Great Boards for Small Groups: A 1-Hour Guide to Governing a Growing Nonprofit

Propel Your Board from Good to Great! Yours is a good board, but you want it to be better. You want clearly defined objectives … Meetings with more focus … Broader participation in fundraising … And more follow-through between meetings.You want these and a dozen other tangibles and intangibles that will propel your board from good to great.Say hello to your guide, Andy Robinson, who has a real knack for offering "forehead-slapping" solutions "Of course! Why haven't we been doing this?" Take what he calls the "Fundraising Menu." Here, board members are asked to generate a list of all the ways (direct and indirect) they could assist in fundraising. The list is prioritized and then used to help each trustee prepare a personalized fundraising agreement that meets his or her specific needs, interests, and limitations.Simple, right? Yet the Fundraising Menu is the closest thing you'll find to guaranteeing a board's commitment to raising money.In a number of "How to Fix It" chapters, Robinson also homes in on specific problems, such as poorly attended meetings, spotty follow-through on commitments, inactive board members, narrow consensus, conflicts of interest, weak agendas, and much more. And Robinson doesn t offer up easy nostrums. Quite the opposite. Over the past 20 years, as a board member, a volunteer, and a consultant, he s put into practice what he preaches and stands unshakably behind his fog-burning advice.