What Nonprofit Executives Want and What They Get from Board Members

• Published date: 01 December 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21234
• Author: Julie Langer,Kelly LeRoux
• Date: 01 December 2016

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N M  L, vol. 27, no. 2, Winter 2016 © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21234

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

Research Articles

What Nonprofi t Executives Want and

What  ey Get from Board Members

Kelly LeRoux , Julie Langer

University of Illinois-Chicago

In theory, nonprofit boards of directors exist to perform mission-setting and oversight func-

tions that help to ensure organizational accountability. Yet there is evidence that board

behavior often falls short of this ideal. Using survey data from a sample of 241 executive

directors of nonprofit agencies, we investigated whether nonprofit boards are meeting exec-

utive directors’ expectations, and if not, what factors explain this? We find that although

board behavior tends to align closely with executive directors’ preferences for involvement

in administration and management tasks, there is a greater disconnect between board

behavior and executive directors’ preferences for involvement in mission-setting and over-

sight duties. Factors that mitigate this gap include organizational professionalization and

stability, whereas more extensive reliance on government funding exacerbates it. Female

executive directors experience a greater disconnect in their preferences for board involve-

ment and actual board involvement than male executive directors. We conclude by discuss-

ing the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.

Keywords: boards , governance , nonprofit management , executive , accountability

THE BOARD-CENTERED MODEL OF GOVERNANCE has been adopted by nonprofit and vol-

untary organizations throughout the United States to address a number of practical organizational

issues ranging from stakeholder management to legal supervision (Gevurtz 2004 ; Zald 1969 ).

Historically, the adoption of a board-centered model of governance has been seen as a way for

organizations to convey legitimacy, ensure public interest, and preserve traditions of representa-

tive institutions (Gevurtz 2004 ; Hillman and Dalziel 2003 ; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978 ). Although

this model has been implemented by a wide range of organizations, it has been criticized for its

idealized form and oversimplification of the board–executive relationship (Gevurtz 2004 ; Her-

man and Van Til 1985 ). This reality, in conjunction with an increased focus on improving the

operations of nonprofit boards, “attest[s] to a generalized sense that there ’ s some distance between

what boards are supposed to be and what they are” (Herman and Van Till 1985 , 1).

Correspondence to: Kelly LeRoux, University of Illinois-Chicago, 412 S. Peoria St., 130 CUPPA Hall (MC 278),

Chicago, IL 60607. Email: kleroux@uic.edu.

Nonprofi t Management & Leadership DOI: 10.1002/nml

148 LEROUX, LANGER

The disconnect between the idealized vision of the nonprofit board and their actual activi-

ties or functions may in part stem from the fact that there are many governance models that

ascribe different levels of importance to the roles of the board and executive. Traditionally,

board-centered models of governance highlight the fiduciary and strategic roles of the board

and how it works with management to ensure organizational effectiveness (Chait, Ryan, and

Taylor 2011 ). If envisioned as a continuum, the board-centered model might fall between

the policy-centered governance model, which stresses the supremacy of board values and pre-

scribes few roles for the executive in governance activities (Carver 2011 ; Carver and Carver

1996 ), and the executive-centered model, which stresses the importance of executives provid-

ing leadership to their boards (Herman and Heimovics 1990 , 1994 ).

Although all these models stress the importance of the board–executive relationship, their

differences highlight the varied ways in which board members understand their role and the

ways in which nonprofit executives view the role of the board. In many instances, nonprofit

executive directors (EDs) have characterized their boards as “talking shops” that do little

more than “provide lip service to the law” (Harris 1989 , 318; Zald 1969 , 98). In these cases

executives believe that boards are detached from the work of the agency and unable to under-

stand what activities were involved in the running of a nonprofit organization (Harris 1989 ).

Conversely, too much input by board members has led to beliefs by the executive of board

interference and in some instances to resignation (Harris 1989 ; McManus and Leslie 2000 ).

Despite the prominence of the board-centered model of governance in nonprofit and volun-

tary sector organizations in the United States, conflicting reports of desired board involve-

ment remain. Surprisingly, although research findings have indicated that nonprofit executive

directors and boards view board performance differently (Bernstein, Buse, and Bilimoria

2016 ), little empirical research has investigated these phenomena from the perspective of

what nonprofit executives want versus what they get from their boards. To fill this gap in the

literature, we answer the following questions in this study: What types of involvement do

executive directors want from their board members? To what extent does board involvement

match executive directors’ preferred level of involvement? And, if gaps exist between board

behavior and executive directors’ preferences, what factors explain these gaps? To address

these questions, we first review the theoretical and practical expectations of boards and dis-

cuss factors that may influence board behavior.

Theoretical and Practical Expectations of Boards

Nonprofit boards of directors often engage in diverse activities ranging from policy formation

and strategic planning to resource procurement, program monitoring, and dispute resolution

(Miller-Millesen 2003 ). We conceptualize the many roles of the nonprofit board as encompass-

ing two broad functions: mission setting and oversight, and administration and management.

The mission-setting and oversight function of the board includes activities related to strategy

development, budget oversight, and the evaluation of organizational accomplishments, while

the administration and management function includes activities associated with stakeholder

management, hiring, and the design of structural operations.

Though many theories have been used to explain the roles of nonprofit boards (Bernstein et al.

2016 ; Brown 2005 ; Caers et al. 2006 ; Cornforth and Edwards 1999 ; Miller-Millensen 2003 ),

the expectations and functions of nonprofit boards are most often explained from agency- and