Board Source

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Considerations of Background Checks for Nonprofit Board Members

Board Source

Criminal background checks are one way for nonprofit organizations to protect themselves, their assets, and the people they serve, but they may not be right for every organization. Ensuring resources is a role of the board, in addition to setting direction for the organization and providing oversight. One way to ensure resources and provide oversight may be to consider background checks for board members.

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Reimagining Boards for High Impact - An Introduction and Invitation

Board Source

At any given moment, nonprofit boards are faced with juggling multiple opposing forces. Boards are excited to charge ahead with the organization's work but at the same time required to continually adapt to change, moved by urgency but hesitant about severely limited capacity, ambitious yet stymied by limited resources. It may feel as if there is never a clear path to follow.

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5 Barriers to Overcome and Advance Your Board’s DEI Commitment

Board Source

It is quite common to see nonprofit organizations making visible commitments to diversity, inclusion, and equity. Many nonprofit organizations have DEI statements; some include the words in their missions. Many have DEI as part of their strategic plan. But when it comes to the composition and practices of nonprofit boards, it's clear that these commitments aren't necessarily translating into real board-level change.

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When Sunsetting Your Nonprofit is the Hardest (and Best) Option

Board Source

If there is a lesson from the last several years, it is that we have to look inward before we do anything else. Between the pandemic, the “Great Resignation,” political division, and heightened awareness of the ways racism and oppression has shaped everything we do in the nonprofit sector, we have been called to be more self-aware and reflective as leaders.

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Lessons From a Cross-Racial Team About Building Belonging

Board Source

As nonprofit consultants, we’ve found the need for board guidance and support with regards to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) has been steadily growing over the years. When it comes to this important work, we know that just diversity , or recruiting board members from different racial backgrounds alone, is not enough. Boards of historically white-led organizations must do more to intentionally work to build diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into board culture.

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It’s Time to Heal

Board Source

“Time heals all wounds” is one of the most widely known and generally accepted expressions in our popular culture, but I’ve always felt that this statement – although not false – was incomplete, at best. I believe that time is necessary but not sufficient for healing. Time facilitates the healing process, but true healing only happens when we do our part, when we are intentional about tending to the physical or psychological wound over time.

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Nonprofits’ Role in Indian Boarding Schools: An Opportunity to Tell the Truth and Heal

Board Source

In May, the world looked on in horror as a mass grave of 215 children’s remains was located using ground-penetrating radar at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. It was this circumstance that caused many people to learn about the institution of Indian residential schools, as they are called in Canada, or Indian boarding schools, as they are called here in the United States, for the first time.