Joining a Nonprofit Board: What You Need to Know

Often business executives serve (or are asked to serve) as board members of nonprofit organizations. However, without a clear understanding of how nonprofits work, service on a board can be a frustrating experience.

Joining a Nonprofit Board offers an important guide to the roles and responsibilities of a nonprofit board member. Marc J. Epstein and F. Warren McFarlan provide a step-by-step guide to how board members can work with a nonprofit organization to achieve the organization’s overarching mission, attain financial sustainability, and develop and execute the systems needed to accomplish both.

Based on more than 10 years of research from Rice University and Harvard Business School and filled with illustrative examples, Joining a Nonprofit Board explores the basic structure of a nonprofit, explains how to build and monitor a nonprofit’s mission, and identifies how the board performs an effective assessment of a non-profit. The book also explores the challenges posed by the duality of leadership between the unpaid volunteer non-executive chairman of the board and the CEO.

Joining a Nonprofit Board includes a helpful explanation of a “board member’s life cycle.” The authors start with the decision to join a board and explain how to prepare for the first meeting. The book explores how to serve effectively the first two years and reveals what it takes to develop your ongoing role as a trustee. Finally the book describes how to transition off the board to other forms of service with the organization.

Joining a Nonprofit Board is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to take their experience in the business world and serve a nonprofit with passion and clarity.

Marc J. Epstein is Distinguished Research Professor of Management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is considered one of the global experts in the areas of sustainability, governance, performance measurement, and accountability in both corporations and nonprofit organizations.

F. Warren McFarlan is Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus and former senior associate dean of the Harvard Business School. He has served for over thirty years on both corporate and nonprofit boards and has written a number of articles and cases in the area of Social Enterprise.