The Role of The Board in The Indian Voluntary Sector

(Excerpts from research done by Arthi Madhusudan as a part of BCF fellowship programme)

The study highlighted that transparency and accountability are among the challenges facing by the Indian voluntary sector. Realizing this, CEOs and boards had begun to pay more attention to demonstrate their accountability to all stakeholders. CEOs and representative board members of 10-12 organizations are surveyed for this study.

This research had made a concerted effort to look at what exactly the role of the board in the Indian voluntary sector as envisaged in current practices. The study further elaborated the legal framework governing the voluntary sector in India restricted to acts such as Societies Registration Act, Indian Trust Act and the companies Act. The role of the governing board as is mandated in these laws including structure of the board and its renewal mechanism, rights/powers of the board members, duties and responsibilities of the board members and implications of the law on the governance are analyzed in detail.

The study also elaborated various models of non-profit governance such as policy governance model, advisory board model, patron model, Co- operative model and management team model. CEOs under this study agreed that their boards comprise people with caliber and professional expertise. Individual board members have been extremely supportive and proactive. This seems to be the consequence of more a personality trait in individuals rather than a conscious execution of board member responsibilities.

On the other hand the board members opined that the good governance of the organization depends on the board members. In order to achieve this each of the members has to invest time, effort and resources. They felt that good board just do not happen and they have to be created. Annexes on recruiting and orienting board members, getting board to work in committees, what goes into a good board meeting, what board needs to watch out for, roles and responsibilities of board members, conflict of interest, board self assessment, sample content of board members manual, role of board in resource mobilisation and the relationship between the CEO and board are useful and can be used a resource manual for the voluntary sector in India.

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