Governing for Nonprofit Excellence

Critical Issues for Board Leadership

Nonprofit organizations require strong, innovative leadership, especially during uncertain times. Governing for Nonprofit Excellence (GNE), an HBS Social Enterprise Initiative program, is designed to maximize the contributions of individual nonprofit board members. Participants are challenged to examine their role and the role of their boards in improving organizational effectiveness.

What You Can Expect

By examining issues of critical concern to board leaders, this leadership development program prepares participants for strategic planning and organizational transformation. Board members gain the skills needed to maintain mission clarity, forge effective relationships with CEOs, structure and manage important alliances, and achieve financial sustainability.

Your Course of Study

Harvard Business School faculty combine extensive research and real-life experience in nonprofit management issues with world-class teaching expertise. The result is an inspiring curriculum that addresses core issues such as strategic realignment, organizational stewardship, and board leadership.

Who Is Right for the Program

GNE is designed for nonprofit board members in board leadership roles who are not serving in full-time employment roles for the nonprofit organizations they are applying to represent. This program meets the needs of leaders from a variety of organizations, such as those focused on social services, education, the environment, healthcare, arts and culture, community and economic development, and international development.

Social Enterprise Initiative

By integrating social enterprise-related research, teaching, and activities into daily life at HBS, the Social Enterprise Initiative plays a critical role in supporting the School's mission to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.

The Social Enterprise program fees are subsidized by Harvard Business School and its Social Enterprise Initiative. Limited, additional need-based scholarship funding may be available. Visit the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative website for scholarship information.

What You Can Expect

Improving Your Organization's Performance

In today’s challenging business environment, board members of nonprofit organizations must effectively coordinate several key functions of governance. These range from providing a broad vision for the organization’s mission to defining specific metrics for measuring performance.

Governing for Nonprofit Excellence is designed to help individual board members enhance the leadership and stewardship they deliver to their organizations. Through case studies and discussions, you will explore the difficulties faced by other boards in several key areas of governance, and you will emerge better prepared to achieve excellence within your own organization.

Taking Your Skills to the Next Level

By examining issues of critical concern to board leaders, you will learn to:

"The program has challenged me to think even more strategically about the critical issues that impact my organization. As a result, I am going to bring back more structure to my board—a clear linkage between what we are doing and what we need to do to ensure that our nonprofit is able to survive today and into the future."
Bonnie Carter [Board Chair], Essex County CASA, U.S.

Your Course of Study

Key to this leadership development program's effectiveness are Harvard Business School's interactive approach to learning and the team of HBS faculty members who combine extensive research and experience in board leadership and nonprofit management with world-class teaching expertise. The curriculum is developed around four core governance competencies: board leadership, strategic stewardship, performance measurement, and financial oversight. In-depth case studies showcase the real-life struggles of boards in their various leadership efforts.

Curriculum components include:

Board Leadership – As boards engineer new forms of strategic alignment and adopt new governance systems, the dynamics between boards and CEOs are changing. The cases present innovative models of leadership, focusing on defining the organization's mission for the greatest impact, clarifying board roles and responsibilities, and planning for CEO succession.

Strategic Stewardship – Today, nonprofit boards are being forced to consider strategic options that would have been unthinkable in the recent past. The central topics in nonprofit boardrooms include downsizing or closing facilities, entering into collaborative arrangements, crafting mergers, and pursuing new and often controversial revenue streams. Classroom discussions center on governance frameworks, alliance creation, and fundraising strategies.

Performance Measurement – Every organization needs to assess performance, but for nonprofits the metrics are less obvious. Nonprofit boards must guide their organizations in defining meaningful metrics to measure organizational performance. Case studies showcase the latest approaches, tools, and systems to support performance and measurement assessments.

Financial Oversight – Spillover pressures from Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and greater media attention on the nonprofit world are bringing into question old models of oversight. Case discussions center on accountability, compliance, and financial oversight.

"I have served on a number of charitable boards over the years, and was seeking to sharpen my game. You try to apply your business acumen to a nonprofit, and then realize it’s a very different world. At HBS, I learned how to overcome the entry-level problem that many businesspeople have when they come into nonprofit management."
Diane Powell [Board Member], Des Plaines Charitable Trust, U.S.

Who Is Right for the Program

Governing for Nonprofit Excellence is designed specifically for chairs and other members of nonprofit boards with significant board leadership responsibilities, but who are not serving in full-time employment roles for the nonprofit organizations they are applying to represent. Past participants have represented a wide range of countries and nonprofit sectors, including human and social services, education, environment, healthcare, arts and culture, foundation and grant funding, advocacy and rights, community and economic development, social enterprise, and international development. The Admissions Committee is dedicated to assembling a select group of board leaders with diverse professional and cultural backgrounds.

Past Participants Represented:

Industries Nationalities
94% Nonprofit Services 13% Asia/Pacific
3% Professional Services 7% Europe
3% Real Estate/Construction 2% Latin America
79% North America

"Over the past 10 years, I have worked for many charities and social enterprises as a pro bono trustee, chair, and nonexecutive director. I attended Governing for Nonprofit Excellence in search of new skills and to gain formal training in not-for-profit governance. The program equipped me with tools that have helped me to develop my leadership abilities and enhance my strategic decision-making capabilities. Indeed, the faculty allowed us to appreciate both the macro- and micro-repercussions of the high-level generative thinking that facilitates the most effective leadership. For me, the course was the single most inspiring educational experience of my life."
Marcus Lyon [Board Chair], Consortium for Street Children, UK

"The most valuable thing to me has been our group. We’ve become very close friends, shared our organizational experiences, and learned from one another. As a result, I’ve made a list of seven things to execute when I return to our organization. I’ve learned a lot about governance—and even more about leadership."
Catharine Arrowood [Board Chair], North Carolina Symphony Society, U.S.

Meet the Program Faculty

Harvard Business School Executive Education programs are developed and taught by a core faculty of HBS professors who are skilled educators, groundbreaking researchers, and award-winning authors. Faculty leverage their business expertise and field-based research to create new knowledge and enduring concepts that shape the practice of management. The result is a teaching team that exposes participants to multiple perspectives, challenging their thinking on many levels. For more detailed biographies, click on each faculty name.

Faculty for the program will be drawn from the following group:

Alnoor Ebrahim, Associate Professor of Business Administration. Faculty chair of "Governing for Nonprofit Excellence."

Allen S. Grossman, MBA Class of 1957 Professor of Management Practice. Member of the General Management Unit; faculty cochair of the "Public Education Leadership Program" and of "Performance Measurement for Effective Management of Nonprofit Organizations."

Robert Steven Kaplan, Professor of Management Practice. Member of the Organizational Behavior Unit.

Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management Teaching Programs, Harvard Kennedy School. Member of the General Management Unit; cochair of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative; and faculty chair of "Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management."

F. Warren McFarlan, Baker Foundation Professor; Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus. Member of the General Management Unit.

Kathleen L. McGinn, Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration. Senior Associate Dean, Director of Faculty Development; Chair of the Doctoral Programs; and member of the Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets Unit.

William Ryan, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy. Research Fellow for the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard Kennedy School.

Howard H. Stevenson, Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus.

"For a decade I dreamed of studying at Harvard—and it was an amazing, eye-opening opportunity that exceeded my expectations. During this one-week session I learned and applied principles that would have taken me much longer to acquire, understand, and implement while volunteering, working, or during my formal schooling. I now feel more confident and competent to effectively address my duties as the newly appointed chair of a rapidly growing multimillion-dollar facility."
David F. Pack, Ph.D. [Chairperson, Board of Trustees], The Living Planet Aquarium, U.S.

"There is a huge level of energy around the people who are doing absolutely amazing things and allocating huge amounts of resources. These professionals are living out their passion to change the world, and you have the opportunity to interact with them on a very intimate level. I would encourage anyone to take the time, find the money, and meet the people who are actually making things happen."
Sig Hutchinson [Vice Chair & Chair-Elect], Triangle Land Conservancy, U.S.

Admissions

Because a diverse participant mix is an important part of every HBS Executive Education program, we look for candidates who reflect a broad range of industries, functions, countries, and backgrounds to enrich the learning experience.

Fees, Payments, and Cancellations

The program fee covers tuition, books, case materials, accommodations, and most meals.

No payment is necessary until you have been accepted into an HBS Executive Education program. After admission notification, we will send you an invoice via email; payment is due within 30 days of the invoice date. If admission is within 30 days prior to the start of the program, payment is due upon receipt of the invoice. Payment is required prior to the program start date. We accept payment by company check, bank wire transfer, or credit card (American Express, MasterCard, Visa). Details are included on the program invoice.

If you need to cancel or defer participation, you must submit your request in writing more than 30 days before the start of the program to receive a full refund. Due to program demand and the volume of preprogram preparation, cancellations or deferrals received 14 to 30 days prior to the start of the program are subject to a fee of one-half of the program fee. Requests received within 14 days are subject to full payment.

Requirements

Although there are no formal educational requirements, admission is a selective process based on professional achievement and organizational responsibility. We look for professionals who have demonstrated business talent and leadership potential.

Language Proficiency

We deliberately design our programs to encourage individual growth and to foster productive interaction among participants. For that reason, proficiency in written and spoken English is essential. If English is your second language, or if you have less than one year's experience working in an English-speaking environment, HBS requires a brief statement documenting proficiency in English-language skills, both conversational and written. This may include a list of the English-language certification programs that you have completed; the degrees you have earned at English-speaking colleges and universities; or the results of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam. The Admissions Committee also may request a telephone interview.

Application Process

HBS must receive your application and all required documents in order to prepare the application for review by the Admissions Committee.

To apply, you may use our online form or download an application. You also may request a brochure by mail.

If you submit your application online, we will promptly acknowledge receipt of your submission via email. In the unlikely event that an email acknowledgment is not received, please contact the Admissions Committee by email: exed_admissions@hbs.edu, phone: +1-617-495-6226, or fax: +1-617-496-1731.

If you choose to submit a printed application, be sure to type or print legibly and sign your application. Send the application to the address or fax number listed on the form. Mailed or faxed applications are processed and acknowledged promptly upon receipt via email.

Complete Your Application

Please answer all questions thoroughly—the Admissions Committee will only consider completed applications. After reviewing your application and making the necessary edits or corrections, print or copy the application for your records.

Meet the Deadlines

We request applications at least four weeks in advance of the program start date. Early application does not guarantee admission. Programs often fill to capacity, so early application is recommended.

Notification of Acceptance

We acknowledge receipt of all applications and maintain all application information in strict confidentiality.

To optimize the learning experience and maximize the exchange of ideas, the Admissions Committee selects a class that balances each participant's experience, the scope of his or her current responsibilities, and the type of organization.

The Admissions Committee begins reviewing applications four months before the start date, and qualified candidates are admitted on a rolling, space-available basis. Once the review process has begun, applicants are notified within three weeks via email regarding Admissions Committee decisions. If your application is received within three weeks of the program's start date, the Admissions Committee will notify you of their decision as soon as possible.

Need help?

For further assistance, contact our client service specialists at: 1-800-427-5577 (outside the U.S., dial +1-617-495-6555).