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Someone the other day said to me, “I’ve served on advisory and regular boards, and I’m familiar with both.” But as she continued, I realized the difference between the two was muddled in her mind. It occurred to me this might be a common predicament since, well, a board is aboard is a board, or so it may seem…

In fact, there are different types of boards with different functions and compositions. Understanding the differences is the first step to knowing whether a given nonprofit should have a particular board or not.

The advisory board’s role and function are distinct from the governing (a.k.a skype for pc for free. “regular”) board. Simply put, the advisory board’s role is, as its name implies, to advise; where the advisory board advises, the governing board decides. So, while advisory boards are a particularly useful entity in the nonprofit world, they are optional. The governing board, of course, is not.

If your nonprofit is considering an advisory board, here are some useful questions to address:

1) Should our nonprofit have one? Is our organization sufficiently stable and mature to manage both the governing board and an advisory board?

2) If so, what is the specific role an advisory board should play in our particular nonprofit–what exactly do we need advice on teamviewer 12 chip?

3) How should the advisory board operate and with what expectations?

4) And conversely, what should advisory board members expect from the nonprofit in return?

5) Finally, who should be on it and for how long?

Following is some guidance to aid in addressing each of these questions.

First, should your nonprofit have an advisory board?

In theory, there isn’t a nonprofit that wouldn’t benefit from an advisory board treiber der netzwerkkarte herunterladen. All organizations need good advice and a great cadre of people from whom to get it when needed. Sounds simple enough.

However, it should go without saying that a nonprofit’s governing board is its first priority. If there’s any doubt about the nonprofit’s ability to develop and consistently maintain a great governing board, it certainly is not time for an advisory board.

That said, even if the nonprofit’s position is stable enough to consider an advisory board, there is another aspect to the advisory board’s role that adds to the complexity of what looks like a simple question youtube videos nur ton herunterladen. That aspect is credibility.

A good advisory board is made up of people who are well-known and are recognized experts in some aspect of the nonprofit’s work. For example, a world-renowned conductor or musician would make an excellent advisory board member of a symphony or opera company. In this way, advisory board members not only offer great advice, resources and connections, they also add to the nonprofit’s credibility–-they help demonstrate by lending their name to the nonprofit’s website, letterhead, etc. that the organization is itself savvy and connected.

Nonprofit-Know How by Rebecca Reynolds

The individuals who are ideal candidates for advisory boards are hopefully influential, in demand and therefore, busy download images from website. Because of this, advisory boards place an additional and in some ways, heightened demand on the nonprofit’s time and attention that the nonprofit must be able to meet for the advisory board to be effective. Not only will the nonprofit need to have connections in the arenas where this caliber of individual is found, it will also need the experience to successfully interact with these individuals.

All advisory board members don’t have to be CEOs of major corporations, senators or international celebrities, although names like this do help, but to be on an advisory board the individual should have the credentials and position to be of real benefit as both an advisor and credibility enhancer to the nonprofit norton 360 premium herunterladen.

Therefore, the nonprofit will need a certain maturity to ensure the advisory board serves its purpose. Small nonprofits or startups may not yet be in the position to structure, populate and interact with a board of advisors in addition to its governing board. Recognizing this upfront is the first step to developing such readiness. Once this readiness is in sight, it’s time to move to question two.

What is the specific role an advisory board should play in our particular nonprofit?

The most important thing a nonprofit can do to ensure the success of its advisory board is define the role and expectations in advance of inviting individuals to join it microsoft word fehler beim herunterladen der vorlage. This is important for several reasons: First, all groups being formed on behalf of the organization function more effectively if expectations are clear from the outset. And second, without clear expectations, potential advisory members will either be unclear and unimpressed or worst case, may take it upon themselves to assume a role that is inappropriate for the nonprofit. And finally, since the advisory board differs substantially from the governing board, it is especially important to make the role and function of this new body clear to the entire organization herunterladen.

The best way to do this is to officially charter the group. The charter is the document that outlines roles, responsibilities and expectations. Don’t let the idea of a “charter” overwhelm you: It’s basically a job description for a group. There are plenty of samples to be found on the Internet, but your organization can always create a simple charter based on your job description format.

When developing the charter, describe the role of the advisory board (to advise on matters such as…), its function (why it’s needed, what benefits the nonprofit will derive from it) and the expectations of it Watchmmelgames for free download full version. In determining what exactly your nonprofit needs advice on, remember to think big. Look for strategic areas the nonprofit is planning to develop that it may not currently have expertise on, such as facility expansion or a new geographical service market. After all, the advisory board is made up of people with substantial experience and contacts, people ideal to help the organization reach its next level of greatness!

This is Part I of a two-part article on advisory boards. Next time we’ll cover questions three through five: the expectations of advisory board members, including if they should meet and make financial contributions apps downloaden und geld verdienen. We’ll also discuss what advisory board members should expect from the nonprofit and more.

We are interviewing authors of intriguing leadership and nonprofit texts to showcase more recommendations and best practices. Join us for our conversation with Rebecca Reynolds, author of “Nonprofit-KnowHow,” which was nominated for the 2012 Terry McAdam Book Award. Whether you’re a seasoned executive director or a new board member, you can benefit from Rebecca Reynolds’ Guide and Workbook, “Nonprofit-KnowHow.”

After 20 years of consulting experience in the sector, Reynolds decided to publish helpful information (the Guide) and tools (the Workbook) she had used to assist nonprofits to further their missions. This comprehensive two-volume manual integrates the theory and practice of nonprofit management subjects such as board governance, strategic planning, finance and fundraising shein herunterladen. All her materials have been tested with hundreds of nonprofit organizations and can be referenced again and again.

Podcast: Listen to Reynolds discuss her invaluable resource, “Nonprofit-KnowHow,” in her own words here.

Transcription:

KR: Welcome to CausePlanet’s book preview series. I’m Kris Rutledge. I’m talking today with Rebecca Reynolds, author of Nonprofit-KnowHow. She is going to discuss her guide and workbook. Rebecca, thanks so much for joining us keine videos von youtubeen.

RR: Thank you, Kris.

KR: Could you start off by giving us an overview of Nonprofit-Knowhow?

RR: I’d be happy to. I began my 20-year consulting career working exclusively with nonprofits and I worked with hundreds of organizations of all sizes and missions. But, over the past five years or so, my work has taken a different direction. It really bothered me that all that material I had developed over years of consulting that had been so effective with my clients was just sitting there gathering digital dust Music download iphone 5s. So, at the beginning of 2012 I decided to sit down and put it all together in an easy-to-use format to give broad access to this knowledge for nonprofits. So, Nonprofit-Knowhow is actually a comprehensive, direct and hopefully easy-to-use manual for effective leadership and management of nonprofit organizations. There are two parts to Nonprofit-Knowhow: the Guide and the Workbook. The Guide explains the important concepts and practices of the nonprofit sector that are often unknown or misunderstood herunterladen. This know-how I’ve found makes the difference between a struggling nonprofit and a high-functioning one. The Workbook, on the other hand, is the action tool of the duo. Once the concepts and practices are clear, the next step is implementing. So the Workbook includes tools to make that implementation easy. For example, it has samples of other clients’ work to show exactly how something is done, like to develop a budget or to prepare a fundraising report. There are templates that people can fill in the blanks and go. There are exercises on how to do something like determine what contribution level board members should give herunterladen. There are checklists, glossaries, diagrams, all kinds of material that I used and created to support my nonprofit clients over the years. So, it’s been well road-tested. The format of Nonprofit-KnowHow is eight chapters: four on key leadership capabilities like board leadership and development, strategic business planning, and finance and four chapters on fundraising, covering basics like Fundraising 101 and grant writing to more sophisticated skills like asking for money and capital campaigns.

KR: Thanks so much. So what would you say is unique about Nonprofit-Knowhow?

RR: First, most books written in the nonprofit sector, like most business books, treat one topic, such as board development or assessment or grant writing herunterladen. When I was consulting with nonprofits, I found that it was often my ability to help clients see the connections between activities like strategic planning and board development and grant writing that really gained the client a quantum leap in their thinking and approaches. In fact, clients would hire me for one thing and soon we’d move into other areas that came up as a result. It was that agility and breadth of understanding that I developed in my own career in nonprofits as an intern, grant writer, development and marketing directors, and then as an executive director that I realized made an organization go from “good to great,” to use Jim Collins’ phrase. I wanted to share this integrated knowledge with many more organizations than I was able to do one at a time. Also, because I’m no longer consulting with nonprofits, I was free to include all my methods and templates and so on that I wouldn’t have when I was consulting because I was still using that material to earn my living ad blocker chrome kostenlos herunterladen. It was an incredible luxury for me to be able to do that.

KR: Wow, that sounds great. How would you suggest using the Guide and the Workbook together?

RR: How people use the Guide and the Workbook I think depends on their experience level in the nonprofit sector. For example, a seasoned executive director would use Nonprofit-Knowhow more as a reference tool, so the Guide they could look up in the index something and just get a check on how to do something or just sort of ground themselves with maybe even an idea about that. But they would also use the Workbook as a place to get templates for things that that executive director already knows they need, such as personnel policies kinder musik zumen. All experienced executive directors know that those are important so they wouldn’t necessarily need the explanation for that provided in the Guide but the sample personnel policies in the Workbook could save that same executive director a lot of time. On the other hand, a new board member would find the Guide a really important teaching tool, and an ED could use it to help orient and explain many important issues that are specific to the nonprofits. For example, why is fundraising an important asset to the nonprofit rather than a burden or an encumbrance, which many for-profit board members coming across to serve really don’t understand alte treiber downloaden.

KR: Thank you so much for giving us this preview. How can we get Nonprofit-Knowhow and follow you?

RR: Nonprofit-Knowhow is available on the Nonprofit-Knowhow website. There I also a lot of other material to support nonprofits on the site, including our blog, Nonprofit Navigator, where we feature guest bloggers as well. Nonprofit-Knowhow is available on Amazon, too. We have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page and our Twitter handle is @NPOKnowHow. We love connecting with new nonprofits and others supporting the important work they do, so we hope that people will check us out sub-lease for.

KR: Rebecca, this has been a great insight into your materials. For more on Rebecca Reynolds and related topics, visit us at www.causeplanet.org. Thanks again.

Delegation is necessary, but…

Nonprofit organizations, like any group working together for a common purpose, carve out certain activities in order to delegate them. For example, the board works on strategic planning, the development staff works on grant writing, the accountant sets up and monitors the financials and so on herunterladen von ard mediathek. This makes good sense–certainly everyone can’t (and shouldn’t) be involved with everything. That’s obvious.

What isn’t always as obvious, though, is when and how these activities should be brought back together.

Connections=success

In consulting with a wide range of nonprofits, I’ve found it’s often my client’s ability to see the connections between activities such as strategic planning, board development and grant writing that really gain the client a quantum leap in his/her thinking and approaches welche serien kann man bei netflix herunterladen. So, while delineation and delegation of work activity is key to getting things done, if the results of those activities are not reconnected for the benefit of the whole, the organization suffers.

Example of siloing

For example, in many organizations, development people write grants for funding from major foundations klingelton von herunterladen. Since foundations ask crucial management questions, effective grant proposals express the nonprofit’s strategic approach to its mission and to the particular funding request. But even so, few if any board members–or in many cases, even executive directors–ever read the proposals. Nor in many cases did the grant writers have access to the organization’s strategic plan as the foundation for writing the proposals pet world kostenlos herunterladen. This disconnect between two primary activities in the organization means a weaker, less effective grant proposal and a weaker, less-informed board.

And this is just one example of how the siloing of basic activities in a nonprofit can hinder its overall success.

How do you prevent silos?

What can be done about this? The most effective leaders think through what types of reintegration make the most sense and then develop the mechanisms in their organizations through which they will occur herunterladen. For example, good budget development requires the information provided by past years’ financial statements and input from the key staff responsible for earned and contributed income. The leadership should develop policies and procedures to ensure cross-pollination between responsible board and staff members takes place in budget development as a matter of routine, rather than expecting (or assuming) it to happen as the result of the initiative of those involved snapchat kostenlos android.

In another example, fundraising and marketing campaigns should originate with the strategic plan, but too often these efforts are developed in isolation. This could be the result of the organization not having a strategic plan (or it being out-of-date) or it could be that the leadership has not made it clear these efforts must synchronize with each other herunterladen. To address this, the leadership could pass a policy that all development and marketing materials must reflect the priorities and language of the organization’s strategic plan and then create procedures whereby the board  collectively reviews marketing and fundraising materials, e.g., the basic grant proposal template, on an annual basis. Not only would this ensure there is a strategic plan, the development staff has access to it, and the intersection of these efforts actually takes place, but also board members are up-to-date on what is being communicated about the organization microsoft office 2019 professional download for free.

This may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how often nonprofits struggle to delegate activities effectively and once this is accomplished, consider that the end of the matter. Or they chalk it up to a communication issue and assume the responsible individuals will take care of it. In fact, it is in the bringing of these delegated activities back together by the leadership that the real benefits are realized programm mac youtube videosen. This is because, simply, everything is connected to and impacts everything else in an organization. A culture that values and nurtures this synergy is what makes for a balanced,resilient, innovative organization–instead of a siloed, reactionary and defensive one.

Integration means going from “good to great”

The more the leadership of a nonprofit is fluent with the intersection between areas of major activity, the better able it will be to lead videos in edgeen. This agility and breadth of understanding across the organization enables an organization to go from “good to great,” to use Jim Collins’ phrase. While specialized expertise in areas like development, planning, marketing, technology and finance is critical in today’s world, it is the leadership’s ability to integrate them-to see what is greater than the sum of their parts-that gets big results.

Nonprofit-KnowHow: The Guide and The Workbook supports nonprofit leaders in reintegrating often siloed activities such as strategic planning, fundraising, board development, finance and more, for greater resilience and impact.

See also:

Picking up where we left off with advisory boards, we’ll continue our discussion of what the nonprofit needs to consider before bringing on any members. To reiterate, all the decisions the nonprofit makes with regard to the role and function of an advisory board should be concisely articulated in the chartering document. The charter creates internal clarity and also serves to inform the prospective advisory board members when the time comes to recruit. As always, setting expectations from the outset makes for a good match between board member (no matter what type of board) and the nonprofit herunterladen.

Let’s move on to question #3 in our list (see Part I for the list) of questions nonprofits should address prior to starting an advisory board:

How should the advisory board operate and with what expectations?

First, a key issue to define is if the advisory board will meet. Depending on the type of people on the advisory board and where they’re located, meetings may not be indicated. For example, a symphony that has international musicians and conductors on its advisory board is unlikely to require meetings. However, if your nonprofit is starting out and has local bank presidents, government representatives and CEOs from peer organizations on its advisory board, then a meeting or two per year may be useful and even welcomed by the members einfaches bildbearbeitungsprogramm kostenlos downloaden. But remember, the primary function of an advisory board is to advise–-this can be done with a simple phone call or brief one-on-one meeting now and then.

Next is the question of contributions: Should advisory boards be expected to make them? While this is a decision for the particular nonprofit, it’s generally a good assumption that if a potential advisory board member is willing and able to give a major contribution then s/he probably should be considered for the governing board. This is because the nonprofit wants individuals on the governing board who are highly committed and able to lead in raising money, qualities that can result in major contributions gratis downloaden series. So in most cases, advisory board members are not expected to donate funds to the organization since what is wanted from them is their advice and stature, and a huge stake in the nonprofit is not necessary.

One case where a financial contribution may be merited is for advisory board members who have been outstanding board members, and the advisory board position is used as an honorary position. In such a case, the individual will likely continue his/her charitable giving and may set an example for other advisory board members. However, this practice is more of a blurring of advisory and honorary boards or emeritus positions, which may or may not be a beneficial strategy herunterladen.

In addition to defining what is expected of advisory board members, the nonprofit will also want to answer question #4:

What should advisory board members expect from the nonprofit in return?

Nonprofit-Know How by Rebecca Reynolds

In most cases, the limited nature of the advisory board role–-occasional advice and name endorsement–-usually results in minimal expectations on the part of advisory board members. That’s one distinct advantage of advisory boards.

However, since the advisory board member’s role is to give advice, the nonprofit should avail itself of this expertise periodically herunterladen. This may seem obvious, but remember that if the advisory board member is never called, the individual may forget about the relationship or even take offense at not being asked to fulfill the role. Conversely, if called too often, the individual may find the position an annoyance. (Calling too often is likely a sign that the nonprofit really needs that individual’s expertise on the governing board.) Finding the sweet spot of how often to contact advisory board members is up to the nonprofit, but a good rule of thumb is between one and four times per year.

Regarding the use of the advisory board member’s name and affiliation, it should go without saying there is no margin for error for the nonprofit in correctly spelling the name and labeling the affiliation title–-and keeping both up to date dirty dancing musik kostenlosen. Beyond this, communicating periodically with the advisory board members about the nonprofit’s efforts and achievements makes good sense.

Any other kindnesses and/or acknowledgments for advisory board members are at the discretion of the nonprofit and could require some creativity. It’s wise to carefully consider the type of individual desired and then develop a range of possible appropriate acknowledgements, just as is done for any donor. Some research into what other similar organizations are doing is always a good starting point.

Finally, question #5:

Who and how many should be on the advisory board and for how long games pc download activation key?

The nonprofit will want to develop a list of prospects. The primary criteria are:

mission and/or mission support expertise needed by the nonprofit and the willingness to advise

position and standing in the community and/or industry of the nonprofit

willingness to have his/her name used in the nonprofit’s marketing materials (letterhead/website, etc.)

accessible to supply expertise, advice and contacts as needed by the nonprofit

not suitable for the governing board (i.e., no interest, not enough time, not an appropriate match to other governing board members, etc.).

As to the number of advisory board members, this is also a matter of choice, but a good guideline is too few (less than five) may appear thin and not enough to constitute a board. (If the nonprofit has a few individuals who would make great advisory members, they can be recognized simply as special advisors, rather than a board.) winzip kostenlosen. Conversely, too many members (more than a dozen) may be difficult to keep track of and to find space for in marketing materials. However, some large institutions have advisory boards numbering many more, as well as a host of other special entities and groups, to create layers and breadth of organizational support. This is an excellent practice, as long as the nonprofit has the capacity to maintain each group and to be sufficiently clear about its role, purpose and function.

Terms are another issue the advisory board charter should address. Since advisory board members’ duties are fairly limited, the terms maybe indefinite herunterladen. This may best suit the nonprofit anyway since this type of individual is not easily replaced. Imagine if your organization was able to secure one of the leaders in its field as an advisory board member. Would the organization want that individual to rotate off? Likely not. So, as long as the person is willing and his/her name and position are in good standing, the nonprofit should have no reason to want to rotate him/her off the advisory board.

All told, advisory boards can be tremendous assets to nonprofits. One great contact can catapult the nonprofit ahead, and one piece of timely advice can save hours of trial and error acnl gifts download is not possible. However, like all boards, advisory boards are more valuable to nonprofits that have done the work up front to define and articulate roles and expectations. This time investment is entirely worthwhile since the long-term benefits of advice and credibility are incalculable.