The High-Performance Board

Dennis D. Pointer and James E. Orlikoff--two of the country's most experienced and successful governance consultants--show you the way. Drawing on their combined forty years of professional practice, the authors provide sixty-four practical principles a nonprofit board can use to dramatically improve its performance and contributions. The High-Performance Board is a concise, quick read for board members and executives of nonprofit organizations who want great governance and are serious about achieving it. Pointer and Orlikoff identify the factors that most affect governance quality--obligations, functions (responsibilities and roles), structure, composition, and infrastructure--and build their principles on these critical areas. They provide recommendations to help your board begin to adopt the book's principles and formulate an action plan for a continuous improvement. At the end of each section they present a board check-up to help assess how well your board is doing in light of best-practices principles. In the final chapter, these check-ups are combined to produce a governance performance profile. The authors' principle-based governance demands that board members step up and meet the challenge of improved performance. This book gives them the information and guidance they need to do so.