10/20/2025

New Book Highlights How the Board Is Not the Boss

It also examines other thoughts related to its role

In Vu Le’s new book, Reimaging Nonprofits and Philanthropy: Unlocking the Full Potential of a Vital and Complex Sector, the creator of the NonprofitAF.com blog challenges much of the conventional thought and practice that drive nonprofits and philanthropy. [The following text is excerpted with author and press permission from Reimaging Nonprofits and Philanthropy: Unlocking the Full Potential of a Vital and Complex Sector (Wiley, 2026) by Vu Le. All rights reserved. This book is available wherever books and eBooks are sold.]

Our default structures and philosophies and have conditioned board members to think they are basically the supervisors of the executive director (ED)/CEO. It is ingrained in all of us, and many EDs/CEOs think along this line, too. Even I have introduced a board member at an event and joked, "This is one of my bosses!"

This line of thinking has caused tremendous problems, such as inflating board members' ego and sense of importance, decreasing of staff’s authority and autonomy to do work and furthering the board’s meddling and micromanaging in programs and operations. It is problematic when board members rarely have even close to the same level of knowledge about what is happening on the ground.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Nonprofit Quarterly.