What is a Governance Board and Why Do We Need One?
A Governance Board is a board that governs by developing policy, and taking action to make decisions relative to human and financial resources that allow an organization to accomplish its work. By having a governance board, we will be able to deliver some legal answers to problems as well as set up our Emmaus and Chrysalis committees to better concentrate on organizing walks and flights.
Our Governance Board will address one specific legal issue: Persons under the age of 18 are not allowed to vote on a board. Our current set-up limits our Chrysalis community to ages 18 and older to serve in an elected leadership role. By implementing the Governance Board model, the two communities become sub-committees; and thus open up positions to Chrysalis youth to serve on the sub-committee to help execute flights.
The Governance Board will also create greater consistency by consolidating policy-making at this level. The new structure will have committee chairpersons for the following positions that will serve both communities: Team Selection, Nominating, Agape, 4th Day, as well one treasurer to serve both communities. These positions will allow the sub-committees to concentrate their time and efforts on walk/flight organization with the Governance Board focusing on bookkeeping, policy development, agape, etc. We will expound upon the sub-committee enhancements from this structure in a future communication, but know that there will still be significant input by Emmaus and Chrysalis into these committees and their respective chairpersons.
The Governance Board structure will allow us to make some very critical improvements. First, we will strengthen the ability to establish and monitor policy so that our walks and flights are more consistent and follow the core flow and message of the Upper Room programs. The Governance Board will also allow us to spend time developing policy that makes training and mentorship a natural part of our community development.
Secondly, the Governance Board will increase community involvement in the entire process of executing our walks and flights. The major change in the new structure will be that persons elected to chairperson roles will serve in that role for the full 3 years of their term. This will allow them to involve more community members to execute the functions of their committee and to mentor persons that can then be nominated for election when the chairperson’s term is up.
The new structure sets us up to expand the community involvement as explained below.
People Involved in a basic layout: Total Members
Officers to the Governance Board 4 4
Standing Governance Board and sub-Committee Chairs 24 28
Sub-Committee Community members 46 74
Walks/Flights Events in a year (team) 440 514
Bottom line, more people are needed in leadership than just board members!! More to come on the Emmaus and Chrysalis sub-committee and the positions next communication.