Posts Tagged ‘Governance’

Players in the Public Policy Process by Herrington Bryce

This book focuses on the nonprofit organization as a social capital asset and agent in all phases of the public policy process–from influencing political parties, platforms, and choice of candidates to the formulation and implementation of public policy including the facilitation of transactions. This book demonstrates the universal utility of the principal-agent paradigm for analyzing nonprofits in foreign or domestic policy, sectarian or faith-based, scientific or social as well as the regulatory (not just participatory) powers of these organizations over market and nonmarket actions as a matter of public, collective policy.

Placing the nonprofit in a principal-agent framework, the book emphasizes such topics as sources of conflict in public expectations and organizational performance, the moral hazard and benefits of organizational self-interest, tax exemption as compensation or a reservation price rather than just a subsidy, the role of social service organizations as managers of adverse social risks, and their inherent competitive advantage (even when faith-based) over firms as agents of choice for social service contracts from a strictly business perspective. It also deals with the role of nonprofits in governance such as over common pool resources, the moral hazard of policy, and the probability that the nonprofit could be an agent of distortions.

Nonprofit Governance: Law, Practices, and Trends by Bruce Hopkins

In this comprehensive, one-stop resource, Hopkins and Gross deftly summarize the law that exists and explain and evaluate the many good governance principles that have been promulgated. Nonprofit Governance helps leaders and managers of nonprofit organizations, and their lawyers, accountants, and advisors, to:

* Understand the legal backdrop for nonprofit governance
* Sift through the numerous good governance principles and
guidelines
* Select the ones that most appropriately apply to their particular
organization
* Devise suitable policies and procedures
* Improve their operations and effectiveness
* Undertake a comprehensive governance legal audit
* Be in a position to file Forms 990 that cast them in the best
possible light regarding nonprofit governance

Nonprofit Governance is a must-read for anyone facing good governance decisions in a nonprofit organization and is lost in the maze of conflicting principles, ever-increasing policies and procedures, murky law, and the intensity of the IRS in insisting on adoption of various principles in the absence of legal requirements for them.