Ambassadors charts highlight each board member's leadership actions. Acts such as committing to sponsor an event, emailing a donor, or talking with potential participants are all noted. This encourages board participation and highlights individual board members' efforts.
Is your organization thinking about forming an advisory board? Make sure your organization specifies the advisory board's role and how it differs from the board of directors or trustees before taking the leap. All advisory boards share common goal: to help the nonprofit organization. However, there are different types of nonprofit advisory boards.
Terry Allebaugh had his "aha" moment when he was away from the office. He was at a workshop on executive transitions presented by the N.C. Center for Nonprofits with support from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC Foundation. He realized he'd fulfilled his work at Housing for New Hope (HNH), which he founded "to prevent and end homelessness one valuable person at a time." After 20 years as executive director, he realized it was time to move aside and let new leadership take the helm. He wasn’t ready to retire, but he was tired of the CEO's administrative responsibilities.
One way to be sure that each person on the board is clear on his or her responsibilities is to adopt a Board Member "Contract" (Blue Avocado). Not intended to be legally enforced, the contract outlines explicitly what is expected of individual board members, and how the organization will in turn be responsible to them.
Sample request for proposal for property and liability risk management and insurance consulting services.
Toward a Theory of Sector Selection - As social entrepreneurs around the world create new organizations to solve emerging public problems, they do so drawing on a broad range of organizational forms, ranging from the traditional nonprofit form to the classic business corporate form. (Nonprofit Quarterly, 2015)
All boards (even the most organized, responsible, and congenial ones) need to document their activities, internal rules, and processes. Some of the documentation is legally required; some is simply helpful to have. Some documents are public; some must be kept confidential. Some serve as guidelines for decisions; some are part of the record keeping. For a board that takes its fiduciary role seriously — and they all should — written rules and documentation of activities are simply part of ongoing, everyday risk management. (BoardSource, 2012)
This document serves as a sample for constructing bylaws.
Part of a series of short guides commissioned by the Weingart Foundation to support nonprofits in Los Angeles, the "HR Best Practices Toolkit" was presented at the Center for Nonprofit Management's 501(c)onference in 2014. It includes sample language, templates, and its written content covers: performance management; recruitment, hiring, and retention; program staffing; ongoing professional development; and resolving problems.
Sample Confidentiality Agreement for Board and Staff Members during an executive search (North Carolina Center for Nonprofits)