Are you looking for new frontiers to conquer? According to the author of this recent book on boards, "...governance is at this point in the history of nonprofit leadership and management still frontier territory."

According to Doug Eadie, a governing board is one of a nonprofit organization's most precious resources. As the ultimate authority for its organization, the board is accountable for setting the direction, allocating resources and overseeing performance.

Extraordinary Board Leadership: The Seven Keys to High-Impact Governance focuses on the governing work of boards —— not providing technical advice or performing other non-governing work. It is primarily intended for the strategic leadership team, including governing board members, the CEO, and senior managers. It is not a comprehensive board manual; nor is it written for novices. The basic tenet of the book is that any board can strengthen its leadership by applying Eadie's high-impact governing model —— his guidelines for translating a board's potential for leadership into significant impact on organizational performance.

In putting together this model for effective governing boards, Mr. Eadie draws on his quarter century of experience working with over 400 nonprofits. He is the founder and president of Doug Eadie Presents! and of Strategic Development Consulting. He is also the author of several other books and articles on boards and board governance.

The material in the book is based on several critical assumptions: boards are organizations; boards are people; building effective boards is a team activity; the CEO is the point person in developing a board's leadership capacity.

A large part of the book focuses on the author's seven keys to high-impact governing board performance: understand in depth what governing is all about and how to build the board's governing capacity; select the right people for the board and develop their governing skills; build and maintain a strong board-CEO working relationship; develop a well-structured board that manages its own performance; have the board play a leading role in generating innovative ideas for the organization; have the board play a strong creative role in operational planning and budgeting and in operational oversight; and have board involved in external relations and financial resource development.

He outlines in some depth how to implement all seven of these "keys" with some samples of forms, agenda, etc. sprinkled throughout.

This publication is a good resource for those charged with recruiting and maintaining board members or for those looking for ways to reenergize their existing board.

For citations to additional literature on this topic, refer to Literature of the Nonprofit Sector Online, using the subject headings "Board members" or "Nonprofit organizations— — administration".