[Organizers] Non-clique members in sensitive board positions.

Winston, Alan P. via Organizers organizers at lists.sharedweight.net
Tue Apr 26 14:53:28 PDT 2016


My local organization has a board that elects its officers and 
successors, so the struggle always is to keep from getting too 
completely cliquish and inbred.  We did just  recently change 
Treasurers, so it's possible, and we bring up several new board members 
each year (but I have been Chair for a very long time and we should 
probably do something about that).

Treasurer is the hardest position to fill, since you need someone who 
understands the job, can do the job, will keep doing the job even when 
their real job or the rest of their life gets difficult/busy.  It really 
needs to be done professionally (at least in an organization like ours 
which runs 17 dances a month, three week-long camps, and several 
weekends and special events).

We have *never* had two qualified candidates for Treasurer at the same 
time, and we have more often (thought not at all recently) had people 
who weren't able to keep up with the position.   Having two candidates 
is luxury.

It sounds like you have a general election for officers, perhaps 
annually?  Is your incumbent Treasurer (a) doing a good job and (b) 
willing/planning to run again?

Is the problem that you're afraid of having a contested election?

Anyway, based on what little information is here, I can't recommend a 
bylaws change that makes it harder to fill the Treasurer spot with a 
qualified candidate.  I can't even understand it.  Would the bylaws 
change say "you can't be Treasurer unless you've been on the Board for 
five years?"  How would that even work?  If I were a member of the 
organization and I heard that they bylaws had been changed to keep out a 
qualified candidate it would make me wonder if the board were conspiring 
to keep an impartial eye from looking at the books.

As to points 2 and 3:  You do need to mentor new people into 
leadership.  You can also accept qualified new-to-you people into 
leadership positions.  If you do neither, your organization will be 
leaderless as current leadership moves away, develops other interests, 
or dies.

If your bylaws specify that these positions are filled by general 
election among the members then you need to just vote at the general 
election and accept the results.

Points 2 and 3 are both true.  As far as I can tell, point 1 is batsh*t 
crazy.

What do we do to avoid situations like this?  We don't even think this 
is a situation to avoid. If somebody's interested in being on the board 
we let them run for the board (and probably get elected); if they don't 
work out they probably don't run again but probably don't get reelected 
if they do run again.  If they want to do more work we give them more 
work to do.  Why is this a problem?


-- Alan

On 4/26/2016 2:08 PM, Joe Kwiatkowski via Organizers wrote:
> It's annual election time, and a new dancer is answering the call to 
> help the organization.
>
> The individual in question is someone known to a Board member and has 
> "has served with other groups as funds manager/ treasurer type 
> positions".  Using her talents, she has volunteered to lend them to 
> the organization as Treasurer.
>
> This has sparked a battle among (1) we need to amend the by-laws so 
> this can't happen, (2) we need to mentor new people into leadership, 
> (3) we need to just vote at the general election and see what happens.
>
> A supporter of (1) claims that "that's what other clubs do".
>
> So without asking for the entire contra nation to take sides, let me 
> ask you organizers: what would your club do/what does your club do to 
> contend with or avoid situations such as this?
>
> Joe Kwiatkowski
>
>
>
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