Having a more “relaxed” set of rules has its place – up to a point. As I said earlier, HamWAN would not be where it is today without them. That said, there is a reason why governance standards have evolved. A quorum requirement ensures that a single individual cannot essentially “bring down” an organization – whether that be intentional or accidental.
It is hard to make a pitch to government or other EMCOMM entities to sign them up and/or pay taxpayer (or other) funds toward HamWAN when it doesn’t even have basic checks and balances in place – i.e. – the potential for one person to drain the bank account or other (insert your favorite foolhardy) act. If I’m a director and I decide I want a fractal flux capacitor for my lab for testing and I’m the only one that votes because everyone else is asleep or out of town, this is a senseless risk that is easily avoided by REQUIRING a YAY or NAY from all directors – we’re not talking rocket or microwave science here, it’s pretty basic.
It ends up being a question of what arena you want to play in. If you want to operate a hobby network that has an EMCOMM element and (HamWAN) funds and supplies the equipment to the EMCOMM agencies, you can probably make it work as-is. If you are representing yourselves as a reliable EMCOMM solution and asking for entities to buy their own equipment and donate to support the network, you have to also pass muster on the organizational front. This includes marketing, support, and finance.
I believe we can get a LOT of EMCOMM interest and support (read FUNDS) for HamWAN if done the right way. We are missing a couple elements before we can say that we’re doing it the “right way”.
Cheers,
Rob
From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces@hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Bart Kus
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 9:39 AM
To: Puget Sound Data Ring
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] director responsibilities
I designed the director role into the constitution in such a way to remove as many obstacles as reasonable in allowing an active supporting member to accomplish the most that they can for HamWAN. Fast voting periods, no need for quorum, discretionary spending without approval required up to a certain limit. While not expressly written down, it's my hope that anyone holding such a position will take advantage of these provisions to move the project forward as quickly as they can.
--Bart
On 2/14/2014 10:46 PM, Tom Hayward wrote:
For those who haven't looked it up, here's the section on director duties from the constitution:
Article IV – Decisions
Director decisions or actions which:
- impact HamWAN finances in excess of $100 USD
- or contractually obligate HamWAN in any way
- or are reasonably judged as significant
shall be announced to all public HamWAN mailing lists. Voting will be considered complete 24 hours after the mailing list announcement of the issue at hand. Decisions shall be rendered approved by a majority vote of the Directors who voted. Directors unfamiliar with the issue at hand are encouraged to abstain from voting. Non-Directors cannot cast votes, although they can communicate with Directors to influence their votes on issues.Over the past year, I saw only a handful of votes cast by directors. Many spending proposals were made and voted on by only Bart. I'd like to see the next batch of directors take a more active role. Moreover, I hope that they generally have a strong understanding of what they are voting on and can justify their votes to the membership.
Tom KD7LXL
On Feb 14, 2014 8:03 PM, "Rob Salsgiver" <rob@nr3o.com> wrote:
I was going to ask if there were any specific duties, responsibilities, and/or expectations for directors – then I went online and looked it up.
In the context of the current vote, is there any value in having a discussion on what expectations there should be of prospective directors?
Cheers,
Rob
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