Governance: turnng a corner?

Fourth in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

I doubt it is any secret that the transition to Policy Governance® has been a somewhat rocky one for the UUA. Part paradigm change, part culture shift, and part stand-in for other issues, the board (including me) and the staff have managed to talk past each other quite successfully.

This meeting was different. According to Carver, monitoring reports are mostly part of a consent agenda – unless there are issues, you really don’t need to talk about them.

This time we didn’t need to talk about them. It was the second year for most of them, the staff used a format that was easy to understand and evaluate, and there really weren’t any issues other than a lower than acceptable number of trustees doing the evaluations. So we addressed the latter in a constructive way that will help us as trustees to be more compliant.

I went from the UUA Board to one the following week I just joined that is not under Policy Governance. It is a well run, sophisticated organization with a member database to die for. We (happily) met for two days from 8 to 5, which tells you it is a very different board from the UUA Board.

What really stood out for me in terms of this board’s financial reporting were the very detailed reports on investments and audit statements that had the familiar glazed look from most of the board members – these are smart people with strong backgrounds, including finance and business, but it struck me that what we really wanted to know about our new investment manager did not require a long presentation. Few of us have the experience to judge the wisdom of post initial hedge fund tenders, the 20 year median OAS, or the OECD CLI. We didn’t even get the headline “Twisting in the Wind” joke referencing the Fed’s Operation Twist (I wonder if they were taking bets on that?) What we really wanted to know was who are these people and how do we know we can trust them with our money?

That is at the heart of Carver’s philosophy – non-profit boards are typically not financial wizards and shouldn’t have to be, fiduciary responsibility not withstanding. So how does management know their records and decisions are sound? What proof do they have of that? This is a very different approach from showing board members all the data and expecting them to figure it out.

A big thanks to the UUA staff for answering the right questions.

Next post: UUA Board at Occupy Boston

Who are we? Part II: the Association

Third in a series of posts from the October UUA Board meeting

As discussed in earlier posts, the Board and UUA President are sponsoring Gathered Here, an Association-wide inquiry into what connects us to our faith, and what differences we want to make in the world. This is in partnership with a growing list of UU organizations. There are two simultaneous paths for the inquiry – one for congregations that helps them identify their own goals and outcomes, and one that builds up to districts and an Association-wide shared vision roughly a year from now.

An interesting thing happened in the very first planning team meeting for Gathered Here last February.

Gathered Here is a combination of congregational and community events and one on one Appreciative Inquiry interviews. One of the commitments from the UUA Board is that these interviews would include more than those “typically at the table” but also the “historically marginalized”. This led to a conversation about Young Adults, mostly raised UU, who still identify as Unitarian Universalists but do not belong to a congregation. Would we include them?

The answer was yes. To some degree this flies in the face of the UUA Board’s strong position that we are an “Association of Congregations” (italics mine), though the by-laws proposal from the board last summer opens the potential for congregations to be other than bricks and mortar “fellowship” and “churches”. When we look forward to what Unitarian Universalism is/shall be for our children’s children, is that enough? Is an “association of congregations” more than the sum of its parts? Are we a “movement”? Are there institutions other than our congregations that are or should be in mutual accountability within that “movement”?

There questions form the basis of a year long conversation with our congregations and other key stakeholders about who we are, starting with the District Presidents Association on November 4. What comes out of these conversations will impact how we define Unitarian Universalism.

Next post: Governance: turning a corner?

Who are we? Part I: the Board

Second in a series of posts about the October UUA Board meeting

A turnover of 41%* would be considered substantial in any organization. Yet through a combination of term limits, in-term resignations, and trustees deciding not to run again, that is the change in the UUA Board. In my opinion, this is for the better, not because any of the trustees who left were bad trustees and were not loved dearly by those of us left, but because this is a more diverse board.

Four trustees (plus the Youth Observer, who sits at the board table) identify as Youth or Young Adult – the highest number since I joined this board in 2007. Five identify as Latino/People of Color, and 10 are ministers. Slightly over half (52%) are men, and at least four identify as BGLTQ. This is the last board that will be elected geographically, and it should be noted that because most of our congregations and members are located east of the Mississippi, so are our trustees (12 of 19 districts are primarily east of the Mississppi).

We bring varied backgrounds: IT (information technology), corporate America, small business, the law, teaching, the military, long time UU ministers, and a former nun, to name a few. This typically means an initial struggle, as we learn to understand and accommodate each other’s values and working styles. Our new trustees have already learned that the pace of the board meetings is brutal – a New York Times article about “decision fatigue” was making the rounds during the meetings, and we all identified with it. Yet we are all culpable, asking the moderator to add “one more thing” to the agenda, and have fairly diverse opinions about what agenda items are most valuable. I am more hopeful this time that we will change it.

It’s all good.

*I have included everyone who is elected and normally "sits at the table" and participates in the discussions: this includes 23 trustees, the Youth Observer, the Moderator, the Financial Advisor, and the President.

Next post: Who are we? Part II: the Association

A new beginning

First in a series of posts about the October 2011 UUA Board meeting

It felt different from the beginning. Ten new board members, a change in tenor from many of us returning. I was very conscious coming to this meeting that I have "only" 20 months left as a UUA trustee. I am not the only one who has a sense of urgency around leaving a board structure that has the support and clarity it needs to function -- knowing full well that each new board that comes after us has to do some of its own definition.

My positive feelings about the ten new board members have only strengthened -- it feels like the learning curve has already been shortened for them, and we are discussing real issues with a deeper level of understanding that I would have expected at this time.

This year's every-other-year retreat was led by the Rev. Margaret Marcuson, a Baptist minister who serves as a spiritual advisor to a number of UU ministers. She is low key, thoughtful. She gives the board space - and time - to sink into our own questions. She names some of our elephants. We create a covenant -- we begin to identify our work over the next few years, a task that will be picked up and amplified over the next few days: governance, shared vision, and annual plan, ministerial credentialing, and reducing the administrative load of the board (including roughly 250 committee appointments). Saturday's items are moved around to allow the board to join Boston's "Occupy Wall Street".

It's going to be an interesting meeting. Read more about it through my posts over the next few weeks.

Cansado

It is the third Wednesday of the month, and I am standing in front the the West County Detention Facility with about 75 people. Our numbers have steadily grown over the past few months, starting with 20 at my first one in May. This facility is one of the top 30 in the country in deporting non-criminal immigrants -- nearly 600 in a little over a year with no criminal record other than not having papers. How many families does this represent? how many children whose parents have been taken away?

This evening we hear two stories -- the first from a man anxious and struggling to read his story about being detained by ICE in a 5:30 am raid, flown to Phoenix, and released after significant money changed hands. He is still undocumented and fears where he is. He is seeking "una vida mejor, para mi y mi familia" -- a better life for him and his family.

The second is a woman who has papers -- but her husband did not. He had applied for sanctuary shortly after fleeing to the United States 20 years before, from threats on his life because his father was a high-ranking official in the Guatemalan government. He had stopped to pick up his children at school, and was over the no parking line. "Give him a ticket!" she yelled as they took him away. "Give him a $15 ticket!". He was deported, and before he could make his way back to the US, he was murdered.

"Now I have two children who have no father -- for a parking ticket."

These are the complicated stories of immigration. The man who just wants "a better life" -- can we throw open our borders to everyone in the world who wants a "better life"? Maybe not, but we can treat people with respect. And sanctuary? I do wonder about the relative chances of someone from Guatemala versus what some might consider a more "desirable" ethnic background.

Worst of all is the fear -- fear of picking up your children and being stopped, fear of someone pounding on your own door in the early morning. As I posted earlier, these fears are not strong enough to stop people from crossing the border -- but what causes them should be strong enough to violate our own sense of moral justice.

A poet steps up the the microphone. With soft guitar strumming in the background, he reads his own poem "Cansado (Tired)". Tired of being afraid, tired of running, tired of being stopped for being brown, tired of being treated like dirt.

Singing hymns

Second in a series about General Assembly 2011 and the UUA Board meeting

Forty-nine fully credentialed off-site delegates from 39 congregations were part of this year’s General Assembly. It was a total thrill to watch their virtual banners in the opening banner parade (Susan Lankford from the UU Church of Berkeley is to the right), see the chart with their votes, hear their voices in the plenary hall. On Sunday, delegates overwhelmingly voted to allow offsite voting and electronic signatures.

I have been part of a “virtual team” that met by phone every week this year, and every other week between September and December of 2010. Including members from the General Assembly Planning Committee, GA Staff, UUA IT department, the UUA Board and the user community, this team has been a joy to work with even though we did not meet face to face until GA. Five more technical support volunteers joined the effort for GA, and brought the same spirit of fun, cooperation, and dedication to the effort.

A similar dynamic was going on with the virtual delegates. The Virtual Plenary Hall included a chat site – old friends were becoming reacquainted during training sessions, and a vibrant community sprang up during the plenary sessions. Said one virtual delegate when GA closed: “I really choked up when it was all over and felt the loss of a neat community.”

Acknowledging the limitations of the electronic world, I often say that nothing can replace the experience of being in a hall with thousands of other Unitarian Universalists, singing “Spirit of Life”, so I was struck by one of the stories from the plenary sessions.

Off-site delegates were encouraged to call into an audio bridge and mute their phones during votes to insure that any time delays in the streaming video would not confound the vote. Hearing some background sounds from one delegate’s line, tech support Laura Randall moved to mute it – then realized what she was hearing.

It was one of our octogenarian delegates, singing the hymn along with the plenary body. She had applied to be an off-site delegate because at 87, she could no longer travel, but really missed being part of GA. This year, she still was.

Trust

First in a series of posts about General Assembly 2011

In providing the position of the UUA Board on its own reduction in size from 23 trustees elected mostly from districts to 11 elected at large, trustee Susan Ritchie said "you can do better than us". I concur. That does not mean I think we have been a bad board, or that we are not qualified to sit at the 25 Beacon table.

The greatest impact of this General Assembly on me personally is the passing of the resolution to downsize the UUA Board. Just re-elected at the June Pacific Central District Assembly, this means I serve a second term of two years, rather than four.

Standing in line at Starbucks in the convention center, a woman about my age asked how the board members felt about the change: “how did it feel to be identified as “less than”, that those of us of a certain age and color were somehow not good enough to serve on the board?”

I ached for her. She had just been passed over in her job for someone younger. This is not what happened in the position taken by the UUA Board.

I am proud of the contributions I have made to the UUA through my board service, and just as determined to have the next two years be even more meaningful. And I am also aware of the privilege that allows me, a 61 year old white woman who is financially independent, to serve this Association. “Be the change you want to see”: I want to willingly step aside to allow other voices as the table. Will they have the life experience, or the knowledge of institutionalism, or the skills I have assembled from leadership positions in corporate power structures? Some will, some won't, but I don’t think that is what matters most. What they will have is a different life experience, and will bring that to bear in all its richness in how we shape our future.

As I walked through the hall after the affirmative vote on downsizing the Board, I ran into several delegates from the district that elected me—each said to me “this is about trust” – trust in the board to follow through on commitments made.

This board does not take that trust lightly. I would like to know what that looks like to you -- a year (or two) from now, what will this board have done that makes you feel really good about the delegates' decision?