Hello everyone,
There has been a bit of discussion recently about Non Profit Foundations
and their organisation. Michael Davis has been discussing a lot in the
past few days with a lawyer we are working with, and amongst various
conclusions, it was recommanded that we try to anticipate the best we
could our growth curve and to get a strong legal framework in place
asap. Which seems to involve good functioning structure... and sticking
a bit more to traditional board governance procedures, with some
evolution in the way we handle agendas, minutes, bylaws, resolution,
board manual, insurance and so on.
We are currently working on all this very much. Each according to its
own ability.
Some of this can only be done by board members proper, other tasks can
also be supported by officers, and some can involve anyone who is
serious and supportive.
Amongst the tasks I will try to take care of in the next few weeks (or
months...) is documentation, such as typically board manual. Michael has
provided us with some documentation (such as
http://www.boardsource.org/FullAnswer.asp?ID=98) and I gathered some
more as well. Most of what is typically required on a board manual, we
already have, but it is dispersed on at least 3 different wikis and
poorly organised. This is unfortunate.
Board governance is not something new and there is no reason for us to
reinvent the wheel. When I looked at some of these pages, I recognised
areas where we have indeed tried to reinvent the wheel... other areas we
have never explored at all, areas where we found our own balance and
areas which are still a mess :-)
I invite you to join and help the way you can if you have such a desire.
Either help to organise the structure of the future document (and more
generally Foundation website), help to gather what already exist, help
write what does *not* exist, help fix poor english, help translate (much
later) some of the pages.
If you are interested, please, let's talk about this on meta or by irc.
I presume this will be very boring for most editors here, so it will
probably rarely be mentionned on the list, but if you wish to help,
please jump in any time.
thanks
Ant