May 4, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
Reinventing Your Board: A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Policy Governance, Revised Edition
by John Carver and Miriam Carver
The responsibilities of a nonprofit board of directors should primarily focus on keeping the organization loyal to its mission, write John and Miriam Carver, co-editors of Board Leadership, a bimonthly publication on governance. In the absence of shareholders, who keep for-profit businesses accountable, nonprofit boards must stand in for the people the group was founded to serve, they say.
The authors call that approach a policy-governance model, and say that boards should first determine who “owns” the organization — for example, the surrounding community if a group is a community foundation, or an association’s members — and what needs they want the charity to fill.
Acting unanimously, boards must then ensure that the organization’s chief executive meets the owners’ expectations.
A companion guide to Boards That Make a Difference, the book that first explained the Carvers’ policy-governance model, this revised edition offers tips for carrying out their ideas in organizations that are set in their ways or have other obstacles that may inhibit change.
Appendices include sample policy manuals and monitoring reports, which the authors urge board members to require chief executives to write regularly.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 111 River Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030; (201) 748-6000; fax (201) 748-6088; http://www.wiley.com; 303 pages; $36; ISBN 0-7879-8181-8.
