I’m puzzled by the proposed change to our bylaws. It doesn’t seem to solve the issues it tries to address and it feels like we will be giving away much more than we will be getting.
In particular, if we pass the proposed change we will be giving significant ground on two key issues. One, we will lose our ability to hold our board members accountable every year instead of only every two years. This will almost certainly result in a board that is less responsive to our concerns rather than more responsive. Second, it will likely reduce the pool of future board candidates because the minimum commitment to run for the board will be two years instead of just one year.
In return for the things we will be giving up, what will we gain by the proposed change to our bylaws? I’ve seen three claims in support of the proposed change. First**,** it will improve board continuity; second, it will compensate for the long learning curve for new board members; and third, everybody else does it, so we should too.
On the first point, as far as I know there has never been an incumbent MakeICT board member who did not get re-elected. So if a board member wants to retain their seat, there is little risk they will not get re-elected. This means a new board member will likely be on the board 3 years before running into the existing term limit. For an organization that is as young and growing as fast as we are, this seems like a significant amount of time. For instance, 3 years is longer than we’ve been in the current building. And if a board member is worried they are at risk of not getting re-elected, it’s almost certainly because members are unhappy with something they’ve done on the board. And why should we as members give up our ability to hold board members accountable sooner rather than later?
More directly to this point, it was stated that only 3 out of the 9 board members from last year’s board are on the current board and that this has hurt board continuity. However, the fact is that almost all the members from last year’s board who aren’t on the current board chose not to run for re-election. I know because I was one of them. But this choice wasn’t due to term limits, so extending term limits would have had almost no effect on this decision. It might be good to try to understand why the majority of the board didn’t want to continue on the board, but I feel confident in saying term limits wasn’t the issue.
On the second point, if it takes the better part of the first year on the board to figure out how the board operates and that concerns someone, increasing term lengths to two years won’t do anything to fix the problem. Simply put, the only thing that will fix not being prepared is being prepared. Asking for a mulligan for the first year on the board doesn’t seem like a reasonable solution to the problem. So if it’s a month before the election and someone is thinking about running for the board, but they’ve never attended a board meeting and only recently started following board activity on the Admin list, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are going to have quite an on the job learning curve. A much better solution would be for them to get involved earlier or run for an At-Large board seat rather than starting out running as an officer.
On the third point, that “everybody else has longer terms so why shouldn’t we”, the fact is, most other non-profits have very different organizational structures than we do. So to pick just one isolated item out of context could easily do more harm than good. At some point down the road, when MakeICT is not growing and changing so fast, it may make sense to have longer board terms, especially if the board only meets a few times a year and is focused on strategic issues. But I would much rather see a comprehensive review and rework of our bylaws rather than a series of piecemeal changes. Otherwise you can end up with a mess of inconsistent bylaws that keep the board needlessly twisted in knots.
Finally, while the concerns raised in support of changing the bylaws are real, there is much that can be done to address these concerns without changing the bylaws and possibly making matters worse. For instance, we can work to broaden the pool of qualified candidates who are interested in running for the board. We can work to connect previous board members with new board members to aid continuity. And we can work to ensure that people running for the board are adequately prepared before they run for office. All these actions would help address the concerns raised without requiring any bylaws changes.
Curt Gridley
Former Board Member
Former CNC Area Lead