Samuel Klein writes:
I
think the board's primary fiduciary responsibility is in ensuring
that the
oversight of the projects not fall into the hands of any special
interests,
something which giving outside experts seats on the board makes more
likely.
The board has many fiduciary responsibilities, and the one you name
here is not "primary" -- it's not the nature of fiduciary
responsibilities that one is primary over the others. As to what is
"more likely," it is worth noting that the appointed seats have one-
year terms, while the chapters and community-elected seats have two
year terms (in general) -- whoever is elected to the seat currently
held by Florence will serve only a one-year term, but the seat will
have two-year terms thereafter.
How is adding Board members with expertise more
suitable than having a
deeply trusted Board acquire and rely on a more broadly talented
advisory
board?
You could ask the opposite of this question -- why shouldn't someone
who qualifies as a member of a broadly talented advisory board not be
eligible to be appointed to the Foundation board. Either you trust
your talented resources or you do not. The restructuring assumes that
trustworthy people can be found, either within the community (however
you choose to understand "community") or outside it.
My case for the converse is a worry about corruption.
Community
members who
have devoted a significant portion of their lives to the project and
demonstrated their gut-level appreciation of the value and necessity
of the
projects are far less corruptible than interested and talented
outsiders;
while the breadth of the projects' appeal has granted us the benefit
of
contributions from experts from all walks of life.
I am not sure what kind of "corruption" you fear. I'm not sure I
grasp what kind of corruption is even possible.
This is a strawman. The current board is a good one,
and
recognizes that
the power to organize, inform, and guide the projects' social and
creative
content movements lies with the community.
If this is true, then it is within the realm of possibility that the
current, good board made a wise set of decisions and ought to be given
the benefit of the doubt. I tend to be an empiricist about such
matters -- if there are changes, I try to keep an open mind and
observe whether the changes are generating good or bad results. Human
enterprises being as complex and unpredictable as they are, I've often
found that my greatest sense of doom was associated with changes that
turned out to be for the best, while I've been blase about what I
thought were minor changes that turned out to have grave
consequences. Nowadays, I try not to assume I know in advance how
everything is going to turn out.
1. When the board changes the bylaws on short notice,
it sets a
precedent
for future boards to do the same.
The board restructuring and the concerns it addresses have been
concerns of the Board for a long time, and not secretly either. I
don't think "short notice" is justified.
As an aside -- the Foundation is coming to see itself
as "a multi-
million
dollar non-profit" and not "a foundation to support and expand a
polylingual
collaborative the size and output of the Marshall Islands".
These two notions do not stand in any logical opposition to each other.
--Mike