They Aware of Their Independent Director Duties?
By Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
The vast majority of nonprofit board members serve as independent directors. They are not members of management, have other occupations as their major focus, but have some significant responsibilities to a community, profession, government or professional/trade association. Mary Jo White, Former Chair, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, outlined the responsibilities of fund board members who also are independent directors to overview the investment dollars made by 53 million U.S. households. Many of her comments easily apply to nonprofit board members and their responsibilities as Independent directors. Note: The italicized materials following are White’s direct quotations. *
How Prepared Are Board Members for the Challenges of the Nonprofit Culture?
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Given that the typical tenure of a new board member is six years. In addition,a new director’s intention may beto make his/her unique contribution to the organization’s progress before he/s rotates off the board and is supplanted by another “new” director. With these factors in mind, I estimate that many volunteers enter the boardroom with little understanding of nonprofit culture. Even those who have served previously on business boards may initially spend valuable time in accommodating to the nuances of nonprofit practices and priorities before being poised to make contributions to the “greater good” that nonprofit create. Following are some areas that are endemic to nonprofits:
NONPROFIT BOARDS HIRE AND CEOs MUST ACT!
By: Eugene Fram
Whenever the time is ripe to select a new nonprofit CEO, I think of the old joke that says “…every person looks for the perfect spouse… meanwhile, they get married.” By the same token, nonprofit directors seek perfection in a new ED/CEO– and find that they must “settle” for less. But there are certain definitive attributes that are essential to his/her success in running the organization. With the pressures of increasingly slim budgets, fund development challenges and the difficulty of recruiting high quality employees, the 21st century ED/CEO must be action oriented and come equipped with at least a modicum of the following abilities: *
Time Compressed Non Profit Board members – Recruit & Retain Them!
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
Every nonprofit board has had the experience of having board positions open and being unable to fill them with highly qualified people. The usual response from qualified candidates is that they are too busy to be accept a board position. However, the real reasons, if speaking privately, are that they perceive the nonprofit decision process to be too slow, board agendas loaded with minutiae, presentations that take up more time than they should, unfocused discussion, etc. (more…)
Nonprofit Management 