[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Anthere]

Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> 
> 
>>valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
>> 
>>
>>
>>>The community could accept only representative members voted with normal
>>>procedure. 
>>>   
>>>
>>
>>Of course.
>>
>>But community vote is not the only way to get board members.  We have
>>some very good board candidates who are not famous in the community and
>>who could bring to the table professional expertise that we greatly
>>need, but who would not put themselves through the troll wars of an
>>election.
>> 
>>
> 
> This sounds reasonable, although I think they're not entirely different 
> things, if we're speaking in an informal sense (which is really what 
> will dominate community-board relations more than the formal setup 
> will).  It's possible, for example, that there are people who would 
> actually prevail in an election, but are deterred from running because 
> of the election process.  If they were appointed, those people could be 
> said in some tea-leaf-reading sense to actually represent the 
> community.  Then there are gradations---people who wouldn't actually win 
> an election, but who are generally respected and don't engender much 
> objection; then unknown people; and finally people who are actively 
> disliked by a large segment of the community.
> 
> We could try some variation on some of the consensus-style methods we 
> tend to use on the encyclopedia.  For example, solicit nominations, 
> possibly in private, and then privately contact the people nominated to 
> ask if they'd accept a position if chosen.  Then make a (public) list of 
> potential candidates, and solicit feedback on them, possibly 
> privately-expressed feedback so people don't have to publicly attack 
> anyone.  Then appoint the people who have reasonably good consensus 
> support.  Assuming the feedback is indeed expressed in private, and the 
> list is more than a handful of people, those not selected shouldn't 
> really be negatively impacted (not being selected for 2 slots out of a 
> list of, say, 15 isn't particularly bad).
> 
> This is a little trickier than the way we do it on articles, because to 
> avoid public flamewars and driving people off, much of it would have to 
> be done in private communications, and therefore the decision of what 
> constitutes consensus would have to be made by whoever reads those 
> emails.  It could be the current board, or someone they designate.  
> Technically/formally, that would essentially be the board appointing new 
> members itself, but if you five agree to follow some rough community 
> consensus in making those appointments, I'm pretty sure you're not going 
> to actually lie to us and claim someone had consensus support when they 
> didn't, even if we have no way of verifying that.
> 
> Anyway that's a pretty off-the-top-of-my-head outline of how to design a 
> system that merges community consensus and sensitivity towards potential 
> members who aren't politicians, so I'm sure there are better ways of 
> doing it.  I do think some sort of balancing of those goals is 
> necessary, though.
> 
> -Mark


Your email is very interesting Mark.

Before we recruit a new trustee, we should consider the following points 
carefully:
* What sort of person we are looking for, and what skills, qualities or 
experience do they need?
* How will a new potential trustee benefit our organisation? (with 
perhaps a list of benefits / advantages and decide if a candidate will 
meet these.)


To answer these questions, we might look at this list of 12 main roles 
for the board

What do trustees do?

Trustee boards have twelve main roles:

1: Set and maintain vision, mission and values

Generally, I think this will be best done by community members.

2: Develop long-term strategy with the chief executive officer

This might require big shot outsiders, people with a large vision and 
bringing insight we do not necessarily have in our organiation

3: Establish and monitor policies to govern organisational activity 
(guidance of staff, reporting policies, monitoring policies, code of 
conduct, conflict of interest policies)

These might be best done by people who already know a bit about non 
profit organisations.

4: Set up employment procedures, plus recruit and select new trustees board

again, might be better to know non profit organisation, plus human 
management, organisation skills... and probably to know pretty well the 
community.

5: Ensure compliance with governing document. In this case... we should 
first *write* the governing document, which allow us to comply with the 
charitable goals.

May come from community... or not.

6: Ensure accountability as required by law

Here, a board member will legal experience might be best.

7: Ensure compliance with the law

Same

8: Maintain proper fiscal oversight (securing resources, monitoring 
spendings, approval of financial statement, budget, fundraising...)

Requires someone experienced on fiscal issues.
Probably a big shot might help on this side as well (fundraising) or a 
bizdev specialists (both are probably not in the community).


9: Select and support the chief executive

Errrrr. Collective role :-)

10: Respect the role of staff. Staff guidelines.

Tricky in an organisation based largely on volunteers


11: Maintain effective board performance

a performant chair might be best here


12: Promote the organisation

Hiya. All big shots and many community members are good at that. So, 
this is not a major need for the current research of new board members.

---------

if you look at it well, you will see that we probably need one or two 
big shots to help in particular with vision and fundraising issues (in 
short, someone with good insight, and who will make the Foundation 
appears brigther).

We may benefit of professionals who know very well non profit 
organisations management (may or may not come from outside), finances 
and legal issues.

This suggests to me we need probably to expand the board from 5 to 9. My 
best perception of this would be 5-6 from community. And 3-4 outsiders.

I would support Tim resigning as early as possible. I have nothing 
against him, but we need active board members and he is simply not. 
Resigning this summer for example.

Wikimania will be the opportunity to meet a lot of people. Last year 
Wikimania was also that opportunity. We'll also be able to meet 
outsiders over there, and maybe to consider inviting them on the board.

What I would like to is that we replace Tim with an outsider and add two 
community people. Or if more board members are replaced, two outsiders 
and two community people.

But what would be suitable would be to stick to the needs defined above. 
More help in finances, legal, fundraising, non-profit organisation.

Outsiders will obviously be appointed. For community members, we roughly 
have 4 solutions
* board appoint people (benefit, we are more likely to get people with 
the best skills compared with what we need. Drawback : see current 
criticism)
* community votes for people (Drawback : less chance to get great people 
from minority languages or projects. Might miss some great choices.)
* community votes per group perhaps, board pick up in the outcome 
(en.wiki arbitration type). (Drawback : board might be expected to pick 
up those with highest number of votes anyway)
* Board pre-selection, then community vote (Benefit : more likely to get 
what is truely needed).

To remove the bias of large language groups or large projects and to 
make elections a less painful system, we might also rely on a system of 
"grand electeurs" (each language/project nominate a couple of people to 
vote in their name). The "grand electeurs " group being more likely to 
elect people based on their participation on Foundation issues, rather 
than purely on their fame.