Most of the time, nonprofit boards work through consensus. But what if you think a serious mistake is being made? Sometimes knowing what to do in advance if such a situation arises can help you understand the situation more clearly as it unfolds:

Have you ever been in a situation where the board has made a decision that you think is very wrong and will have severe negative consequences for the organization? Or where you think an important decision has been railroaded through?

As a board member myself and something of a contrarian, I've found myself in these circumstances from time to time over the years. For example, on the board of an organization with a sizable financial deficit, I found myself and one other board member losing a seventeen-to-two vote to take funds from the organization's endowment for current operating e

Ishikawa diagrams were proposed by Kaoru Ishikawa[1] in the 1960s, who pioneered quality management processes in the Kawasaki shipyards, and in the process became one of the founding fathers of modern management.

For analyzing processes.

There are two things to worry about with copyrights: protecting original material that your organization has created, and making sure that your organization isn't improperly using material that someone else owns. Blue Avocado asked copyright attorney Kate Spelman to help us with these issues, and she generously gave all of us her expertise and time.

Q: Should we be copyrighting things we publish in print, on our web site, in our music CD, and elsewhere? Is it enough to put a © (copyright symbol) on things?

Kate: It's a good idea to put the © symbol (a 'c' in a circle) on original materials, along with the year and the copyright owner. But a copyright can't be enforced unless the work has been registered. See the U.S. Copyright Office at  www.co

People in Partnership (PIP) is a network of Lamoille Valley coalitions, organizations and citizens who work collaboratively to create and support a thriving community. Our common purpose is to make improvements in outcomes of well-being for children, families and individuals through the development of strategies that engage diverse sectors of the community. Using results-based accountability as [...]

Waking Up the Board - Warning Signs of a Dysfunctional Organization

It's the phone call no board member wants or ever expects to get: word that the organization's executive director is being investigated by the police for embezzlement. In this First Person Nonprofit article, Vernon Waldren, board member of the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands in Omaha, Nebraska, talks candidly about how the story unfolded:

We got a call from someone at a different nonprofit letting us know that our executive director was probably going to be arrested for embezzlement at their organization, where he was on the board. Our [board] president got that call on a Monday morning, and she called a meeting of the executive committee at 5:00 that evening. What we learned was . . .

In Part 1 of this series on diversity, we discussed mission reasons, business reasons and other ways to think about diversity on nonprofit boards. In Part 2 we looked at diversity at the nonprofit sector level and the importance of organizations of color in the nonprofit ecosystem. Here in Part 3 we offer specific, practical tips for recruiting people "unlike ourselves" for nonprofit boards.

One of the maxims of looking for a job is that it's more effective to look for a particular kind of job (as a waitress or as a teacher in a preschool) than it is to look for "a job -- any job!" In the same way, knowing why you want to recruit someone of a different race, let's say, and knowing what you want that person to do, is more effective (and sincere) than "we just need a Latino."

In Part 1 of this serie