[HamWAN PSDR] director responsibilities

[Rob Salsgiver]

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 at 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 at 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

 


_______________________________________________
PSDR mailing list
PSDR at hamwan.org
http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org






_______________________________________________
PSDR mailing list
PSDR at hamwan.org
http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.hamwan.net/pipermail/psdr/attachments/20140218/eddc999b/attachment.html>