[OpenID] Shade's questions - Vision/Hope for OpenID

[Peter Williams]

Shade said: I understand that elections are for the community board members,
because corporate board members paid their way instead - megacorps
really, because they're rich enough to afford the $50,000 for a
Sustaining Membership, annually.

Peter says:

do folks know how many 50k lots of cash has been actually disbursed by the corporate members? Assuming there are 5 corporate  members, that's could be 250k, of actual cash or secured obligations against which one can (or could) get a credit line (since the obligated parties are so well known in credit circles).

I cannot tell, from the email banter, whether all sitting Board members of all types have or have not seen a balance sheet. Its not clear, apart from 1, if any of the Candidates endorse or not the current practices of handling financial accountability. Its seems unlikely that 25$ members will ever get timely access to the balance sheet (showing the cash assets or obligations per corporate member) and will not have timely access to the chairman's report on how expenditures were actually executed per mission statement, as promised to the investors/corporate-sponsors.

At the same time, I really would expect a club of corporate members to work to prevent release of this kind of information about "their" Foundation to the rank and file. To be fair, they are paying. I'd be surprised they if wanted their corporate board deliberations about missions, deals and expenditure projects to be released even to the community members of the board.

Now, this may sound all "so unfair" and someone will whine that its imputing impropriety on the hard working volunteers. But, in the absence of just normal financial disclosures and release of information between EO/Chair and corporate members to the whole board, folks will properly wonder. That what the assurance of (self)audits eliminates! Folks are experienced enough in management to know you just dont induce confidence lapses by failing to observe formalities like this.

It's time to grow up and be formal, once one is dealing with $250k of others peoples/corporation's money. That doesn't mean spend $200k of it on CPAs, corporate counsel, and insurance for the director's liability coverage. It does mean remember that accountability is the opportunity to show a clean hand, and thus preempt the whining about lack of accountability and representation in the decisions and accounting of no longer trivial sums of cash. (The first thing I always look at on budgets vs disbursements in small non profits is travel/revenue. It often tells you alot about who is running the show.)

Now, let's be ultra clear, I've seen few misgivings expressed about use made of the donated/sponsored cash - only misgivings about the lack of disclosure, and an evident continuing  reluctance to disclose before the election.

Its now entirely fair for members to ask Candidates if they intend to use their limited voting power to continue this practice or would vote against it, and, how do they regard the current practice of Foundation governance?