A comprehensive, actionable guide for rethinking nonprofit organizations, especially their boards.
A guide to understanding and managing nonprofit arts organizations.
The author has extensive experience with theater companies, including productions at Lincoln Center, the Pittsburgh Public Theater, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and he puts that experience to good use here. Harrison contends that the organizational structure of nonprofit boards should be reexamined and notes that leadership strategies that may have worked in the 1970s aren’t viable today. It’s time to start from scratch, he says. After chapters about why boards need to change and the necessity of effective fundraising, the author gets to the crux of his book, which consists of the five responsibilities of nonprofit arts boards: defining a mission, fundraising, choosing an executive director, recruiting other board members, and advocating for the organization. He discusses the importance of studying other organizations and understanding how a board should govern. Finally, Harrison acknowledges that any list of best practices, including his own, may not work for all organizations, and one’s community’s needs should take precedence over all else. He has an easy, engaging style and does more than complain about nonprofit boards (although there’s plenty to complain about): He provides a usable blueprint for how to start, reconfigure, and run a board. “Harrison’s Rules of Order” covers how to conduct efficient meetings and outlines six rules (e.g., “Don’t waste the money you’ve budgeted for board meetings by talking about items that you cannot change”) that will help any arts board meeting—and other boards, as well—run more smoothly. Also included are exercises for boards to tackle together, which are sometimes based on real-life situations. For instance, the author recalls one particularly heinous conversation with a racist board member and asks readers whether he handled the situation well. This is a great starting point for any organization looking to run more smoothly.
A comprehensive, actionable guide for rethinking nonprofit organizations, especially their boards.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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