SCN: RE: Now what?

[Steve Guest]

Joe the challenge is getting to any consensus for the board is not easy when
it is forced to listen and be directed by the previously discussed
membership.  The board has to assume the volunteers are working for the good
of the organization.  It only takes one of the volunteers to become loud,
disruptive, dictatorial or inactive for a form of negative cancer to grow
inside the organization.  Add to this a lack of understanding of the roles
and responsibilities of a board member by many volunteers.

Ti summed up the challenge of SCN really well - getting things done within
SCN is like herding bumble bees.  Until the concept of membership is well
formulated the board is almost powerless to get things done but personally
responsible for every volunteer's actions.  This is one of the joys of a
charity over a true limited company.

The lack of creditability of board members is the apparent outcome.  Those
outside the board see only their part of the elephant.  They complain about
the elephant from their point of view.  They are correct to complain but
they need to remember the board has to deal with the whole elephant.  Thus
some are concerned about the phone lines and the equipment, some are
concerned about the giveaway program, some are concerned about the budget,
others are concerned about the legal standing and they each complain about
the whole from their myopic view of the organization.  The board has to try
to deal fairly with everything.

For example; on the legal side alone, let us just look at some of the not
creditable work the board had to do which JJ so easily sweeps away.  Setting
up the copyright agent details before the federal government closed our web
site down, the attending court (several times) to stop the seizure of all
our equipment when a free web site owner published something inappropriate
about someone else, the moves to stop the equipment being seized when a free
web site owner started up a credit card scam, the meetings to pacify someone
who felt a volunteer was so rude to them they made a police complaint, the
setting up of state required background checks for any volunteer we allowed
to interact with a vulnerable member of the public and the list goes on and
on, but no one who makes sure the equipment is running or is maintaining
phones lines would know this or even considers it relevant.

The adding of new volunteers to the board may be the solution.  Yet these
new board members need to know they do not get a free hand because of the
way SCN/SCNA was setup.  They also need to understand they are taking on a
large level of responsibility.

Steve

Dr. Stephen Guest     
Groupworks Technology Support  
206-364-5636                                   www.groupworks.org



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-scn at scn.org [mailto:owner-scn at scn.org] On Behalf Of jmabel
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 9:35 AM
To: J. Johnson
Cc: sc at sdf.lonestar.org; scn at scn.org
Subject: Re: SCN: RE: Now what?

I disagree. A Board doesn't need to start with a strong consensus. It just
needs
to start with a willingness to work together and hash things out, including
a
willingness idividual not to get everything they want if they get a good bit
of
what they want. I'd actually be very doubtful that anyone who thinks they
know
exactly what needs to happen now would be a good person to be on the Board.
What
we need are a group of competent people willing to work together, first to
work
out how to keep things running on an interim basis, then to work out where
to go
from here to get SCN out of mere 'maintenance mode'.

As I understand it, though, the current Board are the only ones who can take
the
next steps:
1) Move forward on registration with the State so the group is legally
constituted.
2) Either express their willingness to appoint an interim board and then
resign,
themselves (with the caveat that I'd like to see one member stay a while for
continuity of memory).

At that point, a new Board can either hand over the assets appropriately to
a
successor organization or set a direction, fundraise, rebuild a membership
organization, hold a general meeting an elections, etc.

--------------------
Joe Mabel

On Sun, 10 Jul 2011, J. Johnson wrote:

> My views differ from Rod's, which illustrates a problem:  how do we agree
> on the fixes when we don't agree on the problems?
>
> Of course, "we" (the membership at large) wouldn't have to agree exactly
> on the problems and fixes if we had a Board of Directors competent enough
> to sort it out themselves. If the replacements don't come in with a strong
> consensus of what the problems are they are likely to be just as
> ineffective.
>
> === JJohnson =====================================================
>
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