Cynthia Jarboe - A Guide to Nonprofit Board Success

Foreword by Timothy J. Sullivan

Copyright 2020 by Cynthia Jarboe

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2019025710

ISBN: 978-1-4408-7266-2 (print)

978-1-4408-7267-9 (ebook)

24 23 22 21 201 2 3 4 5

This book is also available as an eBook.

Praeger
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

ABC-CLIO, LLC

147 Castilian Drive

Santa Barbara, California 93117

www.abc-clio.com

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

This is a book well worth reading. When I reviewed the manuscript, its quality did not surprise. During my time as president of William & Mary, Cindy Jarboe and I worked together closely. She was one of the colleges ablest volunteer leaders. She never failed. She was conscientious, imaginative, and indefatigable. The intensity of her commitment inspired others.

This book deserves a wide audience for many reasons. Among them is the underappreciated importance of nonprofit organizations. Consider this: in one recent year the nonprofit sector contributed $878 billion to the national economy. That approximates 5.5% of our gross domestic product. Nearly 12 million people find employment in the nonprofit sector, more than 10% of the American workforce.

Nonprofits are not principally engines of economic growth. They touch every aspect of the cultural, educational, and moral life of the nation. Choose any American city or town. You will discover profound nonprofit influence everywhere: in the arts, education, the environment, health, and religion. Put simply, life without nonprofits is unimaginable.

What also makes this book special is the wide-angle analytic lens Cindy uses in shaping its content. Here the reader will discover informed advice on every aspect of nonprofit endeavors, from the essentials of volunteer recruitment to the basis of financial literacy and to the ABCs of event planning. Nothing important has been omitted.

Yet this book is much more than a well-considered how to manual. Cindy writes with real insight about leadership. She is a wise guide to what makes great leaders and how they may be trained and sustained. Her thinking is relevant to leaders and leadership in any context.

If the lessons this book tries to teach are taken to heart, the wide world of nonprofits will be better managed and led. This, in turn, will make nonprofits everywhere more effective servants of the great causes in aid of which they were founded.

Timothy J. Sullivan

Timothy J. Sullivan was the 25th president of the College of William & Mary from 1992 through 2005. After receiving his law degree from Harvard University, he was professor at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law where he became dean in 1985. He served for nearly three years as executive assistant for policy for then Virginia governor Charles S. Robb. He served as president and chief executive officer of The Mariners Museum from 2006 through 2009. He is active with numerous nonprofits and has been appointed to numerous commissions, task forces, and the Council of Presidents where he was chair of the governing board.

These days, it is busy people who step forward and agree to serve on nonprofit boards. Often when they join their first board or even subsequent boards, they do not know what they are getting themselves into. They do not have the time to read textbooks or the latest in-depth thinking on governance of nonprofits. They need a quick, easy read on the basics of what it means to join the board of a nonprofit. Additionally, officers of boards do not have the time to teach all the principles that they may have learned from decades of board service. Often board terms are limited to three to six years, and there are always new board members coming on. This book of basic principles can be read in a few hours but serve as a refresher and a reference for board members. Resources such as sample policies, forms, and checklists are provided for future reference.

Given the often-limited number of board meetings held and the amount of business that needs to be addressed, training is often nonexistent or limited to a couple of hours. New board members have to get up to speed quickly. This book answers many of the I wish I had known that when I first went on the board questions.

As the numbers of nonprofits continue to grow with the emphasis on social responsibility, the need for knowledgeable board members grows. This book, based on over 35 years of both serving on boards and providing financial and consulting services to boards and nonprofit organizations, is intended to meet the need to provide a basic understanding of what board members will have to understand to participate effectively.

At the same time, fraudulent and irresponsible nonprofits also continue to grow increasing the need for transparency; fiscal responsibility; and skilled, ethical board members. With the availability of data on nonprofits on the Internet, board members need to know how to represent their organizations well from day one in any setting. This book meets that need by discussing how information about a nonprofit organization is derived for publication on the Internet and the boards responsibility for accuracy and favorable portrayal.

Having consulted with and served on almost 100 nonprofit boards in my 36-year career, I have been asked often if there is an easy-to-read resource to help new board members get up to speed quickly. The topics covered in this book are the essential topics that apply to almost all boards. The organization of the book parallels a new board members experience from the first invitation to be nominated to the board, the first meeting, and then the topics the board member will have to address. Each chapter is organized with a light introduction sharing the current experience of the novice board member, a discussion of the concepts, and finally a section called Reality Check, which is a miniature case study or anecdote that reiterates many of the topics covered in the chapter.

This book is intended to easily assist new board members in understanding their roles and responsibilities starting with the decision on whether to join a board. It then covers what to expect in the first board meeting, including how a board member should prepare followed by board governance, including committee service and the relationship between the board and staff. Other topics covered are fund-raising, how to read nonprofit financial statements, understand investing, and the endowment model and the importance of strategic planning. Additional topics include event planning, technology, evaluation of boards and their members, and recruiting volunteers. After all the technical and best practices are covered, the final chapter addresses leadership skills and what history has shown the traits of good leaders are.