How To Form A Nonprofit Advisory Board: Fill & Download for Free

Don’t do it on your own.Enrol a group of supporters, some of whom could later form your Advisory or Trustee or Director’s board, depending on which country it is based.It all depends on the laws of your country - investigate those as carefully as you can.Try, as far as possible, to forecast your income and expenditure for the first few years; and use this to decide what proportion of your income will be from trading, grants/donations, and debt or equity finance.

It’s best if people know what they are getting into. Is there a job description for each? A commitment form that explains in more detail (e.g., meeting attendance and schedule, serve on a commitment, make an annual gift, be a member, declare and manage conflicts of interest, abide by Code of Conduct - whatever makes sense in your organization. if it’s signed in advance it’s easier to hold people to their commitments. If you just ask and can’t explain, they won’t know what they are accepting and probably it won’t be a fit. Hire carefully; it’s hard to get rid of bad board members.If you are a brand new organization, tell people that and ask them to help develop that information, without a long term obligation to stay on the board. If the organization already exists, set up an interview committee and treat board service like an unpaid job. If possible have them sit in on a board meeting.How to invite? Ask your connections to suggest others to talk to and maybe invite or get other names from them, with as broad a reach as makes sense for your nonprofit. Ask people to apply using the social media sites where the type of people you want hang out. See if anyone you know has access to a listserve or e-newsletter that might reach the right kinds of people.Try NOT to ask family, friends and immediate neighbours. Reach for diversity from the start, in as many ways as you can, and balance board skill needs with lived experience relevant to the organization as the two key factors.P.S. The term MY Nonprofit may turn people off. Nonprofits are community-based (the community may be one block or a whole country) and no one person can own them. I don’t know your role but there is no controlling role at a nonprofit.

Because despite what these meta-analyses say, many patients subjectively find SSRIs to have awesome clinical results, and this experience is objectively corroborated by highly-trained psychiatrists/psychologists. Combine that with the fact that SSRIs are easy to prescribe, (relatively) easy to monitor, and easy to take, and you have a recipe for a popular class of drug.Your Wikipedia source claims that "Two meta-analyses of clinical trials published in 2008 and 2011 found that in mild and moderate depression, the effect of SSRIs is small or none compared to placebo, while in very severe depression the effect of SSRIs is between 'relatively small' and 'substantial'."Um...how about we actually read the papers, because clearly whoever wrote that has minimal understanding of their significance.PAPER #1:2008 paper: Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration[1]The entire analysis relies on use of the Hamilton Rating Scale of Depression, which is an ancient scale developed in the late 1950s and first published in 1960; in the 5+ decades since, its use has fallen out of clinical favor as our understanding of mental health has increased [The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale: Has the Gold Standard Become a Lead Weight?]. So...while it's one of the better standards we have, claiming that lack of change on this scale is some sort of brilliant objective clinical data point to discredit all SSRIs is, to put it mildly, premature.Why? Because the overall change on the scale is not always helpful; suicidal ideations can increase but if sleep quality goes up, your overall score can deceivingly "improve" despite clear clinical deterioration. So if you actually pull up a copy of the scale, the extra mean improvement of 1.8 points in the drug group is easily HUGE if that improvement is in the right category; notably, the authors of this paper fail to recognize this.Ok, so the scale's not perfect. But it's what we use for clinical trials! Surely, it must mean something?Absolutely: these authors quietly admitted in their paper that the 1.8 point difference caused by the drugs "easily attained statistical significance"....wait, what?Yeah. Their meta-analysis actually found that SSRIs have a statistically significant impact. They then go on to attempt to discredit this inconvenient result...which makes me think this was a paper published primarily to attract attention and garner controversy, not objectively report findings.PAPER #22011 paper: Antidepressant Drug Effects and Depression Severity: A Patient-Level Meta-analysisConclusion: "The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo increases with severity of depression symptoms and may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms. For patients with very severe depression, the benefit of medications over placebo is substantial."Translation: the worse the depression, the more effective medication therapy can be. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that gee, yeah, if symptoms aren't bad, you might not need medication for them. All this paper tells us is what's already done in clinical practice: attempt first-line therapies such as psychological counseling before utilizing pharmacologic adjuncts. So...this paper isn't exactly ground-breaking either.In addition, if you actually look at this paper's data, half of it involves imipramine, a really old tricyclic antidepressant developed in the 1950s that isn't even in common use anymore for depression, especially compared to SSRIs. So...I don't understand why the Wikipedia article on SSRIs even bothered citing this paper as relevant when half the data involved a different class of drug; the results clearly do not necessarily extrapolate.While not necessarily related to the integrity of the paper, I also tend to stop caring about what a paper's authors say when I see a financial disclosure list this big:Financial Disclosures: Dr Amsterdam reported serving on the speakers' bureau of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Bristol Myers Squibb; receiving research support from Novartis, Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Cephalon, and Forest Laboratories; and serving as a consultant for Bristol Myers Squibb. Dr Shelton reported serving as a consultant to AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Evotec, Forest Pharmaceuticals, Gideon Richter, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Ostuka Pharmaceuticals, Pamlab, Pfizer, Repligen, Sierra Neuropharmaceuticals, and Wyeth; receiving speaking honoraria from AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Forest Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Pamlab, Pfizer, and Wyeth; and receiving research and/or grant support from Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Evotec, Forest Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Ostuka Pharmaceuticals, Pamlab, Pfizer, Repligen, and Wyeth. Dr Fawcett reported serving as a consultant to Abbott Laboratories, Merck, and Slack; receiving speaking honoraria from Eli Lilly; and serving as a board member for the Berman Center and on the scientific advisory boards for the nonprofit advocacy organizations NARSAD and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Dr Fawcett also reported providing expert testimony on cases involving pharmaceutical companies including Banner Health and Alphapharm and currently chairing the Mood Disorders Work Group for the forthcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition). No other disclosures were reported.In summary: the Wikipedia article and its two "supporting" citations do not represent a very cohesive, comprehensive, or scientifically sound view of SSRIs. Please follow the recommendations of your physician when it comes to medications, and bring up any concerns with the appropriate healthcare provider before making any decisions based on random things found on the internet.