As a board member of a NFP organisation, during your work you must have come across various financial questions (and not only!) that you wished someone had given answers to. The good news is that someone did! This someone is the Institute of Community Directors Australia and now they offer the absolutely free and extremely useful book Damn Good Advice for Board Members: Twenty-five questions a not-for-profit board member needs to ask about the finances.

The Institute of Community Directors Australia is an Our Community enterprise which has a leading role for providing training, qualification, information and tools for not-for-profits in Australia. It is the best practice governance network for members of NFP boards, councils and committees, as well as for other senior employees in the field. Their new book is part of the national financial literacy programme Community Smart and was published with the help of the Commonwealth Bank NFP Sector Banking.

So what is the book all about? As the title says, it answers 25 very important questions that every board member needs information about, starting with “How did I get there?”, going through “What’s our profit margin?” and “What’s the cost of our fundraising?” and ending with “Who can I complain to?” Many of the topics provide extremely useful resources in terms of sample documents and forms – standing orders, project budget, overhead costs, calculation of profit margin etc., or even parts from the Law that you will need for your work. At the end of the book, you will find a glossary of some NFP and financial terms, and a financial literacy self-assessment quiz that will show you the areas you need to know more about.

So let’s see what exactly you can expect from the book. Question 14 asks “How do we handle our annual budget?” The book follows a certain style – there is a page of explanation, and after it there may be a sample to help you understand or explain things to yourself with practical examples. In this case, the book explains what exactly budgeting is, who is responsible for it and what you need to have in mind, and all that – in a couple of paragraphs. After that, you are presented with a Sample Annual Budget coming from a real NFP organisation.

The book is written in an extremely clear, down-to-earth and easy to understand style. Check out the following two paragraphs coming from the chapter discussed above: “This isn’t just a formality. The board has to sign off on what’s going to be bought and what’s going to be spent, and any purchasing or spending that hasn’t been approved is unauthorised, improper and grounds for dismissal. Budgeting is simply the process of planning your organisation’s finances for 12 months. It’s all the activities you plan to undertake in the next 12 months, expressed in terms of money. Ideally, it’s the first year of your business plan, expressed with more precision.”

‘Damn Good Advice for Board Members’ is an invaluable book everyone related to NFP finances needs to have. It can serve as a guide, as an information source, as a textbook or just as a reference book. And the greatest part is, as we already said, that it is absolutely free of charge. You can read it online, download it as a PDF for future reference, or even order a free hard-copy for your office. All of these options are available on the book page on the Institute of Community Directors Australia. Just check it out – you don’t lose anything, but you are certain to learn a lot. Happy reading!