About the Leadership Roundtable
The National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management is an organization of laity, religious, and clergy working together to promote excellence and best practices in the management, finances, and human resource development of the Catholic Church in the U.S. through the greater incorporation of the expertise of the laity. We are a Catholic 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that brings together leaders from the worlds of business, finance, academia, philanthropy, non-profit organizations, and the Church to serve the Catholic Church in the United States.
Learn more about the Leadership Roundtable here.
About the Best Practices Forum
This forum is an online learning community for Catholics interested in, and making use of, best management practices in the Church. Based on the Leadership Roundtable's Standards for Excellence program this forum facilitates the sharing of ideas, practices, and management challenges.

Volunteer pastoral council and finance council members at dioceses and parishes, stewardship committee members, pastors, parish and diocesan leadership, board members and staffs of Catholic nonprofits, religious community members and leaders, and Catholic school leadership - all who have an interest in the good stewardship of their resources are invited to join in this online learning community.

The Standards for Excellence are intended to describe how the most well managed and responsibly governed dioceses, parishes and Catholic nonprofits operate.  They provide benchmarks related to temporal affairs to determine how well a diocese, parish or Catholic nonprofit is fulfilling its obligations to those who benefit from its ministry programs, to contributors, and to the public both inside and outside the Church.

Eight (8) Guiding Principles are provided, along with fifty-five (55) standards - more detailed performance benchmarks that will enable Catholic parishes, dioceses and nonprofits to strengthen their operations.  

These guiding principles have developed the core discussion forums of this site.  They are:

• Mission Statement and Ministry Program

• Governance and Advisory Bodies

• Conflict of Interest

• Human Resources

• Financial and Legal

• Openness

• Fundraising

• Public Life and Public Policy

Affiliate Groups

Are you a national or local organization/association dedicated to practices related to the Catholic Standards for Excellence 8 Guiding Principles?  Are you a part of a (arch)diocese or religious community that could benefit from establishing an online forum to share practices with each other?  If so, why not create your own exclusive group on the Standards for Excellence Forum.  Find out more information here.

Benefits and ways to contribute

Here are some of the many ways you can benefit and contribute to this learning community:

• Ask a management dilemma in one of our 8 forums based on the Standards for Excellence guiding principles.

• Post a best practice or policy so that others may benefit.

• Develop a personal page for content and information about yourself and your best practice ideas and practices.

• View a previously recorded best practice webinar in our Standards for Excellence webinar library.

• Begin a public web log (blog) of all of your management challenges and solutions so that others may learn from your experiences and offer comments and alternate ideas.