Library
Click on categories below (document tags) to call up all documents in that category (number of documents is given in parentheses), or enter in Tag box. Type in a keyword below to find documents by a word in their title or description.
In addition to the resources in the Library, Valley Nonprofit Resources’ website has available publications that can be downloaded for free from its past projects – the MENDing Poverty conference series, Raising the Bar Project, Latino Multifamily Group Program, and Latino Multifamily Groups for Type II Diabetes Project.
A Board Member Crosses the Line
Presents a case of inappropriate and potentially destructive behavior by a board member and suggestions for how the situation can be dealt with effectively.
A Board Member’s Guide to Nonprofit Overhead
Amid the crosstalk about nonprofit overhead, board members and staff do need to understand what the conversation is really about, and how to interpret "what is overhead" for its own organization. This article presents eight key things boards and staff should know about overhead.
A Few Good Tools: Board Portals and Other Ways to Collaborate
Collaboration is integral to the work done by foundations and nonprofits. This is especially true for boards of directors tasked with working together to guide organizations — but when board members and staff are spread across multiple offices or geographic locations, collaboration is not as easy as sitting around a conference room table. Whether voting on proposed budgets, preparing financial documents or recommendations for upcoming meetings, or evaluating pending grant proposals, sharing do
A Roadmap to Better Boards
Is an article written by Kate Hayes for Stanford Social Innovation Review. The article offers advice for creating a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable board through decision-making, infrastructure, and inclusion.
All Aboard: Boards that Work
Building off the 2014 Money for Our Movements debate, at the last Grassroots Institute’s Conference, in this piece Kim Klein and Stephanie Roth argue that nonprofit organizations can have the boards they want and need, and offer ideas for how to achieve them.
Best Practices for a More Impactful Nonprofit Board
Is an article written for Smart Business Online. The article shares basic steps for ensuring that nonprofits stay aligned with their mission and put themselves in a strong position for the future.
Board Essentials: What Should All Board Members Know?
Is a question and answer presentation that covers this topic. Included in the questions are: what should someone know before joining the board, how to keep board members informed, what are the individual responsibilities of board members and how to safeguard against conflict of interest?
Boards and Leadership Hires: How to Get It Right
How a board handles a leadership transition can have powerful and long-lasting effects. In this article, Deborah Linnell discusses how a board's handling of this pivotal moment can result in long-lasting problems and what a board can do to get it right.
Boards Cannot Be Sacred, Staff Cannot be Saints, and Founders Should Never Be Martyrs
In this essay, Paul Hogan states his belief that nonprofit workers can be prone to a variety of feelings connected with the sacrifices that people in the sector make, and examines how nonprofit organizations can balance these feelings with being open to learning.
Bridging the Generation Gap: Why Your Organization Should have an Associate Board (and How to Start One)
Nonprofits are missing an opportunity to engage with the next generation of donors. The author argues that while Gen Z make up over half the U.S. population, they account for only 16% of total charitable giving. The upcoming generation is largely an untapped group of donors and volunteers. Associate Boards are an innovative approach to attracting young professionals to your nonprofit. This article presents four steps to getting started.
Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Nonprofit Boards
Is an article written by Matthew Forti for Stanford Social Innovation Review. In the article, Forti shares advice for helping a board to evolve alongside an organization's changing needs and opportunities.
Conflict of Interest...or Conflict of Loyalty?
Often the "conflicts of interest" of nonprofit board members do not involve personal financial gain. Consider the board member whose commitment to rights for people with disabilities leads her to serve on the boards of two such organizations. At Board A she hears about a new grant opportunity that is opening up at a local foundation. Should she tell Board B about it, or is she obligated not to mention i?
Developing Leadership on Boards of Directors
By Barbara S. Miller and Jean Bergman is an article from the Journal of Nonprofit Management, published by the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, New York. It summarizes the results of a study of fifteen exemplary nonprofits, and provides insights into how boards can create a culture of leadership and transform themselves into an active, engaged, and knowledgeable team. These changes can help a nonprofit organization anticipate and respond to the myriad challenges in the sector today.
Ditch Your Board Composition Matrix
The board matrix has a list of skills and competencies that are "supposed" to be on the board, such as legal, marketing, HR, fundraising and finance. And typically there are also demographic qualities, such as gender, race and age. The board matrix then shows what boxes presumably need to be filled. What's wrong here is that these board composition matrices focus our attention on what people are, rather than on what the organization needs board members to do. This article explains why this appro
DIY: Make a Bylaws Cheat Sheet
It's cumbersome to have to look over all the legalese of bylaws when an organization wants to answer to a simple question. In this article, Jan Masaoka suggests creating a summary of the bylaws as a quick reference guide