As you know, we recently announced a restructuring of the Board of
Trustees, which added two new avenues for selecting board members. One
of these is the two seats to be selected by the chapters; the other is
the use of a Nominating Committee to assist the community
representatives in identifying needed expertise to fill out the board.
This note is about the formation of the Nominating Committee. (The
chapters are actively discussing their selection process, and we'll have
more information about that once it is finalized.)
The job of the Nominating Committee is to identify, research and
pre-screen potential candidates for the appointed board positions
involving "specific expertise". There are four of those seats in total;
two are currently vacant, and the others are filled by Jan-Bart de
Vreede and Stuart West. The Nominating Committee will not itself
determine who takes those seats. Its job is to make recommendations to
the community members on the board, who will make the final decision.
(The appointed board members will not vote in these decisions, since it
affects them personally.)
The Nominating Committee will include the following:
* Two members of the current Board of Trustees
* Two members of the volunteer community
* One member of our Advisory Board
* Sue Gardner, our Executive Director
Here's how we expect the nomination process will work:
* First, the board will brief the Nominating Committee regarding its
role, the restructuring, and the board's assessment of its own strengths
and skills gaps. That briefing will result in a set of criteria for
potential board candidates.
* Then, the Nominating Committee will generate a list of possible board
members. All community members should feel free to contribute to this
list by sending names to any member of the Nominating Committee at any
time. Names will also be generated by the Nominating Committee's own
research, as well as recommendations solicited from other friends and
supporters of Wikimedia.
* Once the Nominating Committee has generated a full and rich list of
possibilities, it will begin a research and screening phase. At that
point, it will research the names which have been put forward, and
assess their fit against the selection criteria developed earlier. This
will result in a shortlist of candidates.
* Once the shortlist has been developed, the Nominating Committee will
begin contacting candidates to assess their level of interest in us.
* At that point, the Nominating Committee will deliver to the board a
final list of interested candidates who fit the criteria for the
"specific expertise" roles. The goal will be to give the board a full
briefing on the top eight candidates for the four "expertise" seats,
along with a recommendation for the four who the Nominating Committee
thinks would be the best fit.
* Then the community board members (currently myself, Kat, Frieda,
Domas, Ting, and Jimmy) will vote to determine who will fill the four seats.
The goal is to have the four seats filled by January. The appointed
board members' terms end in December, and this process would be repeated
each year.
Of course the Nominating Committee, once established, is free to adjust
and refine this process if it wants to. For example, if a current
appointed board member should be retained for continuity, that may be
handled more simply, although we also anticipate that these seats will
bring in fresh voices from time to time. But at any rate, we imagine the
nominating process will work more-or-less as described here.
So the purpose of this message is both to describe the process for
filling those seats, and to ask for volunteers to fill the two
"volunteer community" spots on the Nominating Committee. If you are
interested in helping us by serving on the Nominating Committee, please
send a note to me, or Sue, or any board member. We would like to hear
from anyone who has the time and the interest to participate, and
especially if you have any experience in non-profit management or
governance, or in hiring. If you're interested, please let us know
within the next week.
--Michael Snow