G took a phone call from the PWCL Development Director this morning. She needed to get my middle name. Why? Because one of the larger funders we're courting needed it. Why? Because it's required by the Patriot Act.
Oh. Wow. My middle name has now entered the work flow of the Patriot Act system. Eep.
Last night was an interesting board meeting. It was an orientation for all the new (and continuing) board members who were elected last month. There was a review of the responsibilities of a non-profit board member as stipulated by Oregon law. And then there was the main business of the evening: getting signed up onto committees.
The facilitator, who was PWCL's interim E.D. for a few months a few years ago, made a radical proposal: collapse our six main committees into just two: Executive and Development.
I was very pleased with this idea. Back when I came onto the board, I wrote a document that suggested that the org basically divide into two halves: service provision, and fundraising. I had thought that the way to implement this idea was to beef up the Fundraising Committee, perhaps even letting it split off as its own organization. Something like "Friends of the Crisis Line".
I've been slowly disillusioned of this idea during the past year, for several reasons...
(1) Now that the organization has a paid Development Director position, she should do the bulk of fundraising work, being merely assisted by the board.
(2) The board members staffing the fundraising committee are just volunteers; we aren't able to do as much work as would be required, or guarantee the necessary stability (e.g. for managing our own volunteer pool). You'd really need a paid position.
(3) A separate fundraising organization would require an independent membership list; this conflicts with the organization's efforts to improve its current list. There's also a conflict of visions: recruit paying "members", who receive a monthly newsletter and renew their status each year -- or recruit "donors" who we ask to give periodically, and who have no official status?
(4) Although, technically, all board members are members of the fundraising committee, the reality has been that no more than three have ever attended a meeting at the same time -- and there have been periods during which I was the only person involved at all.
...The plan put about 5 people on the Executive Committee, and everyone else on the Development Committee, guarantees that the fundraising function will finally get adequate staffing. It also matches pretty well with my sense that a lot of the different committee functions were already overlapping, e.g. Finance, Personel, and Strategic Planning are all basically about making the big decisions about the organization's direction. The people who are making these decisions all have to be in communication with each other anyway -- it makes sense for them to all be a part of one decision-making body.
I still have some concerns. I wonder if the amount of work that needs to get done can be accomplished with only meeting once a month. ...I've been told that it's a sign of overcommiting our resources if we meet more often. Hm. I'm also still somewhat fuzzy about what the relationship will be between the Development Director and the Development Committee. ...I've been told that it will be somewhat akin to the relationship of the Executive Director to the Executive Committee -- we oversee her, but she does the bulk of the work. But the E.D. will also have to attend our meetings, since she's the D.D.'s supervisor.
Last night also provided an excellent opportunity for me to get out of being the Fundraising Committee chair -- without even having to say anything. Our first (ever) Development Director was fired, and our second has just announced that she'll be leaving the organization. It's been very disorienting for me, trying to figure out my position in the organization, given these circumstances. I think the most important fact to comprehend is that hiring a D.D. at all, has radically changed the nature of fundraising at PWCL. What this means has yet to really be worked out.
Given the big change, it's (I hope) somewhat understandable that most of the projects I was promoting when I first joined the organization have had to be abandoned. I find this very embarassing. I know that one or two people are sort of wondering whatever happened to those initiatives. I gave a presentation two months ago, talking about the state of fundraising at the organization, that I think summed things up pretty well. But not everyone heard it. It leaves me thinking that I should probably write up a new document -- that either talks about changes in my personal vision, or forgets about the past and just sums up my thoughts about where we are now.
Whatever I do, I think that as we enter the new committee structure, I need to go into a more back-seat role for a while. I'm afraid that this will increase the perception that I'm not pulling my weight -- but I think at this point, I need to just see what direction things are going to go in, before I make new promises or proposals to anyone.
Oh. Wow. My middle name has now entered the work flow of the Patriot Act system. Eep.
Last night was an interesting board meeting. It was an orientation for all the new (and continuing) board members who were elected last month. There was a review of the responsibilities of a non-profit board member as stipulated by Oregon law. And then there was the main business of the evening: getting signed up onto committees.
The facilitator, who was PWCL's interim E.D. for a few months a few years ago, made a radical proposal: collapse our six main committees into just two: Executive and Development.
I was very pleased with this idea. Back when I came onto the board, I wrote a document that suggested that the org basically divide into two halves: service provision, and fundraising. I had thought that the way to implement this idea was to beef up the Fundraising Committee, perhaps even letting it split off as its own organization. Something like "Friends of the Crisis Line".
I've been slowly disillusioned of this idea during the past year, for several reasons...
(1) Now that the organization has a paid Development Director position, she should do the bulk of fundraising work, being merely assisted by the board.
(2) The board members staffing the fundraising committee are just volunteers; we aren't able to do as much work as would be required, or guarantee the necessary stability (e.g. for managing our own volunteer pool). You'd really need a paid position.
(3) A separate fundraising organization would require an independent membership list; this conflicts with the organization's efforts to improve its current list. There's also a conflict of visions: recruit paying "members", who receive a monthly newsletter and renew their status each year -- or recruit "donors" who we ask to give periodically, and who have no official status?
(4) Although, technically, all board members are members of the fundraising committee, the reality has been that no more than three have ever attended a meeting at the same time -- and there have been periods during which I was the only person involved at all.
...The plan put about 5 people on the Executive Committee, and everyone else on the Development Committee, guarantees that the fundraising function will finally get adequate staffing. It also matches pretty well with my sense that a lot of the different committee functions were already overlapping, e.g. Finance, Personel, and Strategic Planning are all basically about making the big decisions about the organization's direction. The people who are making these decisions all have to be in communication with each other anyway -- it makes sense for them to all be a part of one decision-making body.
I still have some concerns. I wonder if the amount of work that needs to get done can be accomplished with only meeting once a month. ...I've been told that it's a sign of overcommiting our resources if we meet more often. Hm. I'm also still somewhat fuzzy about what the relationship will be between the Development Director and the Development Committee. ...I've been told that it will be somewhat akin to the relationship of the Executive Director to the Executive Committee -- we oversee her, but she does the bulk of the work. But the E.D. will also have to attend our meetings, since she's the D.D.'s supervisor.
Last night also provided an excellent opportunity for me to get out of being the Fundraising Committee chair -- without even having to say anything. Our first (ever) Development Director was fired, and our second has just announced that she'll be leaving the organization. It's been very disorienting for me, trying to figure out my position in the organization, given these circumstances. I think the most important fact to comprehend is that hiring a D.D. at all, has radically changed the nature of fundraising at PWCL. What this means has yet to really be worked out.
Given the big change, it's (I hope) somewhat understandable that most of the projects I was promoting when I first joined the organization have had to be abandoned. I find this very embarassing. I know that one or two people are sort of wondering whatever happened to those initiatives. I gave a presentation two months ago, talking about the state of fundraising at the organization, that I think summed things up pretty well. But not everyone heard it. It leaves me thinking that I should probably write up a new document -- that either talks about changes in my personal vision, or forgets about the past and just sums up my thoughts about where we are now.
Whatever I do, I think that as we enter the new committee structure, I need to go into a more back-seat role for a while. I'm afraid that this will increase the perception that I'm not pulling my weight -- but I think at this point, I need to just see what direction things are going to go in, before I make new promises or proposals to anyone.
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