On 8/9/2011 1:43 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
One possible way to decentralise whilst maintaining or even improving fiscal accountability would be to replace the Audit committee with a group audit committee. I'm familiar with this model here in the UK in our not for profit housing sector - basically multiple organisations in the same group are audited by the same committee. To keep the committee to a manageable size you wouldn't have every chapter on it every year, and you would probably continue to have independents as now. But I would hope you'd avoid having a majority from any one continent let alone one country. Also as a matter of good governance there should be a separation of powers - none of our treasurers should serve on it without at least a break of a year since serving as a treasurer.
If you're talking about overseeing a financial audit process, I doubt that a group audit committee would be at all efficient, because of the need to comply with requirements that vary in detail from one jurisdiction to the next. If you're talking about an audit committee to monitor risk factors more generally, then the existing audit committee already takes it as being part of its mandate to study risks for the movement as a whole. For example, see http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_risks_2009
As to the idea of decentralization, I'm having trouble seeing why this suggestion would be the place to start. I don't know if it's a meaningful difference in function, so I'm skeptical as to what the proposal would accomplish.
--Michael Snow