The Chronicle of Philanthropy (August 1, 2019)
After spending two decades working for nonprofits and now in my role as a consultant to them, I keep hearing stories about nonprofit leaders encountering friction with their boards.
Most recently, a friend who works as the executive director of a small nonprofit complained to me that the organization’s board members are interfering in her management of the staff, despite the board’s having made clear that it was her responsibility. She’s learning about the interference from her employees, and I hear the panic in her voice. The questions in her mind are swirling.
The Columbus Dispatch (July 13, 2019)
When it comes to racial and ethnic diversity, the leadership boards of central Ohio nonprofit organizations don’t look like the communities they serve. So the United Way of Central Ohio wants to nudge them a little closer to the local demographic. Starting early in 2020, the United Way plans to include ‘board diversity’ as part of the criteria in its next grant-application process. Charities seeking funding from the United Way will need to have diverse boards or a board-approved plan for achieving diversity.
Read the full article.
Philanthropy News Digest (October 3, 2018)
Here’s a well-documented fact: in the nonprofit sector, most boards are lacking in diversity, especially when it comes to people of color and women. (We wrote about the former, and how to change it, a couple of months ago.) We also know that more diversity on a board tends to bring positive, lasting results to the organizations governed by those boards. There’s another population that is often overlooked for board service, however, one that is well positioned to bring new and different perspectives to nonprofit board deliberations. I’m talking about millennials.
Nonprofit Quarterly (August 8, 2018)
As NPQ reported, a 2015 national study published by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation found that 84 percent of art museum curators were white (compared to 62 percent in the US population). Of the remainder, six percent were Asian, four percent were Black, and three percent were Latinx (reported totals for American Indians and Native Hawaiians were less than 0.5 percent each). These numbers, of course, reflect broader nonprofit trends, as documented by BoardSource’s Leading with Intent report.
Nonprofit Quarterly (May 24, 2018)
Leadership in the nonprofit sector remains largely white. Perversely, even as we are actively talking about and studying this issue in the sector, the proportion of nonprofits who have all-white boards have risen both in the US and the UK. Conforming to this, the environmental sector is headed in the same direction but from a far worse place.
Center for Nonprofit Excellence (March 15, 2018)
Thoughtful consideration of the questions in this article can help your board move beyond good intentions to develop an action plan. And action is needed, because decades of evidence show the value of diverse boards and suggests that diversity won’t happen without intentionality.
BoardSource Blog (Feb. 28, 2018)
This blog post is the first in a series written by foundation leaders in response to a new research report published by BoardSource titled Foundation Board Leadership: A Closer Look at Foundation Board Responses to Leading with Intent 2017.
BoardSource Blog (Mar. 6, 2018)
This blog post is the second in a series written by foundation leaders in response to a new research report published by BoardSource titled “Foundation Board Leadership: A Closer Look at Foundation Board Responses to Leading with Intent 2017.”
Center for Effective Philanthropy (Mar. 1, 2018)
Nearly a third of CEO respondents in a just-released BoardSource study on foundation governance reported that they hadn’t had a performance review in the past 12 months. Eighteen percent of the 111 respondents said they’d never been evaluated.
Center for Effective Philanthropy (Mar. 5, 2018)
Ensuring regular turnover of current board members and then prioritizing diversity in the recruitment of new ones is the only path forward for foundation boards if they are to make the kind of dramatic progress on diversity that is so desperately needed.
Read the full article.