Accountability is created by the tension that exists between groups that watch each other. Having a set of committees reporting to a single board is simply a pyramid. A director (CEO, whatever you wish to call the position) and their team is one locus of control. A board is another. The board's task is to offer guidance, select individuals to perform specific tasks, remove non-performers from office and so on. But the actual running of the organisation is left to the director and team. Reconstituting Anthere's list of committees into a set of line functions overseen by a director would look as follows: * Finance and internal audit - task is to ensure bookkeeping, and audit, as well as assist auditors appointed by board; insurance can be pasted in here as well. * Chapters - I'm assuming this has some oversight of the projects? * Communications and Public Relations - press releases, events, promotions, as well as watching media for outside coverage, etc. * Information technology and technical development - server maintenance and development * Special projects - should this simply be part of an enlarged Chapters role? * Legal - specialist required in international law, trademarks, etc. * Fundraising - works closely with communications and PR * HR and admin - if you are going to have an office, you need to ensure it gets cleaned, stocked with coffee / tea, salaries paid on time, contracts drawn up ... that sort of thing * Director / CEO - the boss, and reports directly to the board These are all simply technical roles - there is no assumption that they would be a single person, or a group, simply tasks that may need to be performed. The board gets standardised feedback and has the right to intervene to fire the director or any of the other role-players. The board does not run the operation, it simply has oversight and ultimate control. The director knows that they report to the board. Board's normally do not require a massive time commitment and so they can be stocked with celebrities who are able to open doors (and consequently make the fundraising task a lot easier). Typically, any organisation has the following core requirements: * financial control * marketing * strategic planning * operational support (includes: IT, legal, HR and so on) You could, depending on the work-load, bundle many of these tasks together: * finance, internal audit, admin, hr * IT, technical development * chapters, special projects * communications, PR, fundraising * legal * director So then you need six people in your head office. Your board could be as large as you like (remembering that the bigger your board, the harder it is to get everyone to get together at the same time, or agree on anything). The overall strategy - it goes without saying - can be the responsibility of the board. Implementation belongs to the director. Anthere again: "Generally, I believe the projects will not accept *anyone* as head of a project, with absolute power. The projects organise themselves independently of the Foundation, only respecting the general goal of the project and a couple of core rules (licence, wikilove and neutrality essentially)." I don't suggest anything like absolute power (editorial control, that sort of thing) but it is useful to have a person in charge who keeps track of what is going on. They act as champion for the project. If you really want to create a Chinese wall between the Foundation and its projects then you have to have someone at any particular project that the Foundation can talk to. Someone has to guarantee the core rules will be applied. It's no good simply cutting a perfectly good project loose when it crosses the line. Someone, tasked with championing the project, should have the job of keeping the project inside those lines ... as gently as possible. Only when they completely loose the ability to control those guidelines should a project be cut.