#board harmony

CNPE’s 2015 Annual Conference will feature Tom Harvey, the recently retired recently Director of Nonprofit Professional Development at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.  He will be co-presenting a breakout session on increasing board effectiveness by applying aspects of group theory.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Tom has led local and national organizations committed to confronting the challenges of poverty, discrimination, access to health care and human services.  In October 2003, the Council on Social Work Education chose Tom as one of the 50 pioneers within the field of Social Work during the past fifty years.  From 1998 until 2005, Tom served as the Senior Vice President of the Alliance for Children & Families, an international association of 350 private, nonprofit child- and family-serving agencies which strengthen the lives of over 5 million disadvantaged families annually.  

Earlier in his career, Tom served as the President & CEO of Catholic Charities USA, one of the nation’s largest networks of religiously affiliated social service organizations.  

Over the course of his career, Tom has worked with countless boards of directors, observing both their best practices and persistent challenges.  He collected these experiences in a book he co-authored in 2009, with John Tropman, PhD, of the University of Michigan: Nonprofit Governance.

Tom will team up with Marita Willis, Major Gifts Officer for the American Red Cross - a local leader that also brings a tremendous amount of board experience—to lead a breakout session entitled Board Harmony: Using Group Theory to Improve Effectiveness.  In the session, participants will learn how group theory can be applied to enhance the performance of any nonprofit board, how systems can be used to channel the behavior of board members to be better decision-makers, how to apply best practices to their own or other boards, and how the suggested board processes will be even more successful if imbedded into a one-year cycle of planned activities