Should the CEO follow or lead the board in fund-raising?
By Eugene Fram
In my opinion, the CEO should be a leading partner with the board in development. He/S is the advanced guard when it comes to fund-raising. First to be successful, she/H has to be alert to all places where the CEO can raise funds on his/her own initiative. (more…)
My Nonprofit Governance Blog-Site has reached a Landmark at 500 Followers!
And here’s a sampling of the most viewed posts of 2014
By: Eugene Fram
Over the last several decades I have published about two dozen articles and four books related to corporate governance, most of them covering nonprofit governance. These have appeared in a range of publications including MIT’s Sloan Management Review and, more recently, in the Huffington Post.
About two years ago, I decided to “become modern” and use social media to generate comments about my (sometimes controversial) ideas for improving corporate governance. There are now over 250 blog posts available on my site. I am amazed at social media’s drawing power and the daily reports of “likes” and professional comments about my ideas. The work has been fun and has allowed me to reach people worldwide, sometimes in as many as 12 different countries daily.
I am happy to share this list of my followers’ favorite posts. Feel free to forward it to others, especially nonprofit CEOs and board directors.
Blog site: http://bit.ly/yfRZpz
# Most Viewed Posts -1/1/2014 to 5/15/2014
Can Nonprofit Boards Suffer From Agenda Deficits? -272*
A Special Relationship: Nurturing the CEO-Board Chair Bond – 178*
Is Your Nonprofit Board Ready to Recruit a Transformational Leader? – 195*
Do Today’s Business Leaders Make Effective Nonprofit Directors? Revised & Updated – 145*
What Nonprofit Boards Are Not Doing – But Should! Revised & Updated -256
When Will Nonprofit Boards Learn to Plan for Succession? – 236
Does the Nonprofit CEO Need to Go?? – 469
Is Your Nonprofit Board Fundraising Committee Strategically oriented? Revised & Updated – 305
Nonprofit Boardroom Elephants and the “Nice Guy” Syndrome: A Complex Problem – 578
A Nonprofit Board’s Most Important Job! – 347
Major Donor Has Remorse — Nonprofit Board/CEO Failed to Meaningfully Engage Him? -350
Once Again! Should a Nonprofit CEO Become a Voting Member of the Board of Directors? – 208
Nonprofit Boards 2014 – Two Recurring Concerns of Directors & Managers – 326
A Nonprofit Board’s Best Friend — A Robust Business Plan – 276
An Action Agenda for Nonprofit Board Management Discussions -211
* Current posts receiving views and comments.
Many people believe as I do that a nonprofit board’s job is to find the best possible person to act as CEO of the organization, then stand back and let that person manage. If your board is in agreement, here are guidelines for action:
Topics Covered
* Recruit Widely
* Understand the Partnership
* A Nonprofit Board Has an Overview Responsibility
* Organization and CEO Measurement
* Nobody Does His/Her Job Perfectly
* The Board and CEO Must Partner on Fundraising
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eugene-fram/a-nonprofit-boards-most-i_b_4839012.html
Nonprofit CEOs and Board Directors: How Expert Is Your CFO? Updated/Revised
By: Eugene Fram
When hiring a chief financial officer (CFO), nonprofit organizations often find themselves with a major challenge, since many financial and accounting functions are identical with those of for-profit organizations. To compete, the nonprofits may need to offer higher salaries than typical for their types of organizations. Some trim the level of expertise required to fill the position. This is a dangerous move, especially if the organization is growing. Also the current CFO, if hired five or ten years ago, may not be up to date and make a major error that will harm the organization’s reputation, leading to a board restructuring and/or firing the CEO.
Both the nonprofit CEO and the board need to assess the CFO’s expertise annually by:
*Asking knowledgeable board members if they are receiving financial data and analysis in a format helpful for decision-making.
*Having an executive session with the external auditors yearly to obtain the firm’s assessment of the expertise of all financial personnel.
*Keeping track of reports that are frequently submitted late. Something might be radically wrong. (I know of one case where the board and CEO were only receiving a subsidiary report intermittently. The problem was the data reported involved old accounts that should have been written off months ago. The organization had to hire forensic accountants to determine what needed to be done to resolve the situation. The board terminated the CEO.)
*Making certain all financial personnel take two weeks vacation each year, so that a substitute needs to handle the duties.
*Having the CEO review the CFO’s expertise annually with knowledgeable board members.
For a current case of a board that evidently failed to adhere to such guidelines see:
How Can Nonprofit Boards More Clearly Define Operational Responsibilities? Revised & Updated
By Eugene Fram
My experience shows that well functioning nonprofit boards establish and monitor the organization’s policies. The board operates through the president/CEO. In turn, the CEO executes policy and is responsible for the prudent and creative operations of the organization. In this role, the CEO exercises leadership resulting in the effective and efficient use of board and of other volunteer time.
Although defining what are policy issues and what are operation issues is not always clear, for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, following is a useful set of guidelines (more…)
Can a 9-Year Tenure Promote Nonprofit Director Effectiveness?
Milestone:This blog-post is number 200, since late 2011, for my blog-site. Like this blog-post, I have attempted to show how board practice and research from other areas might help nonprofits to achieve better mission outcomes and impacts. In other posts, I have attempted commented on traditional issues, such as is the board or CEO primarily responsible for fundraising? That blog-post went viral on the Internet abut 10 days ago and continues to go viral today. Thanks to all who added their insights and experiences to my comments.
By: Eugene Fram
Having served on two nonprofit boards for a period of ten consecutive years, I was interested to read a current study of the optimal tenure for business board directors. The business study found that a director’s effectiveness peaked at nine years, after which it falls off.* If a parallel study were to be run with nonprofits, what conclusions might be drawn given that the usual nonprofit board tenure is two three-year terms? What, if any, might be the impact on nonprofits by extending directors’ term of office? Although there are differences in their missions, nonprofit and for-profit boards should be able learn from each other., (more…)
The Challenge of the Nonprofit Board Meeting: Some Tips for Board Chairs
By Eugene Fram
The new director sits down at his first board meeting and turns to the director sitting beside him. “What am I supposed to do?” he asks the more experienced director who replies, “Pity the Board Chair!”
One of the biggest challenges for a president or board chair is to run a tight and meaningful meeting. Without careful planning and new approaches, the obligatory periodic 1.5 hours with the directors can also be a major frustration. Directors often either don’t show up or appear to be bored, tired, disinterested clock-watchers during this important effort to collectively oversee the state of the organization.
Here are some ideas- some innovative, some old stand-byes- that may help the chair ”Preside” more effectively. Be sure to sit down with the CEO well before the scheduled meeting to set the agenda, establish meeting goals and brainstorm the format. Anticipate the inevitable “bumps in the road’ and how best to handle them. Agree to try a new idea occasionally to facilitate discussion, nurture participation, and generally engage the directors. (more…)
Gold Standards for a Strategic Mission Focused Nonprofit
By Eugene Fram
The following is Google’s mission statement:
To organize the world’s information and make it universally assessable and useful.
This twelve-word expression of purpose should serve as a shining example to nonprofit boards that wrestle with the development of their own mission statements. Typically the process takes huge amounts of time as boards struggle to accommodate a wide range of viewpoints.* Too often the resulting statements tend to be complex and hard to understand.
Here are some approaches that are of fundamental importance to building strategic strength in a mission-focused nonprofit: (more…)
NcNamara
I disagree with you a bit 🙂
Fram
Carter: Thanks for your comments below. I really appreciate your comments, as they force me to rethink and reconsider my viewpoints.
My replies are in bold
McNamara
You and I have been around the nonprofit world for a long time. We’ve seen where lawyers did Board trainings in the ’70s and early ’80s. Everything back then was determined by what was in your bylaws. If you wanted to change how the organization operated, then a change in bylaws was supposed to accomplish that 🙂 (more…)
How is trust developed between the nonprofit board chair and the chief executive?
By Eugene Fram
First, in order to maintain trust between the board chair and CEO, the chair must be certain that the evaluation of the organization and the performance evaluation of the CEO are inclusive, i.e., cover a balance of the most relevant outcomes. Otherwise, the evaluation outcomes have the potential to damage the trust relationship that’s necessary to drive organizational growth. (more…)
Nonprofit Management 