[Evergreen-governance-l] Governance: two outstanding action items

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:40:43PM -0500, Steve Wills wrote:
> Thanks Dan,
> 
> With the exception of your observation of an ultimate deterrent to member conflicts, I didn't see any discussion on this question.   I sit on my town's planning board and, because of my affiliation with Lyrasis, the question of a conflict arises for me whenever our town librarian proposes an RFP.   We have specific procedures for determining when and if there is a conflict.  Everyone on this board now is pretty seasoned and will know how and when to withdraw from a vote.  If it is left unaddressed, my question is if the board will always be so lucky? Isn't it prudent to at least take a look at guidelines of other non-profit boards and add  2.7 (b) to the effect that, 

You might be assuming that nobody has looked at the guidelines of other
non-profit boards already. I've found a number that have developed
conflict of interest guidelines as a separate policy document (often 7
or more pages in length) and I don't see why we couldn't follow the same
direction. I don't think the policy needs to be part of the rules of
governance right from the start, though.
 
> 2.7 (b) If a board member is unsure if he/she or any other board member has a conflict, the matter may be resolved by consulting with......   etc. etc.
> 
> I would be happy to do a survey of how other NGO's and projects handle this case and suggest some more wording unless y'all really don't think it's worth the effort?

I think it would be a worthy subcommittee effort to define a separate
policy statement on conflicts of interest once the Evergreen Oversight
Board is operational.