Roles and composition of nonprofit boards: a dynamic vision

For decades, scientific literature identifies the roles that a nonprofit board should assume, adopting too often a normative and static view on the issue. If a clear view is absolutely desirable, we refuse to endorse simplistic views on governance. Indeed, the heterogeneity of nonprofit organizations, the diversity of governance mechanisms, the fact that external and internal pressures do design governance models and the importance of time factor lead us to consider that governance models cannot be established once and for all but have to be thought in a dynamic process. The model that we present here underlies a dynamic vision of the roles and the composition of nonprofit boards.