March 12, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Getting Started With Policy Governance: Bringing Purpose, Integrity, and Efficiency to Your Board
by Caroline Oliver
This book lays out a plan for nonprofit boards to become more streamlined and efficient — and therefore increase the difference made by the nonprofit groups they oversee.
The author, Caroline Oliver, is a communications consultant in Ontario, Canada, and the founder of the International Policy Governance Association, in Ogdensburg, N.Y.
Ms. Oliver says that individuals on boards must be given enough freedom to move with “maximum velocity.” She writes that, too often, members get mired in confusion and arguments about the board’s goals and thus fail to move forward on decisions and action.
The “policy governance” approach she suggests can be broken down into six basic steps: Define the difference your owners — or those most invested in the nonprofit group’s mission — want to make; assign someone the responsibility for making that difference; limit the authority that goes with the responsibility as much as possible; put the charity’s goals and values in a comprehensive-yet-concise written policy; delegate work and freedom to individual board members; and be sure you are making the difference your owners want.
Each of the seven chapters explains how those basic steps should work. For example, one chapter includes six examples of “ends policies,” or short, to-the-point written statements that identify a nonprofit group’s “bottom line,” or the difference the group exists to make in the world. The policies, writes Ms. Oliver, help a board deduce a clear direction and help unify a board’s decisions.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard, Indianapolis, Ind. 46256; (800) 762-2974; http://www.josseybass.com; 256 pages; $40; ISBN 978-0-7879-8713-8.
