Governance and Leadership

A nonprofit’s governing body, officers, and key employees are responsible for defining and upholding the organization’s mission, vision, and values, and for providing overall leadership and strategic direction to the organization. Each nonprofit board should:

  • Ensure that the organization is adequately resourced to carry out its mission;
  • Advance the ethical and legal integrity of the organization and ensure accountability and good governance practices;
  • Ensure that activities and expenses align with mission focus;
  • Actively set and implement policies;
  • Provide oversight, direction, and moral support for the chief executive in order to further the goals of the organization; and
  • Evaluate its own effectiveness as a governing body and as representatives of the community in upholding the public interest served by the organization.

Members of the governing body need to be aware of the legal fiduciary duties related to their work: the duty of care, the duty of loyalty and the duty of obedience.

Excerpt from, Principles & Practices for Nonprofit Excellence in Colorado.

Online FAQs and Samples

While our toolkit contains many answers to commonly asked questions and sample policies we provide new and additional resources through this website.

FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions for Governance and Leadership.
Samples – Sample policies and documents

Governance Toolkit

To support our Principles & Practices for Nonprofit Excellence in Coloradowe have created supporting materials to help you and your organization better understand key principles, update or create essential policies and have an assessment for each of our principle areas. You can download the toolkit below split up into 3 sections:

Part 1: The Toolkit – provides in-depth information about each of the Principles and Practices and an assessment to see if your organization is meeting each principle and practice.
Part 2: FAQs – provides answers to some of the most commonly questions.
Part 3: Samples – provides sample policies and documents that can be used to create or update your own.