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Review of Board Member Rule: How to Be a Strategic Advocate for your Nonprofit

By Scott Ullman, The San Francisco Foundation Center

Time constraints often limit nonprofit professionals and volunteer the opportunity to expand their management and fundraising skills. There have been many wonderful books on nonprofit board governance and development. However, most take a considerable effort to read and absorb because of their length. Longtime San Francisco Bay Area consultants and authors, Ann W. Lehman and Robert M. Zimmerman have written a concise, accessible, hands-on, mini-manual on the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit board of trustees.

Board Member Rule: How to Be a Strategic Advocate for your Nonprofit at 112 pages with a nice amount of exercises, examples, and reference materials provides the reader with a comprehensive but manageable model on approaching nonprofit stewardship. The book is designed as a quick read for board members to assist them on in becoming strategic advocates on their agency's behalf.

The philosophy of the book is stated in its Introduction. We hear complaints about boards: they are ineffective, wont fundraise, and cant read a financial statement& the list goes on and on. But we don't hear enough about how boards educate their members about their responsibilities. We readily ask board members to make decisions without the necessary instructions.

Board Members Rule helps to rectify this situation. The chapters are succinct and varied including discussions on fiduciary responsibilities, governance, strategic advocacy, marketing, strategic planning, financial oversight, recruitment, etc. Each chapter is designed to delve into a particular board role or responsibility. Many chapters also provide useful templates such as a Board Member Assessment Grid to review current board members skills and traits or an outline of what goes into a board orientation package.

The authors tackle some current key buzz words now sweeping the profession such as accountability and transparency and how it impacts the Board of Trustees. Board members now face a period of increased public fiscal scrutiny and are put into the position to defend overhead costs or executive salaries. These are evolving changing roles for board members in providing more information for the public on financial operations and program evaluation. A nice Appendix provides specific exercises for board members, sample public policy guidelines and further resources in print and on the web. Lehman and Zimmerman will take a discussion point raised in a specific chapter such as how to develop conflict of interest policy and provide an interactive exercise to further explore the topic. These exercises nicely compliment the narrative discussion.

Ann W. Lehman and Robert M. Zimmerman have over sixty years of experience in board development, fundraising and planning. They partner in their consulting firm, Zimmerman Lehman and frequently provide training throughout the United States. Their workshops are known as practical down-to-earth presentations. Their verbal style translates well to the printed page. This book is an essential tool for nonprofit board members.

Copyright 2008 Zimmerman Lehman.

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