Feature
January 11, 2010Harris School Offers Nonprofit Governance Mini-Course
Ask average nonprofit executives to rate their boards of directors and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a good grade, says Martin Sinnott, principal of the nonprofit executive search consulting firm Kittleman & Associates. A thirty-year veteran of the nonprofit sector, Sinnott has compiled this and other nonprofit governance challenges into a new Harris School mini-course next month.
Starting February 5th, Sinnott’s noncredit course (Governance and Nonprofit Organizations) devotes three weekly sessions to the fundamentals of nonprofit practices and compliance issues that range from legal expectations to board selection and governance models Sinnott wished he’d learned while getting his master’s degree.
“I think it’s a tough thing to get your arms around,” he says of his course topic. “I don’t think a lot of universities do a very good job of exposing students to that because I think most folks don’t understand it.”
The mini-course comes at a time when more Harris School graduates over the past two years are finding work in the nonprofit realm than any other sector, according to its Career Development Office.
Dean of Students Ellen Cohen says mini-courses have historically been a great way for students to specialize in certain topics the school may not include in its formal coursework. They’re also a way for the school to test the level of student interest in specialized policy realms before committing resources to a full-credit course.
“I don’t think we’ve ever offered course content that focuses solely on governance of the nonprofit realm,” Cohen says. “We have a number of students who go lead NGOs and need to understand how the high-level decisions are made so they will be armed when they go and run their own boards.”
Sinnott has been running such boards since the early ‘90s as the CEO and president of organizations like The Youth Campus and Kids Hope United, which spans four states to work with some 15,000 children and families. He refers to the forthcoming mini-course as his own “tales from the lion’s den.”
“Much of that you learn through trial and error,” he admits. “I hope I can connect some of those pieces to afford these students a little bit of a jump start.”
By Steven Yaccino
Contact Information
Communications Office
Phone: 773-702-7681
