What This Covers
This hub is for directors, HR and operations leads, and board members at small and mid-sized nonprofits. It brings together four areas: governance through the board, people through staff and contractors, operations through procurement and security, and planning. Where OpenAid has a page for a task below, it is linked.
Start Here
- Board roles and duties. Learn what the board does, the four officer positions most bylaws name, and your legal duties. In the United States these are the three duties of care, loyalty and obedience; check the law where you are registered.
- Employee or contractor. Decide how to classify a worker before a mistake brings penalties. In the United States that means steep penalties and interest.
- Procurement policy. Write one that controls conflicts of interest and sets limits on gifts and hospitality from suppliers. Start from the procurement policy guide.
- Staff security. Turn duty of care into a simple set of routines that a smaller organization with limited resources can keep up. Staff security and duty of care sets out the routines.
- Downsizing. If you have to cut staff, see downsizing responsibly.
Key Concepts
- Governance versus management: governance is the board's job and management is the staff's, and blurring the two erodes trust. Boards that reach into operations confuse staff, and boards that rubber-stamp whatever staff bring fail in their duty of care.
- Conflict of interest: impartial and objective work is compromised by economic interest, family or emotional ties, or another shared interest.
- Duty of care: the moral or legal obligation to ensure the health, safety or well-being of others.
- Worker classification: the evidence is how the work is really done. If the organization controls what is done and how, that points to employment; a contractor typically sets their own schedule and delivers a service with little control from the organization. In the United States the evidence falls into behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship.
- Strategic plan: goals aligned with vision and mission, with steps and a multi-year timeline, usually three to five years. Staff usually draft it and the board challenges, refines and adopts it.
- Capacity assessment: a simple tool that scores the organization category by category, done by a team that mixes staff with people from outside.
Related Pages
- Procurement policy guide: for evaluation committees and signed no-conflict declarations.
- Terms of reference prompt: for a first draft of a consultant's terms of reference.