Thanks, Bill Schubart, for this very insightful commentary.
Having studied nonprofit scandals and nonprofit dysfunction for many years, I can confirm that Mr. Schubart's analysis could be very accurately applied to most nonprofit failures I have seen.
The tragedy of it all is that these failures are so destructive to community and the formation, or destruction, of trust in the nonprofit sector.
Without the nonprofit sector, our society would be doomed - just look at the state of government at many (but not all) levels.
On the brighter side, scandals that result from what Mr. Schubart describes are highly preventable.
To do so requires intervention at the board level to put into place the organizational infrastructure that empowers board members to take control during times of organizational stress and empower board members to identify and expose internal problems and nip them in the bud.
While such failures are often failures of the person, most times they are failures of the organization - that is, inadequate infrastructure of internal procedures and bylaws - coupled with a lack of transparency at the board level.
Do you know that in many nonprofits, board members are legally culpable, yet they do not even have unfettered access to internal records? Board members are often in an impossible situation where they have legal culpability but they lack the practical power to obtain information that they critically need to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities.
If preventing nonprofit dysfunction and scandals is of interest to you, I wrote a book, Advancing Nonprofit Stewardship Through Self-Regulation: Translating Principles into Practice (Kumarian Press).
The book empowers board members to fulfill their fiduciary duties and identifies how board members can create the specific internal infrastructure necessary to achieve that. My research includes a study of the best practices of A-rated nonprofits' internal bylaws and procedures.