The Nonprofit Boards Role

Nonprofit boards play an important part in the success of your business. They are responsible for overseeing finances, ensuring that nonprofits have enough resources to reach their goals and ensuring that they are operating within legal regulations. They also play an important role in fundraising. Board members also have a fiduciary responsibility to treat the assets of the nonprofit as if they were their own. They are not allowed to make decisions for personal gain or to benefit the organization.

Nonprofits should search for board members with the following characteristics:

Passion: Board members must be passionate about your nonprofit’s mission and share the desire to act. If your board isn’t possessed of this it will struggle to be productive.

In order to be successful the nonprofit organization requires the dedication of its staff and volunteers. Your board should be prepared to invest time and money as well as energy.

Skills: A competent board of directors will have abilities in areas such as governance as well as strategic planning and oversight of directory the organization. It should also be able find talent and recruit the needed people for leadership positions.

All members of a nonprofit must adhere to a conflict-of interest policy. Failure to adhere to the policy could result in penalties from the IRS and state-level “Sunshine Laws.” This is a very important matter, and it’s why many nonprofits require their board members to sign conflict of interest agreements.