Passion Turned Profession · Book X · The documents
Nonprofit Bylaws, Budgets, and Policies
Every other book explains what to write. This one reproduces the finished document and annotates it.
7 chapters · 81 pages
What it is
Articles, bylaws, minutes, a mission statement in three drafts, a theory of change on one page, an intake form, a case for support, a gift acknowledgement, a chart of accounts, a year-one budget that reconciles, a reserve policy, a job description, an offer letter, a contractor agreement, nine short policies that replaced a fifty-one page handbook, a board calendar, an executive director evaluation, an emergency succession plan, a compliance calendar, a data inventory. Every one printed complete.
They belong to Second Chapter Reading, North County Diaper Bank, and Southside Community Kitchen, the three organizations followed throughout the preceding books.
One is a single board meeting recorded twice, on facing pages, so that the difference between adequate and inadequate minutes is visible at a glance. Another is a first-year budget that balances, which is less common in published examples than it ought to be.
The founding documents take an afternoon and govern for a decade. Nothing else you write will have that ratio. Book X · Nonprofit Bylaws, Budgets, and Policies
What this book assumes
Nothing. It serves as the appendix to the series, and it is often the book people open first.
Every chapter
7 chapters, and what each one does.
Every chapter, with the sentence it opens on.
- 01
The Documents That Make It Exist
Four documents, two of which you will file once and never read again, and one that governs more of your life than any statute.
- 02
The Documents That Describe the Work
Five documents, and the reason to write them is not the funder. It is that you cannot hand over a programme that exists only in your judgement.
- 03
The Documents That Ask
Five documents, one of which is a legal requirement most small organizations satisfy badly and do not know it.
- 04
The Documents That Account
Five documents, and the second one is the only budget in this series that you can check with a calculator.
- 05
The Documents That Employ
Eight documents, and the shortest one in the chapter is the set of policies that replaced a fifty-one page handbook.
- 06
The Documents That Govern
Seven documents, and one of them is the same meeting written down twice.
- 07
The Documents That Keep You Out of Trouble
Six documents. None is interesting. One of them is a single page that would have prevented more of the failures in this series than anything else in it.
Two more lines from inside
From the manuscript.
Minutes are not a record of a meeting. They are the only evidence the board exercised its duty, and they are read by people who were not there, years later, in circumstances you cannot predict.
Book X · Nonprofit Bylaws, Budgets, and Policies
A budget that does not reconcile is not a budget, it is a wish with columns. Check the one in front of you before you copy its structure.
Book X · Nonprofit Bylaws, Budgets, and Policies
-
What this book assumes
Nothing. It serves as the appendix to the series, and it is often the book people open first.
Each subject is treated once, in the book that owns it. Where an answer belongs elsewhere, you are given the chapter reference.
The contents
Every document, by name.
The full contents of this book are listed on their own page, grouped by chapter, with the organization each one belongs to.
Get the complete set
All ten books, plus the toolkit.
Passion Turned Profession is available as a complete set for $149: all ten books in PDF and EPUB, plus the forty documents printed in Book X as editable Word files. The books are not sold separately.