Ultimately, boards are accountability to the community they exist to serve.  If nonprofits act contrary to federal or state statutes, board members may find that they are accountable to regulatory agencies.  But for inaction, in effect incompetence, no regulations are perhaps violated.  Who is responsible, for example, if committees just aren’t meeting and not much policy , oversight or strategic thinking is produced by a  board? 

If an organization has the funding for professional staff, the board may feel justified in pointing fingers at the E.D., saying, “well, we are waiting for YOU to set up meetings.”  Are an organization’s stakeholders well served, if the board is passive or does only those things that paid management direct or request that they do?   Best practice approaches over the last couple of decades to point to a paradox in this regard.  Paid, professional staffing is encouraged and the “care and feeding” of the board is considered a high priority for top managers, certainly not to be left to chance.  However, boards are still considered to be the entity that has a direct obligation to the community regardless of the presence of paid staffing.

Ultimately, a board is responsible for whether it does all that is reasonable to provide adequate governance for an organization.  That responsibility includes selection and management of paid staff that can support improvement of board capacity and its ultimate production in service of the organization’s mission.

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3.22 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."