Associate professor of law Faith Rivers James led a Dec. 9 workshop presentation at the South Carolina Nonprofit Legal Symposium, sponsored by the South Carolina Association of Nonprofit Organizations for its 800-plus members.
Rivers James discussed fiduciary duties under South Carolina and model nonprofit corporation statutes that establish standards of conduct for directors of nonprofit corporations. She considered the challenges to effective board governance, including board composition, social norms and conflicts of interest.
Rivers James suggested that practitioners and scholars consider the intersection between these state statutory duties and federal intervention into nonprofit governance through the Internal Revenue Service’s intermediate sanctions regulations, applications for tax exempt status, and nonprofit annual tax return filings.
She has written about the fiduciary duty of obedience and nonprofit board composition in her most recent article, “Bridging the Black-Green-White Divide: The Impact of Diversity in Environmental Nonprofits,” which is forthcoming in the William and Mary Environmental Law Review.
Previously, Rivers James received the David Stevenson Fellowship for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Studies by the National Academic Centers Council. She will teach Nonprofit Law, Policy and Practice in the spring.