[Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[Michael Snow]

On 8/5/2011 7:17 PM, Nathan wrote:
> John's e-mail reads like a suggestion that the Foundation negotiated
> in bad faith. I hope this isn't the case, although the references made
> to consulting with outside auditors and meetings of the Audit
> Committee suggest this decision may have been conceived prior to the
> Fundraising Summit.
The audit committee met and discussed this in July, so after the 
fundraising summit. I don't know the exact timeline of everything that 
went into this, but at that point it was my sense that it was only just 
coming together as an actual decision, if you will. That's not to say 
that chapter accountability and reporting, particularly around finances, 
has never come up as a concern before. It's enough of a longstanding 
issue that if you think about it, it shouldn't be a real surprise that 
the board would eventually need to give input on it. If there's a 
surprise, it's more that it's hard to predict what will drive the board 
to act on a particular issue at a particular moment. (I'm not exactly 
sure the board can predict it, either. I would have liked it as chair if 
agendas were fully predictable six months in advance, but things don't 
quite work out that way.)

--Michael Snow