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