January 11, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Art of Trusteeship: The Nonprofit Board Member’s Guide to Effective Governance
by Candace Widmer and Susan Houchin
“The well-being of any nonprofit organization,” the authors of this new guide observe, “rests with its volunteer board of directors.”
Although nonprofit organizations in the United States are “astonishingly diverse,” Ms. Widmer and Ms. Houchin say, all types of organizations depend on their boards for guidance and support. The information offered in this guide, they explain, can therefore be of use to the trustees of any nonprofit organization, whatever its mission, membership, or size.
Ms. Widmer is a professor of human services and sociology at Elmira College in Elmira, N.Y., and Susan Houchin is director of national services at Girls Incorporated, in New York.
Their advice is presented in a list of 10 fundamental board responsibilities that are grouped into three categories: mission, money, and management. Chapters that deal with mission discuss how to establish a mission and monitor its progress, initiate realistic yet ambitious projects, and communicate a charity’s mission to the public.
Topics in the section on financial issues include overseeing an organization’s finances, developing fund-raising programs, and ensuring sound risk-management practices. The management segment suggests the best ways for board members to hire and supervise their organization’s chief executive officer and explains how boards can best evaluate their own performance.
Ms. Widmer and Ms. Houchin also try to clarify the many “ambiguities and contradictions” that they say are inherent in board members’ roles. But they say trusteeship is so complicated that “it is simply not, and never can be, an exact science.”
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94104; (415) 433-1740 or (800) 956-7739; fax (415) 433-0499 or (800) 605-2665; http://www.josseybass.com; 186 pages; $25.95; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-5133-1.
