In the nonprofit management arena, literature has suggested that boards are unclear about their roles and responsibilities. In response to this issue, boards have been presented with more and more detailed and restrictive job descriptions. In this University podcast, William Ryan, a consultant to foundations and nonprofit organizations and research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, offers a new conceptual framework for helping nonprofit organizations maximize the effectiveness of their boards. Ryan redefines nonprofit governance and advocates for the enrichment of boards' work: more macro-governance in exchange for less micromanagement. He provides many useful ideas that can dramatically enhance nonprofit management.
William P. Ryan is a consultant to foundations and nonprofit organizations, and a research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. Both his consulting and research focus on nonprofit organizational effectiveness. He currently directs the Nonprofit Governance and Accountability Project, a joint initiative of the Hauser Center and Harvard Law School aimed at engaging Harvard researchers in critical questions related to nonprofit governance. He is coauthor, most recently, of Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards, which has been honored with awards from the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and Independent Sector. He is also coauthor of High Performance Nonprofit Organizations: Managing Upstream for Greater Impact and of Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists, Harvard Business Review (March-April, 1997), and is the author of The New Landscape for Nonprofits, Harvard Business Review (Jan.-Feb., 1999), which analyzes the rise of for-profit social service organizations. He holds a BA from Columbia University and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Resources
This free podcast is from our Stanford Social Innovation Review series.
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