How do well-intentioned board oversight mechanisms systematically undermine nonprofit effectiveness, and what can be done to address these failures?

The US nonprofit sector forms the backbone of American civil society, yet its governance structures are fundamentally broken, creating a crisis that threatens the very missions these organizations were designed to protect.

Despite their fiduciary responsibility to advance organizational missions, nonprofit boards frequently engage in counterproductive behaviors that impede strategic execution, compromise operational efficiency, and erode stakeholder confidence.

We will explore these psychological, structural, and institutional factors, then propose a framework for governance reform with targeted interventions to realign board functions with organizational objectives.

Noorain Khan is National Board President of Girl Scouts of the USA and Principal at NFK Philanthropic Strategy.  Noorain previously spent nearly a decade at the Ford Foundation, where she built and led the first-ever discretionary program team and Ford’s work in disability rights and growing it into the largest private funder of disability rights in the world. Her leadership is the subject of a Harvard Law School case study on public sector leadership.  A Rhodes Scholar with degrees from Yale Law, Oxford, and Rice University, she previously served at the White House National Economic Council and Teach For All. Noorain began her career as an attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City.

Ms. Khan is giving a lecture in conjunction with the SPI 415 course Contemporary Issues in Philanthropy taught by Dr. Aly Kassam-Remtulla, Lecturer in Public Policy and Vice Provost for International Affairs at Princeton.  Princeton affiliates and members of the public are warmly welcome to attend this and other public programming associated with the course. 

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