Starting out it makes a lot of sense to do consensus EveryOnes equal A founder, more or less EveryOne has a say. But over time And increased amount of people, Some coming in new And a history develops Previous decisions Some get revised

And meetings lose their energy And get bogged down People get tired of hearing the same opinions Many of which were voted down Brought up again & again By the same people Like we don't think drinking during meetings is good...

And incorporated sounds better & better We want legal status 501c3 NonProfit Taking donations Tax deductible And buying wholesale requires a legal entity, an address for shipping, etc And the traditional legal structure Is a board, limited number of people, makes meetings quicker We'll go from consensus to majority We don't have to start over with each new person who shows up Therefore Hierarchy ResponseAbility you said you would do that but ... Authority Got a title, now what? Financial reports instead of a kitty And need insurance What if? This or that bad thing happens The (new) space requires it Slip & fall? Someone gets hurt? We've invested all this time, energy, money Sweat equity And want at least recognition for it, Respect, been to almost all of these meetings, and now new people Bright new ideas/their way/stamp on things Slowing things down, Start over from the beginning, Why do it this way, instead of that? etc

So Utopia gets clouded And just another business Not being a boss But told what to do by others Dream(s) lost Had to grow up Reality Bummer man/woman/child/nonbinary, etc

Some consider it growing pains.

Seen it in many structures/orgs over the years yeah I'm getting jaded Some call it experience: Knowing What Not To Do Because we tried that and it didn't work out that well Becoming the nay sayer Instead of yes we can

My 0.02-inflation DwC

From Mental Health Drop in Centers

To bike advocacy To Hacker/MakerSpaces To Bike Coops/Collectives

NoVAPeers.PBWorks.com DancesWithCars.CrazyGuyOnABike.co aka just another bozo on a bike

On Fri, May 27, 2022, 04:23 Thomas Butler thomas.unavailable@gmail.com wrote:

Austin's Yellow Bike Project is going through a governance transition. We used to be a fairly horizontally organized consensus-run collective of volunteers who did the day-to-day of what happens at the shop, and our size wasn't limited. We are becoming an exclusive board of probably 6-9 people. Some of us are still running shops, but about half are not.

We're currently trying to work out (among many other things) how board members are (s)elected and to whom the board is accountable. Or more concretely, how the board is held accountable. We don't have "members," so the questions of "who gets to vote" is among the ones we're trying to answer.

If you have thoughts or if your org went through something like this I'm interested to hear about it. In particular what best practices and pitfalls you encountered.

The board also has appetite for working through this with a professional. Some of us are less psyched about people who don't have experience with groups that have our consensus- / volunteer-run d.i.y. culture, horizontal organizing history, etc. Many of them have experience only with the more traditional non-profit board model and struggle to wrap their heads around how we used to operate and why. Suggestions are welcome.

Feel free to email me privately if you like at thomas.unavailable@gmail.com Or you can reply here.

Thanks Thomas Butler he | him | his Austin's Yellow Bike Project austinyellowbike.org ____________________________________

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We had to consider this extensively; never got to exactly where you are but one important thing stood out in the consideration over time: nobody should be on a board unless they have strong standing in running the day-to-day of the shop, or, at the least, the board should have a required majority of members having that qualification.

Don't go down the path of a board with an agenda that doesn't fit with what the organization needs in order to thrive on a daily basis - and more broadly, accomplish its mission. It's one thing to have stakeholders on the board *in addition* to former staff or experts; it's completely another to seat people who simply want to have some measure of leverage or influence for their own reasons.

The purpose of a board, from the federal government's perspective, is so that the government may retain a reliable point of contact through any potiential changes or adversity. It's s huge deal to the feds to remove the requirement to pay taxes, and they don't want to grant that status without assurance that the entity will remain responsive and responsible from a federal standpoint. What this means is that there is no requirement for the board to do any particular thing other than exist and be prepared to liase with the feds should they require it. The board can be a board of directors, who exert vision and authority, or it can simply be a board of advisors, assisting those who already run the organization. Really it can be a board of [anything]. It just has to fulfill the few barebones duties demanded by nonprofit specifications.

So be careful how you choose them and appoint them. Do set out very carefully right away who gets to choose them; one of the worst configurations, because nepotism and incest, is the current board voting on the new board members. Any good idea might be protected in this way long-term (which is why a lot of organizations cling to this method), but it can also mean bad ideas have the ability infect a board for generations, even outliving the tenure of the members who originally set them in motion. Probably better to identify stakeholder groups (whom are served or targeted by the organization) and operational groups (staff, volunteers, other support personnel), and extend the right (or requirement) to vote to them.

As for accountability, elections play a part in that - not only the initial elections themselves, but the frequency of them. More frequent elections, for instance, might mean more opportunities to cut off bad work or behavior.

~cyclista Nicholas

On 2022-05-27 08:23, Thomas Butler wrote:

Austin's Yellow Bike Project is going through a governance transition. We used to be a fairly horizontally organized consensus-run collective of volunteers who did the day-to-day of what happens at the shop, and our size wasn't limited. We are becoming an exclusive board of probably 6-9 people. Some of us are still running shops, but about half are not.

We're currently trying to work out (among many other things) how board members are (s)elected and to whom the board is accountable. Or more concretely, how the board is held accountable. We don't have "members," so the questions of "who gets to vote" is among the ones we're trying to answer.

If you have thoughts or if your org went through something like this I'm interested to hear about it. In particular what best practices and pitfalls you encountered.

The board also has appetite for working through this with a professional. Some of us are less psyched about people who don't have experience with groups that have our consensus- / volunteer-run d.i.y. culture, horizontal organizing history, etc. Many of them have experience only with the more traditional non-profit board model and struggle to wrap their heads around how we used to operate and why. Suggestions are welcome.

Feel free to email me privately if you like at thomas.unavailable@gmail.com Or you can reply here.

Thanks Thomas Butler he | him | his Austin's Yellow Bike Project austinyellowbike.org

---

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