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Three Legal Duties of a Nonprofit Board Member

Originally written by Paul Thares, former SDSU Extension Community Vitality Field Specialist.

One of the important challenges that many board members and boards have: they lack a strong understanding of their legal duties.

Three Duties at the Root of All Board Member Actions

At the root of conflicts of interest, non-independence, and self-dealing are three simple standards: duty of loyalty, duty of care, and duty of obedience (Herrington, 2017).