November 15, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board
by Max De Pree
Board members and the executive directors who must work with them face a number of vexing challenges. Among them: determining the role of the board, figuring out how the board can best work for its charity, finding the best trustees, and learning how best to use the time of busy and overly committed people.
In Called to Serve, Max De Pree, retired chairman of the board of Herman Miller, a company in Zeeland, Mich., calls on his experience as a board member to explore those issues. The book is based on a series of letters Mr. De Pree wrote to Verley Sangster, president of the Center for Urban Theological Studies, in Philadelphia, in which the two discussed how to establish a board that combined “in a fruitful way a passion for a group’s mission with the competence to make a significant contribution.”
Chapters cover how to start a nonprofit board, its tasks and structure, the role of the chairman and trustees, and how to deal with conflicts between board members and within the organization. The book also contains a guide for the chair and a chapter about what the board “owes” the head of the charity.
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson Avenue S.E., Grand Rapids, Mich. 49503; (800) 253-7521; fax (616) 459-6540; http://www.eerdmans.com; 91 pages; $10; I.S.B.N. 0-8028-4922-9.
