title: Policy Vs Paperclips: Selling the Corporate Model to Your Nonprofit Board
author:  Eugene H. Fram 
description: <b>Policy vs. Paper Clips </b>shows how to transform your organization by optimizing:<br><br>Strategic Planning<br><ul><li>Focus on organization strategic issues over operational minutiae</li><li>Encourage directors to bring their own special expertise and cultural values to board decisions</li></ul><b>Board Structure</b><ul><li>Develop or enhance a mission focused board structure for growth</li><li>Use task forces more efficiently to obtain time results</li><li>Designate the senior operational manager as the President/CEO to give the position the prestige that it deserves</li><li>Establish a framework for separating policy/strategy development from operational activities</li><li>Make effective use of an executive committee</li><li>Make wise use of volunteers' time to make board recruitment easier</li><li>Reduce or increase board size</li><li>Operate effectively with only three standing board committees&#xA0;</li><li>Make major board structural changes with minimum disruption</li><li>Develop effective audit committee procedures</li><li>Keep board involvement high when developing policies & strategies</li></ul><b>Board-Staff Relations</b><br><ul><li>Create a partnership between board and staff built on trust</li><li>Pinpoint management's&#xA0; responsibility and clarify its accountability</li><li>Allow more management flexibility to develop a more entrepreneurial culture</li><li>Increase focus on productivity at the expense of bureaucratic processes</li><li>Develop a more professional and self-managing staff</li><li>Build a working relationship between the volunteer board chair and the CEO</li><li>Evaluate the senior manager fairly, despite only having some imperfect metrics for qualitative outcomes</li><li>Improve the CEO's fund raising capacity to drive development productivity </li></ul><b>Operations & Compliance </b><ul><li>Sharpen the organization's client focus to improve mission impact</li><li>Obtain greater efficiencies through lower costs</li><li>Establish a system of organizational checks and balances</li><li>Use the board to provide responsibility for -- and oversight over -- fraud prevention</li><li>Understand the implications of compliance requirements such as IRS Form 990, the Sarbanes- Oxley Act and the Intermediate Sanctions Act</li><li>Understand the&#xA0; need for -- and implement -- rigorous assessment of operational outcome&#xA0; </li></ul>
  						    	
  						        	--This text refers to an alternate <a href='/dp/1456374052/ref=dp_bookdescription?_encoding=UTF8&amp;n=283155'>Paperback</a> edition.
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