Understanding Nonprofit Boards: An Exploratory Study of the Governance Practices of Regional Nonprofits

Many researchers have catalogued best practices of board governance. Most of the existing research employed surveys to review compliance with these practices, and the results are highly quantitative as well as self-reported. This study used interviews of board members representing a cross-section of nonprofits to examine conformity with recommended governance best practices and procedures as well as to provide insight into how these practices have changed during their tenure.Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 nonprofit board members in the Tampa Bay area. Using the thematic coding approach proposed by Braun and Clark (2006), four themes emerged from the data: Recruiting, Training, Meetings and Decision Making, and Organization and Structure. Organizations scored weakest on the topics of training and evaluation. These findings concur with an earlier study evaluating governance practices that found the lowest compliance in evaluation, of individual board members and a collective board self-evaluation. In this study, individuals who had served on their boards for several years noted that training, particularly on-boarding, has improved since they joined the board, but agree there is still room for improvement