Chamber resources

Chamber boards and committees

Take a look at our extensive list of publications which are available to order through our affiliated partners, recommended by the International Chamber of Commerce.

Healthy debate and conflict resolution

  • Culture of Inquiry: Healthy Debate in the Boardroom

    By Nancy R. Axelrod
    This book explains how to create a culture of inquiry within the boardroom - one marked by mutual respect and constructive debate that leads to sound and shared decision making. It details how to develop an environment where board members solicit, acknowledge and respectfully listen to different points of view; where they seek more information, question assumptions, and challenge conclusions so that they may advocate for solutions based on analysis.

  • Managing Conflicts of Interest

    A Primer for Nonprofit Boards By Daniel L. Kurtz
    Help promote a culture of disclosure in your nonprofit by exploring the meaning of conflicts of interest and understanding the legal rules relating to them. Managing Conflicts of Interest acknowledges the difficulty in identifying problematic conflicts of interest, and gives recommendations for practice.

  • Meeting, and Exceeding Expectations

    A Guide to Successful Nonprofit Board Meetings By Outi Flynn
    In Meeting, and Exceeding Expectations, you'll find ready-to-use information that will help your board members provide the valuable input that will propel your organization to greatness. This must-have resource poses critical questions, provides easy-to-implement answers, suggests tools, and clarifies legal and ethical expectations.

  • Taming the Troublesome Board Member

    By Katha Kissman
    Addressing troubling behavior in a timely manner can make the difference between troubling and troublesome. Organized as a reference guide, Taming the Troublesome Board Member lays out a blueprint for avoiding and resolving the challenge of disruptive board members.

  • Executive Committee

    (The Boardsource Committee Series, 2) By Mark Light
    Executive Committee, by Mark Light, recognizes the potential for an executive committee to cause unrest on the board, and provides suggestions on how to avoid possible conflict.

  • Diversity In Action Assessment

    By BoardSource
    If you’re like most board leaders, you understand the need to increase board diversity and adopt more inclusive practices. It’s the “how to do it” that has so many boards stuck.

  • Managing Conflicts of Interest

    The Board's Guide to Unbiased Decision Making, Third Edition By Sarah E. Paul and Daniel L. Kurtz
    Managing Conflicts of Interest is here to help by providing you with the information you need to recognize potential conflicts of interest, determine when these conflicts present areas of concern, and do something about them.

Leadership

  • Extraordinary Board Leadership

    The Seven Keys to High-Impact Governance (Aspen's Nonprofit Management) By Doug Eadie
    This book reveals the power of high-impact governance. The author helps nonprofits reach beyond success to develop dynamic leadership that makes the board a true asset in leading change and achieving unprecedented results.

  • Global Imperatives

    12 Attributes of Effective Decision-Making and 9 Dimensions of Success for U.S.-Based Associations By Mohamadou Hayatou
    Global Imperatives compiles wisdom and experience gleaned from conversations with almost 70 association executives to provide warnings, lessons, and guidance, especially around the decision-making process. Learn from leaders who have taken their associations to a global audience, avoid their mistakes, and make use of their experiences to open up your own new global audiences, markets, and sources of revenue.

  • Meeting the Challenge

    An Orientation to Nonprofit Board Service By BoardSource
    Meeting the Challenge, hosted by Ray Suarez, the former voice of National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation and former board member for the Chicago Council of Boy Scouts, highlights four basic principles of board responsibility - determining mission and program, ensuring effective oversight, providing resources, and participating in community outreach.

  • The Nonprofit Board Answer Book

    A Practical Guide for Board Members and Chief Executives By BoardSource
    This third edition of the bestselling book for nonprofit board members and professionals offers a thoroughly revised and updated resource that answers the most-commonly asked question on board governance. The book covers such topics as board structure and process, board member recruitment and orientation, board-staff relations, and financial management.

  • The Nonprofit Dashboard

    A Tool for Tracking Progress By Lawrence M. Butler
    This book, for board members and senior staff, presents different options for creating dashboards and offers detailed illustrations and considerations. To help organizations get started with their own dashboard reports, the accompanying CD-ROM includes a dashboard generator file with two different customizable dashboard templates and how-to instructions for working with the file.

  • Structures and Practices of Nonprofit Boards

    By Robert L. Gale, Melissa Davis and Charles F. Dambach
    This book provides a set of basic guidelines to enable nonprofit boards to meet these challenges and develop board members who are actively engaged in the life of the organization. It discusses how the board is organized (including board size and term limits); who is on the board; the roles of the board chair, chief executive, and committees; and productive ways for board members to work together.

  • Supporting the Decision to Join

    What Association Boards Should Know and Do About Membership and Affiliation By James Dalton
    Supporting the Decision to Join sifts the research published in The Decision to Join (ASAE, 2007) to identify specific lessons that association leaders and board members must know to enhance their members perception of the associations value.

  • Ten Basic Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards

    (Governance Series 1, 2nd Edition) By Richard T. Ingram
    BoardSource's all-time bestseller, with more than 175,000 copies sold, not only explores the board's 10 core responsibilities, it also puts them into the context of the governance challenges facing nonprofits today. This new, expanded edition clarifies and distinguishes the board's responsibilities from those of the chief executive and senior staff.

  • The Board Chair Handbook

    2nd Edition, By PhD Mindy R. Wertheimer
    User friendly and practical, this book focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the board chair position, addresses the all-important work partnership with the organization's chief executive, and outlines the solid communications skills that the board chair's work requires - skills that invite dialogue in a nonjudgmental, respectful atmosphere.

  • The Business Professional's Guide to Nonprofit Board Service

    Leveraging Your Talents for the Social Sector, Second Edition By BoardSource
    Learn about the role of the board, the differences between for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and how to choose a board aligned with your needs and interests. Don't miss these invaluable lessons on effectively applying your skills and passion to nonprofit board services!

  • The Nonprofit Chief Executive's Ten Basic Responsibilities

    By Richard L. Moyers
    The Nonprofit Chief Executive's Ten Basic Responsibilities discusses all the chief executive's responsibilities, including supervising staff, overseeing operations, and supporting the board.

  • The Principles Workbook

    Steering Your Board Toward Good Governance and Ethical Practice By Independent Sector and BoardSource
    The Principles Workbook: Steering Your Board Toward Good Governance and Ethical Practice provides further support for nonprofits, foundations, and corporate giving programs committed to examining and improving their governance practices.

  • Chief Executive Succession Planning

    It might be tomorrw; it might be 10 years from now. But someday, your chief executive is going to leave your organization. Is there a well-thought-out plan in plance? Can you expect a smooth transition? If not, his or her departure could trigger a chaotic situation that reduces your organization's effectiveness and panics key stakeholders.

Development

  • The Nonprofit Board's Role in Mission, Planning, and Evaluation

    2nd Edition (Governance Series, No. 5) By Kay Sprinkel Grace
    All too often, nonprofit boards look at mission, planning, and evaluation in isolation. This book, however, offers an integrated approach. A regular and consistent planning process helps the board and staff clarify mission and make changes when necessary to keep mission fresh, lively, and relevant.

  • 199 Ideas: Build a Better Board

    By Douglas M. Kleine
    199 Ideas: Build a Better Board is one short volume with collected wisdom and ideas to help thousands of nonprofit groups build a strong and meaningful Board and ensure success of your organization.

  • Advisory Councils

    (Committee Series, 5) By Nancy R. Axelrod
    Have you ever wondered what the difference is between an advisory board and a governing board? An advisory group and an advisory council? This book will help you understand what an advisory council is and how it can benefit your board. Learn different ways these groups may be implemented in order to assist your board in expanding outreach efforts, finding new supporters, incorporating new perspectives, and distributing tasks.

  • Development Committee

    (Boardsource Committee Series, 4,) By Eugene R. Tempel
    With expert advice from the Fund Raising School at the Center on Philanthropy, the material presented here teaches a development committee how to act as the motivator for disengaged board members who are reluctant to make the ask in fundraising.

  • The Board Building Cycle

    Nine Steps to Finding, Recruiting, and Engaging Nonprofit Board Members, Second Edition By BoardSource
    This book is intended not only for organizations where the board is charged with selecting its own members but also for organizations where the authority to appoint new board members rests elsewhere.

Governance

  • Governance as Leadership

    Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards By Richard P. Chait, William P. Ryan and Barbara E. Taylor
    A new framework for helping nonprofit organizations maximize the effectiveness of their boards. Written by noted consultants and researchers attuned to the needs of practitioners, Governance as Leadership redefines nonprofit governance. It provides a powerful framework for a new covenant between trustees and executives: more macrogovernance in exchange for less micromanagement.

  • Governing for Growth

    Using 7 Measures of Success to Strengthen Board Dialogue and Decision Making By Nancy R. Axelrod
    This book draws from the research for 7 Measures of Success: What Remarkable Associations Do That Others Don t (ASAE, 2006). Governing for Growth teases out the policy and strategy implications of the seven measures and presents them to association leaders who want to take their organizations to new levels of effectiveness, influence, and adaptability.

  • Governing for Growth Facilitator's Guide

    By Nancy R. Axelrod
    In this facilitator's guide to Governing for Growth: Using 7 Measures of Success to Strengthen Board Dialogue and Decision Making, Nancy Axelrod writes for individuals charged with actually bringing about a board's strategic discussion.

  • Twelve Principles of Governance That Power Exceptional Boards

    By BoardSource
    The Source enables nonprofit boards to operate at the highest and best use of their collective capacity. Aspirational in nature, these principles offer chief executives a description of an empowered board that is a strategic asset to be leveraged.

  • The Strategic Board

    The Step-by-Step Guide to High-Impact Governance By Mark Light
    The Strategic Board is a uniquely flexible blueprint for better functioning that will at last connect your board's work about where you go tomorrow with your staff's work on what gets done today.

  • The Will to Govern Well

    Knowledge, Trust, and Nimbleness By Glenn H. Tecker, Paul D. Meyer, Bud Crouch and Leigh Wintz
    This book is about developing strategies for change in governance. It rejects the idea of wholesale revolution in favor of rapid evolution, which has the added benefit of decreasing resistance among members and stakeholders, who similarly reject such terms.

  • Governance Committee

    (Boardsource Committee Series, 1.) By Sandra R. Hughes, Berit M. Lakey and Outi Flynn
    This book discusses this group's challenging responsibility in overseeing the performance of the board and managing compliance to the organization's mission. Discover how this committee can help all boards - new or seasoned - live up to their highest potential, keeping board members energized and engaged in maintaining value and control.

  • Fundraising Fitness

    The board's fundraising role has never been more critical. In many cases, it will determine if an organization flourishes in the changing economy or is forced to close its doors.

    Fundraising Fitness: A BoardSource Toolkit gives board members the practical tips and proven advice they need to get more involved in the type of fundraising efforts that will strengthen an organization's financial condition.

  • Building the Governance Partnership

    In a constructive partnership with the board, the chief executive works hard to provide leadership that engages the board in exceptional governance - work that requires a lot of time and energy. Building the Governance Partnership offers practical tips and perspectives to help you manage this considerable investment of time and build a partnership with your board that is based on support, trust, honesty, forthrightness, respect, and understanding. Within its pages, you'll learn how to work for, work with, and work the board. And while it is time-consuming work, the rewards-the success of both you and your organization are worth the effort.

  • Board Fundamentals

    What is governance? What is the role of the board? What is expected of board members? And how does an effective board operate? Board Fundamentals answers theses questions and more.

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