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.
Once Again! What Are the Best Risk Levels for Your Nonprofit’s Investments in a COVID 19 environment and after it?
By Eugene Fram Freed Digital Image
Some nonprofits have significant investment accounts. The following are some guidelines to help develop investment policies during and after COVID 19. These funds may have been accrued through annual surpluses/donations or have been legally mandated to cover future expenditures through a reserve account.
I have encountered ultraconservative nonprofits that invest all funds in several bank savings accounts that are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC). Those that advocate this position feel that they don’t want to assume responsibility for loss of donor or membership funds that might occur, even temporarily, with investments in a mix portfolio of investment opportunities such as stock funds and/or rated bonds. (more…)
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:
The Possibility Of Fraud – A Nonprofit Board Alert
By: Eugene Fram Free Digital Image
“According to a Washington Post analysis of the filings from 2008-2012 … of more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations, … there was a ‘significant diversion’ of nonprofit assets, disclosing losses attributed to theft, investment frauds, embezzlement and other unauthorized uses of funds.” The top 20 organizations in the Post’s analysis had a combined potential total loss of more than a half-billion dollars. *
One estimate, by Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, suggests that fraud losses among U.S. nonprofits are approximately $40 billion a year. **
Vigilant nonprofit boards might prevent many of these losses. Here’s how:
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: *
Nonprofit Management 