I live in a community where we know each other by name, use Twitter to help each other's locate lost pets, and shovel each other’s sidewalks after storms. I feel blessed to have such a close-knit environment while still living in a large, often impersonal city like DC. I am passionate about my...

Board meetings tend to remind me of sitcoms: a genre of comedy centered on characters who share a common environment, such as a home, workplace, or a boardroom, with laughable moments. There is usually a board member who lacks self-awareness (i.e. Kramer from Seinfeld), someone who has a very high...

The board meeting was only at the 30-minute mark, but eyes were already starting to droop. The AC was out, and the small fans whirred in the background like a white noise machine. Prior to the meeting, board members were treated to a 4-course lunch, and the rich food was adding to the sleepiness....

As both a mom and a consultant in the nonprofit sector, I often wonder what my world looks like to my two young children, who currently understand very little about what “mommy does.” What, for example, might they conclude about board culture if they were to venture with me into a nonprofit...

Are you the next or the new board chair? Thinking about it in your future? Routinely, a new board chair begins to receive advice – and warnings – from others such as “but we have always done it that way,” or “don’t rock the boat” and, on the flip side, “breathe new life into our board” or “board...

When I ask audiences of nonprofit leaders to indicate how many of them engage in strategic planning, have an annual action plan, or make time to plan out the projects and activities that are critical to their success, the all too familiar response is that many don’t.

Ironically, those same...

Chris Thompson, BoardSource’s numbers guy (and experienced ATM user) explores what can be learned from our recent financial literacy quiz.

Of the 10 basic board responsibilities, “finance” appears prominently in two of them: “ensuring adequate financial resources” and “protecting assets and...

Financial oversight is probably one of the most important board responsibilities. It’s important because an organization’s nonprofit status can come with some really nice benefits that may include:

• no income taxes
• no sales taxes
• no property taxes
• donations to the organization are tax-deductible

...

In 1994, Amazon was launched, the infamous Lorena Bobbitt went on trial and was found temporarily insane, Michael Jackson married Elvis’s daughter, and Howard Stern ran for governor of New York. Given such momentous cultural milestones, it is hardly surprising that the first-ever BoardSource...

Unprecedented crisis requires equally unprecedented response and risk taking. Undoubtedly, this is not an entirely foreign concept for many of us in the nonprofit sector. Most likely, we’ve heard one variation or another of this statement. And, often times, our willingness to take on risk comes in...