Anti-Consultative Trends in Nonprofit Governance

18 Pages Posted: 20 Dec 2006

See all articles by Norman I. Silber

Norman I. Silber

Hofstra University School of Law; Yale University - Law School

Date Written: 2006

Abstract

The cultural and political demand for nonprofit financial accountability has grown rapidly in recent decades. At the same time, donations and gifts continue, apparently, to decline as a proportion of overall revenue received. To remain viable in this environment, many nonprofit groups are changing their operating models and organizational structures, the better to attract contracts, grants, and fee-for-service revenue. An underappreciated consequence of the convergence of these accountability and viability challenges is an anti-consultative or anti-collaborative imperative. With increasing frequency, scholars, attorneys, and consultants are advising nonprofit groups that seek to comply with nonprofit laws and to enhance their financial performance, to turn away from the popular cultural traditions and from the legal norms that have, by and large, encouraged collaboration and consultation in the normal course of internal decision making and governance. This advice often entails the adoption of strategies for streamlining nonprofit governance along for-profit business principles, in order to augment corporate efficiency, and management development, in the name, ultimately, of service to the nonprofit mission. Until now, law has largely accommodated and encouraged transplanted business models with new statutory proscriptions, administrative guidelines, and with liberal common law interpretations of the older statutes which demote consultative values. It may be time for courts and legislatures to start to impose limits on the wholesale adoption of for-profit management and governance models in nonprofit organization.

Keywords: Nonprofits, Accountability, corporate governance models, collaborative governance, consultative governance, social capital, democratic governance, nonprofit organizations, nonprofit governance

Suggested Citation

Silber, Norman I., Anti-Consultative Trends in Nonprofit Governance (2006). Hofstra University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-36, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=952372 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.952372

Norman I. Silber (Contact Author)

Hofstra University School of Law ( email )

121 Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549
United States
516 463 5866 (Phone)
516 463 4962 (Fax)

Yale University - Law School

P.O. Box 208215
New Haven, CT 06520-8215
United States

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