About Board Cafe

Board Cafe is pleased to find its new home in Blue Avocado. For 10 years, Board Cafe has been one of the most popular and influentialpublications in the U.S. nonprofit sector.

Ten years of hitting the right notes

CompassPoint Nonprofit Services launched Board Cafe in 1998 to reach a large audience that is more talked about than talked with: members of nonprofit boards of directors. Board Cafe quickly became popular because it was just right for busy board members: short, pithy, practical, real, suited to community-based organizations.

Board Cafe's and Blue Avocado'success and viewpoint come from our commitment to community organizations and our belief in the capabilities and power of volunteer leaders. Board Cafe takes on difficult subjects, such as racial diversity on the boards of ethnic-specific organizations, how to pay the executive director, whether to close down an organization, and what to do you when you really, really disagree with a board decision.

We've found that Board Cafe's readership is eager for dialog: each issue we hear from readers who serve on boards running from youth swim teams to hospitals, from theatres to cancer research laboratories, from preschools to civil rights advocacy organizations. Now, finally, these comments can be actively shared with Board Cafe's community through the Comments Sections at the conclusions of Board Cafe articles.

The Best of the Board Cafe

The Fieldstone Alliance (formerly the Wilder Foundation) published a compilation of materials in The Best of the Board Cafe, which quickly became a bestseller for them and is in its second printing. Its articles are reprinted in dozens of publications each year, and an updated and expanded second edition is planned for the fall of 2008.

Board Cafe's Kitchen Staff

Board Cafe is written by Jan Masaoka, and features occasional guest authors. A volunteer Editorial Committee, whose perspectives and sharp critiques make the column strong, reviews every article in advance. The Committee includes:

• Mike Allison, Michael Allison Consulting
• Pamela Davis, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance Group
• Michael Schley, Schley Look & Guthrie LLP
• Nora Silver, Nonprofit and Public Management Program, Haas School of Business, University of California
• Tim Wolfred, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services

In addition, Karen Aitchison serves as Board Cafe's copy editor. And for nine years until her death last year, Brooke Mahoney of BoardNetUSA served as an energetic member of the Editorial Committee and constant Board Cafe promoter.

The Board Cafe is also grateful to its early supporters more than ten years ago: the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the James Irvine Foundation, and its early co-sponsors, BoardSource and BoardNetUSA.

Join the discussion table at the Board Cafe

We encourage you to register at Blue Avocado (free) so that you can post your comments on articles. We also hope you will join Blue Avocado as a supporting member, for as little as $20 per year. And let us know your ideas for future articles and stories as well.

Thank you for being a part of Board Cafe . . . and now, Blue Avocado!