By: Barbara Floersch
Your organization’s board of directors may be affable, effective, challenging, or down-right difficult. But love it or not, the board has a role to play in grants administration. The board’s responsibility to oversee the financial and legal operations of your nonprofit place it at the epicenter of post-award management, but the board also has a role on the pre-award side. Here are some typical ways that boards participate in securing grants.
CLASSIC ARTICLES - Your agency submits a grant proposal to a longtime funder and the program officer responds with high praise. There's just one hitch-she also wants you to redefine your mission. What's a board to do? Three experts offer their own advice.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - Every group has a mission, but how do you distill that mission down to a single, concise paragraph? Communications expert Janel M. Radtke has some answers. She also gives several illustrations of mission statements that work.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - Recruiting good board members is a persistent challenge for community-based organizations. Grantsmanship Center trainer Judy Gooch suggests a dozen places to start looking for prospective members.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - Board conflicts can present some of the most formidable challenges that a nonprofit manager must face. They generally come in two forms--conflict between members of the board and conflict between board and staff.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - Both volunteer board members and paid employees typically feel a strong emotional attachment to the nonprofits they serve, leading them to see merger as more of a threat than an opportunity. Management consultant Dan H.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - In order to improve their finances, services, or pursuit of mission, nonprofits may be tempted to merge with other, similar organizations. But the road to merger can be difficult-even dangerous.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - In the wake of recent corporate scandals, Congress has imposed strict new standards for the governing boards of public companies.
