Nonprofit Board Quotes

A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held. (Government regulations effectively mandate that public companies have larger boards—the average is nine members.) By far the worst you can do is to make your board extra large. When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small.

In the short term, there is scant room for dreaming, for one must choose between being taken seriously and being visionary. In the long term, however, leadership cannot afford to overlook the wisdom of dreams, even the wisdom of playful dreaming. Vision that bounds higher than the barriers that confine us often spring from earnest playfulness.

For years, the family funded legal challenges to various campaign-finance laws. Ground zero in this fight was the James Madison Center for Free Speech, of which Betsy DeVos became a founding board member in 1997. The nonprofit organization’s sole goal was to end all legal restrictions on money in politics. Its honorary chairman was Senator Mitch McConnell, a savvy and prodigious fund-raiser. Conservatives

Australian pro surfer Dave Rastovich, straddling his board waiting for a wave, was astonished to watch a dolphin hurtle itself at a shark that was torpedoing toward him, sending it fleeing. (Coincidentally, only two days earlier Rastovich had launched a nonprofit group, Surfers for Cetaceans, to protect dolphins and whales.)

When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.

Alice James Books is a nonprofit cooperative poetry press, founded in 1973 by five women and two men: Patricia Cumming, Marjorie Fletcher, Jean Pedrick, Lee Rudolph, Ron Schreiber, Betsy Sholl and Cornelia Veenendaal. Their objectives were to give women access to publishing and to involve authors in the publishing process. The press remains true to that mission and to publishing a diversity of poets including both beginning and established poets, and a diversity of poetic styles. The press is named for Alice James—the sister of novelist Henry James and philosopher William James—whose fine journal and gift for writing were unrecognized during her lifetime. Since 1994, the press has been affiliated with the University of Maine at Farmington. The press educates up to 14 interns per year through individual writing apprenticeships. Alice James Books also serves to train and advise the on-campus, bi-annual literary journal, The Sandy River Review. Alice James Books is one of the original and few presses in the country that is run collectively. Our cooperative selects manuscripts for publication through both regional and national annual competitions. The cooperative offers two book competitions a year: the Kinereth Gensler Award and the Beatrice Hawley Award. The winners of the Kinereth Gensler Award competition become active members of Alice James Books and act as the editorial board after their manuscripts are selected for publication. The winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award is exempt from the cooperative work commitment. Alice James Books recently established two new book series: the AJB Translation Series and The Kundiman Poetry Prize. The press partners with Kundiman, a nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion and preservation on Asian American poetry, to present The Kundiman Poetry Prize, a book-length manuscript competition open to all Asian American poets with any number of published books. The inaugural competition took place in 2010.

Peter Allison is a safari guide who has spent much of the last twelve years leading wildlife-viewing and ecotourism trips in Africa, mostly Botswana. His love of animals led him to train as a safari guide in the early 1990s and soon thereafter he was hired by southern Africa’s largest operator to train all of their safari experts. Safaris he has led have been featured in magazines such as Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler. He has assisted National Geographic photographers and appeared on television shows such as Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. Peter is also active with the Athena Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group. He is on the board of the Athena Foundation’s youth program, whose mission is to inspire young people to develop their interest in conservation. Originally born and raised in Sydney, Australia, he currently divides his time between Australia, California, and Botswana.

You cannot be a modern association without a contemporary board.

Local power is also the realm of the small nonprofit, church, and civic association. A handful of people, properly organized, can drive enormous changes in a city’s dynamics. I’ll offer yet another example from Portland, Oregon. A group of water-conservation enthusiasts, frustrated at the illegal status of graywater reuse in the city and state, formed an organization called Recode. Although many in the group were young, among them they had built solid relationships with a number of local officials, business leaders, and other key people in the politics of the area. Recode pooled their respective connections to gather together relevant stakeholders, such as health officials, state legislature staff, the plumbing board, and developers. To the surprise of all, everyone at the meeting supported graywater use. So, everyone wondered, what was up? A state legislature staffer in attendance zeroed in on the main obstacle: There was no provision in the state codes for graywater. Legally, all of Oregon’s water fell into one of two categories, potable water or sewage. Since graywater was not potable, it had to be considered sewage. The staffer told them, “So, all we need to do is create a third water category, graywater.” They drafted a resolution doing that, got it to their state representative, and it passed at the next legislative session. After three subsequent years of bureaucratic wrangling and gentle pressure from Recode, graywater use became legal in Oregon. Recode then tackled urban composting toilets as their next target for legalization.

In addressing a subcommittee of the National Science Board (it oversees the National Science Foundation) charged with reviewing “transformational” science, he remarked: My colleagues and I have studied approximately 175 research organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, and in many respects the Santa Fe Institute is the ideal type of organization which facilitates creative thinking. And here’s a quote from Wired magazine: Since its founding in 1984, the nonprofit research center has united top minds from diverse fields to study cellular biology, computer networks, and other systems that underlie our lives. The patterns they’ve discovered have illuminated some of the most pressing issues of our time and, along the way, served as the basis for what’s now called the science of complexity. The institute was originally conceived by a small group of distinguished scientists, including several Nobel laureates, most of whom had some association with Los Alamos National Laboratory. They were concerned that the academic landscape had become so dominated by disciplinary stovepiping and specialization that many of the big questions, and especially those that transcend disciplines or were perhaps of a societal nature, were being ignored. The reward system for obtaining an academic position, for gaining promotion or tenure, for securing grants from federal agencies or private foundations, and even for being elected to a national academy, was becoming more and more tied to demonstrating that you were the expert in some tiny corner of some narrow subdiscipline. The freedom to think or speculate about some of the bigger questions and broader issues, to take a risk or be a maverick, was not a luxury many could afford. It was not just “publish or perish,” but increasingly it was also becoming “bring in the big bucks or perish.

Business Plan Samples This sample business plan is intended to provide you with a template that can be used as a reference for when you’re hard at work on your plan. It's always easier to write something if you can read an example first, so here's an executive summary example that you can use as a model for your own business plan's executive summary. The Executive Summary is where you explain the general idea behind your company; it’s where you give the reader (most likely an investor, or someone else you need on board) a clear indication of why you’ve sent this Business Plan to them. In the Business Plan section, you will want to get the reader’s attention by letting them know what you do. It’s vitality important to set up a strong foundation and a thorough business plan in the beginning. Nonprofit business plans have several different features and quirks that you’ll need to include to receive funding and having a strong passion to help your community is only a fragment of what it takes to run a not-for-profit organization.

I wanted to help rescue this species from endangerment by learning about the elephants’ intricate social structure, increasing worldwide attention to this species through my research and scientific advancements in knowledge. However, when the scientific papers that I had spent years writing finally came out, there was little reaction. I felt proud of my scientific accomplishments but was sad that I wasn’t doing more for the species that I cared about so much. The following year after I graduated, a new paper by one of my colleagues in Gabon found that between 2002-2011, the duration of my Ph.D. plus a few years, over 60% of the entire forest elephant population declined due to poaching[5]. The poaching was almost exclusively driven by the consumption of their tusks as sources for carving statues, jewelry, and other decorative objects. The true conservation issue had nothing to do with studying the elephants themselves. What was the point of studying a species if it might not exist in a few decades?  If I really wanted to help forest elephants, I should have been studying the people, the consumers who were purchasing ivory to determine if there were ways to change attitudes towards ivory and purchasing behavior. Yes, having rangers on the ground to protect parks and elephants is important, but if there is no decrease in demand, it will constantly be an uphill battle. All of the solutions to the conservation problems of forest elephants are social, political, and economic first.  If you are interested in pursuing wildlife biology as a career for conservation purposes (like I was) or because you love animals (also me), you might be better suited in another career if research is not your thing but can still work for a conservation organization. Nonprofits need lawyers, financial planners, fundraising experts, and marketing executives to name a few. When I perused the job boards of nonprofit organizations, I was surprised by how few research positions there were. There were far more in fundraising, marketing, and development. Even if you don’t work directly for conservation, honestly, you can still make a difference and help conservation efforts in other ways outside of your career. A lot of conservation is really about investing in programs and habitat, so species stay protected. For example, if you can purchase and/or donate money to organizations that buy large areas of land, this land can be set aside for wildlife conservation. The biggest threat to wildlife is habitat loss and simply buying more land, keeping it undeveloped, and/or restoring it for species to live on, is one of the major means to solve the biodiversity crisis.

Many leaders still regard the private sector with skepticism—an attitude inherited from the old “New Left.” They fear that they might lose focus or be co-opted if they partner with corporations. Some nonprofits play a corporate watchdog role and protest the excesses of capitalism and globalization—often for good reason. And a recent spate of corporate scandals hasn’t helped improve the image of business. “Among many nonprofits, there is a view that business is the enemy,” says Mike McCurry, who is on the board of Share Our Strength. On the other side of this debate, more pragmatic members of the social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility movements have long touted the benefits of cross-sector partnerships and of harnessing market forces for social change. They argue that companies’ bottom lines can benefit from social responsibility, while nonprofits

Nicole Parsons graduated with honors from Memorial University of Newfoundland with a Bachelor of Commerce. She was formerly a member of the Training & Qualifications Committee with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), and she is currently the Board Director at Choices for Youth, an organization with nonprofit status which addresses the needs of at-risk youth in the region. She enjoys family time and travels with her spouse, Francois.

homeless woman who rejected care for two and a half years by screaming at the outreach team when they approached was finally committed for involuntary treatment when she became threatening. Three years later, O’Connell saw her at a board meeting of a nonprofit organization. Finding her totally transformed, O’Connell remarked, “You look fabulous.” Her response, “Screw you. You left me out there for all those years and didn’t help.

A homeless woman who rejected care for two and a half years by screaming at the outreach team when they approached was finally committed for involuntary treatment when she became threatening. Three years later, O’Connell saw her at a board meeting of a nonprofit organization. Finding her totally transformed, O’Connell remarked, “You look fabulous.” Her response, “Screw you. You left me out there for all those years and didn’t help.

Autism Speaks organization. For the nonprofit’s first ten years, none of its board members were openly autistic, and at the same time, many autistic people vocalized that they did not want to be cured. Similarly, in 2009, the organization put out an ad directed by Academy Award–winning director Alfonso Cuarón titled “I Am Autism,” which depicted autism as a menacing force. “I know where you live and guess what? I live there too,” the voice-over said, adding that it worked faster than deadly diseases like pediatric AIDS, cancer, and diabetes combined. “And if you are happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails,” the voice went on, pledging to bankrupt families (there is some irony, of course, that a millionaire executive’s charity would put out such an ad). The ad ultimately faced massive pushback, and it was removed from its website.

Nicole Parsons is Board Director for the nonprofit, Choices for Youth. The organization works with at-risk youth throughout Labrador and Newfoundland. She joined Nalcor Energy in 2016 and built a career of more than two decades as a human resource specialist. Nicole lends her voice to advocacy efforts supporting women in leadership and gender equality. She leads through strong ethics and a mind for environments free of harassment.

Lui started a nonprofit organization called Unify Carmel, which was among the first groups in the country to bring up to their school boards that shockingly explicit books were in their school libraries. After discovering the books, Lui says, “We read the sexually explicit and gender-propaganda books during open comments at a school board meeting.

Racial inequity and injustice, and gender inequity, are systemic problems that impede businesses from achieving their greater potential in the global marketplace; in the meantime, society suffers as well. Readers will learn how companies and their boards, together with nonprofits and governments, can drive prosperity by centering equity and sustainability.

More than two-thirds of the country’s hospitals are not-for-profit, and IRS rules state that nonprofit CEOs should receive only “reasonable compensation,” which it advises should be determined in part by considering salaries at similar organizations. But, as also occurs in the corporate world, the CEO typically picks the compensation consultant and controls who is on the board.

—DON M. GREEN is Executive Director of the nonprofit Napoleon Hill Foundation, a position he has held for fourteen years. Don is a board member of The University of Virginia/Wise and president of the University of Virginia/Wise Foundation Board. Prior to his position with the Napoleon Hill Foundation, he was a bank

the James Madison Center for Free Speech, of which Betsy DeVos became a founding board member in 1997. The nonprofit organization’s sole goal was to end all legal restrictions on money in politics. Its honorary chairman was Senator Mitch McConnell, a savvy and prodigious fund-raiser.

Back in 2012, the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation along with Consumer Reports, a highly regarded independent, nonprofit consumer organization, introduced Choosing Wisely,68–77 an initiative to reduce unnecessary medical tests and cut costs. When Choosing Wisely was first announced, nine medical professional organizations published their lists of five tests and procedures that they deemed were unnecessary. Of these forty-five recommendations for unneeded tests, twenty-five (56 percent) were related

Once I started working with nonprofits, I noticed that none of them ever sent line-item budgets out. They would produce one for the board to use and for internal accounting purposes, but they never—and I mean never—mailed it to all their donors. I asked why and got a simple answer, “It is not helpful and it is not necessary. Our donors cannot tell who we are and what we do by a line-item budget. We produce a lot of material detailing what we are doing in accomplishing our mission and what it costs, but not by using a line-item budget. It doesn’t tell anyone how we are changing lives.

In the early twentieth century, when John D. Rockefeller was petitioning Congress for a charter to create the first foundation, a top nonprofit leader of that time, Edward Devine, argued the charter should only be granted if public officials had some say over the selection of board members. The idea never went anywhere and has rarely been raised since. Foundations answer only to themselves.

As a result, a core competency of today’s nonprofit leader is the ability to build trusting relationships. Leaders who can bring out the best in others and make people feel their voices, concerns and actions matter are most likely to build successful organizations.

I know from personal experience and the vast amount of available research on emotional intelligence that people who can understand and manage their own and others’ emotions make better leaders. Leaders who possess a high level of emotional intelligence recognize and regulate their behavior, embrace open communication and show a greater ability to adapt to different work situations. They are also able to express empathy for others and collaborate more effectively with their executive team members and their boards.

An organization’s success often rests on a shared sense of passion and on a collective pursuit of excellence at every level of the organization.

Knowing and understanding your organization’s purpose is essential to making important organizational decisions. It’s also a fundamental tool to use when asking for money, recruiting additional board members, hiring and motivating staff, and publicizing your activities. Also, remember that your governing board’s input in developing the mission statement is not an option. Buy-in begins with inclusion!