On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 6:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.comwrote:
Bishakha Datta, 02/11/2012 17:08:
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Benjamin Lees wrote:
This doesn't seem too unreasonable in itself, but it is somewhat
surprising that you didn't readjust the board's composition accordingly. The justification for having unelected seats is to ensure that the board has people with specific skills or backgrounds, and my impression was that getting someone with accounting experience to serve as treasurer was part of that.
And that accounting experience is still very much needed on the Board - to head the Audit Committee and to oversee the treasurer.
This seems quite a weak answer to Benjamin's point: if the experience of an "expert" board member is relevant/needed only for one committee which can consist also of non-board members (who in principle can also head it), then the board may well decide to restrict his/her partecipation to that committee, to take advantage of that experience where it's most effective and free a board position to allow further diversification and expansion of board member experiences.
The point I didn't make explicit is that someone on the board needs to
embody the notion of financial accountability - although all of us, as trustees, see this as part of our fiduciary duties, it is extremely useful to have among us, a trustee, who 'owns' the overall concept, and pushes to consistently strengthen financial accountability (as part of overall accountability), both at the Foundation and across the movement.
Best Bishakha