[Foundation-l] governance

[George Herbert]

On 4/11/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Non-profits still have money to deal with...
>
> On 4/11/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Insider trading is one example. There are lots of others. Its just
> > > depends on the circumstances.
> >
> > How can you have insider trading in a non-profit? There's nothing to
> > trade...

Right, but nobody owns stock in the organization.  There's no
securities regulation involved.

Someone could misuse WMF funds, which might be criminal and might piss
off donors.  Some of those misuses could be due to conflicts of
interest or some such.  But I don't see how less transparency would
help there.

Usually, the only entities that over-openness could hurt would be the
internal operation of the organization.  Some things, like personnel
matters, may be properly not handled completely in the open, but
generally the laws and regulations about other disclosures are that
there are legally mandated minimum reporting requirements, but no
maximum.  Any public discussion that didn't cause the board to be
neglegent in discharging their duties would be ok, I would think.

Given the specific nature of WMF, I find it hard to see how
over-openness would get in the way of the board discharging their
duties.  One could make a case that it may not be optimal for some
discussions, but that's different than neglegent.

I think that legally, it's ok, and from an organizational standpoint,
we elected the board to run things, inform us, and use your
discretion.  If your judgement says that you want to talk about
something of this magnitude in the open, I don't see any evidence to
the contrary in front of me.  Personally, I appreciate seeing what you
all are thinking about, and i think it's good for the foundation to
run it up the flagpole.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com