Governance

Your Board of Directors should be the stewards of your mission, providing cohesive, powerful direction in organizational governance. Such a Board can make all the difference in the impact a nonprofit can have on its community. 

Many factors can interfere with a Board’s ability to play its role properly; other factors may drive a need for governance changes: 

• Funders may pressure the organization to get the Board in order
• The board may be inactive or conversely, be encroaching on management responsibilities
• Scandals at other organizations may motivate the need for certainty that your Board is “squeaky clean”
• The Board may be unable to function due to outdated provisions in its bylaws
• The organization may need to come into compliance with new legislation, such as the “Not-for-Profit Revitalization Bill” 

NPHD can help with these challenges, and many others. We can conduct a comprehensive or a problem-specific assessment of your governance situation; then help you take steps based upon the results of that assessment. Potential findings and related actions could include: 

• A need for Board development and/or revitalization:
  • Identifying areas in which individual board members can shine and coaching them to take a more active role
  • Coaching the executive director in recruiting new board members for key positions

• Increasing Board member understanding of their responsibilities
  • Helping the Board understand their fiduciary responsibilities
  • Informing the Board of required anti-harassment policies and the need for proper levels of insurance
  • Providing an outside perspective that resets Board member expectations
  • Assuring accuracy and honesty of financial reporting, and providing monitoring tools

• The need to revise by-laws so that:
  • They are consistent with the organization’s current, rather than founding, mission and structure (e.g. a former umbrella organization that is now providing direct services itself)
  • “Catch-22” situations that keep the organization from moving forward are eliminated, as when by-laws specify that Board members should represent defunct organizations