\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>is taking care of the board\u2019s own long-term health by continuously cultivating, recruiting and training new board members. Be sure your board has a clear plan for choosing your board members. Many nonprofits create a matrix to describe the talents and expertise to look for in their board members. It is also good to have a clear cultivation and recruitment protocol so that everyone knows what to expect when inviting someone to join the board.<\/p>\nAnother critical component of governance is your bylaws. Bylaws need to be up-to-date, and you must be following them. If you don\u2019t know what your bylaws say or if you aren\u2019t following them, you might as well not have them. At least that is how the courts look at it. Be sure your bylaws have been reviewed by an attorney every few years. A board committee should evaluate your bylaws from time to time to make any necessary changes and to keep them fresh in everyone\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n
A board with good governance practices will have written policies, standards and procedures in place to address all key aspects of your nonprofit. Policies such as whistleblower, conflict of interest and gift acceptance are just a few of the documents that should be in your files. And just like the bylaws, it\u2019s important to review the policies, standards and procedures occasionally to make sure they are being followed.<\/p>\n
And finally, under the heading of governance, we have the very important board role of hiring, supporting and evaluating the Chief Executive. The Executive Director is the board\u2019s one and only employee and main partner in doing the work of the organization. So, it\u2019s important that nonprofits conduct a thorough search for their candidate, hire well, support\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>the individual to help them do their best job and provide a written performance evaluation every year.<\/p>\nThis evaluation should be a two-way conversation between the board and CEO in order to strengthen the partnership and create a winning team. Mutual trust and respect as well as clear and consistent communication will keep you on track.<\/p>\n
There are three legal responsibilities of all nonprofit boards.<\/h3>\n
>>The Duty of Care<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>says that all board members should have sufficient competence to participate in the governing board. It also says that each board member must exercise reasonable care (\u201cthe care that an ordinarily prudent person would exercise in a like position and under similar circumstances\u201d). Board members must remember that they are stewards of the nonprofit and make decisions accordingly.<\/p>\n>>The Duty of Loyalty<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>is a standard of faithfulness; a board member must give undivided allegiance when making decisions affecting the organization. This means that a board member can never use information obtained as a member for personal gain but must act in the best interests of the organization.<\/p>\n>>The Duty of Obedience\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/em>requires board members to be faithful to the organization’s mission. They are not permitted to act in a way that is inconsistent with the central goals of the organization. A basis for this rule lies in the public’s trust that the organization will manage donated funds to fulfill the organization’s mission.<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One board member of a regional organization dedicated to providing guide dogs for the visually impaired suggested that the group branch out to include production of a healthy dog food product. Another board member said he heard of a new grant that would fund provision of other types of animals for people with a variety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonprofitkinect.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}