In accordance with their fiduciary duties to the organisation, board members have a responsibility to implement good governance. The board is expected to operate collegially. Each board member brings to the boardroom their own particular skills, knowledge and experience, and has a duty to apply their skills, knowledge and experience, acting at all times in the best interests of the organisation.
An effective board seeks to stimulate the flow of ideas, identify key issues, consider alternatives and make informed decisions. To do so requires often-vigorous debate, which can sometimes turn into negative conflict. There are many more issues and situations outlined in section 2 below that can give rise to a board dispute. Such disputes must be dealt with as soon as possible, because if left unresolved,
they can undermine the board’s effectiveness and the organisation’s performance.
To set out the process for the removal of a board member from a board for nonprofit organisations.
This policy guide outlines the internal processes and best practice steps to be taken. It complements existing legal provisions for board member removal under the Companies Act 2014. If there is any conflict between this guidance document and the organisation’s constitution or relevant legislation, the constitution and/or the law will take precedence.
Before, applying the policy in an actual board member removal situation, the board should consider if it should obtain professional advice on the specific nature of the dispute and application of the procedures in the policy, particularly, if steps 1 (informal resolution) and 2 (mediation) below fail to have the matter resolved.
AI is rapidly evolving and its use in the nonprofit sector presents concerns, challenges and opportunities. As part of their ‘Consulting with NGOs’ module run by Kathleen O’Reilly, a team of UCD students were teamed up with Carmichael to address these questions.
The students conducted research to assess both the current applications of AI in nonprofit organizations and the potential opportunities for its integration.
This document is an overview of their work and summarises their findings on AI usage in the sector, ethical considerations and barriers, guidelines for using prompts and key recommendations for using AI.
The background literature review which gives further context to this summary document will be released in the coming months.
Thank you to Giovanni Morandi, Vivian Li, Colin Cunningham, Nathan Souillard, Sorcha Love & Gavin Maggio for this useful piece of work.
Each year, nonprofit organisations dedicate extensive time and energy to producing their annual reports. The Annual Report is the perfect medium to showcase your strategy and operations, and also to signpost your future direction.
Below is an exploration of its core utilities and how organisations can unlock their full potential.
Thank you to Sheena Horgan from 2into3 for her contribution.
Good Governance Awards 2024 Technical Assessment of the Financial Statements.
The Carmichael Good Governance Awards consists of a three-staged process to identify the winners in each of the categories; a general assessment stage, a technical assessment of financial statements of those entries that have been longlisted in the general assessment and a judging stage of the shortlisted entries to select the category winners. The technical assessment is conducted by our panel of accounting firms who assess the compliance of the financial statements with relevant legal and accounting standard requirements. This information resource is a list of the compliance issues identified by our Technical Assessors in the 2024 Good Governance Awards.
On the 27th of February 2024, Carmichael hosted a webinar on how nonprofits can improve their annual reports and financial statements.
The panel consisted of:
- Nina Arwitz: CEO of Volunteer Ireland
- Aedín Morkan: Audit Partner at Mazars Ireland
- Senan Turnbull: Consultant and trainer specialising in nonprofit annual reports
The panel was chaired by Róisín McGuigan: Services Manager at Carmichael and Coordinator of the Good Governance Awards.
The three panellists shared some of their pointers for improvement and the session finished with a Q&A.
This resource is taken from the session.
Board packs are one of the key gateways for board members into the organisation they govern. The clarity and accessibility of board packs is vital to ensuring an effective board and well-governed organisation.
Follow the four stage plan to achieve this.
This article explores the use of performance metrics by boards and the process for selecting and
assessing key performance indicators. It is an extract from a Carmichael report “Improving the quality of
board packs for better decision making in Irish Nonprofits”.
We all know that the annual report is more than just a profit and loss statement. Annual reports are typically filled with important and often critical information about the charity’s finances, its performance, and its goals for the future so make sure it is accessible. Have a read of this resource to guide you.
A Board evaluation is a great opportunity for the Board of a non-profit organisation to take a good look at itself and consider how it operates, how effective are board members individually and collectively. Importantly, it is not a governance review, it is a review of Board performance and effectiveness. This document captures why board evaluations matter. Author: Andrew Madden, Head of Training, Consultancy and Communications.