NOMINATING COMMITTEE

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AGENDA

August 16, 1999

Nominees | Constructing the Slate

1. Introductions; Rehearsal of our Charge, Method & Timetable

    

2. What Are We Looking For in our Board Members: Skills & Qualities

    

3. What Should the Nominating Form Look Like?

1. REHEARSAL OF OUR CHARGE, METHOD & TIMETABLE

First our instructions, again:

The BOARD

1. The governing Board shall consist of a small group of approximately ten people to shape policy and be the legally and fiscally responsible body for the organization. It was proposed that the governing Board comprise a mixture (say 7:3) of representatives of NINCH member organizations and institutions and of individuals drawn from the membership who can contribute to NINCH's policy deliberations. The working group understands that the size of the Board may grow depending on the size of NINCH membership, but this approximate ratio should remain the same;

 

2. Board members would rotate every three years; election would be organized by a small nominating committee.

 

3. Officers elected for staggered 2-year rotational terms (Chair-elect; Chair; Secretary & Treasurer) will act as the executive committee, working in "informal consultation" with the Executive Director.

 

NOMINATING COMMITTEE

A nominating committee, elected by the Board, in consultation with the executive director, will call for nominations for board membership and officers by a date certain; will circulate a single slate of nominees for voting by the entire membership of NINCH; and will announce the results. In preparing for FY2000, the nominating committee will comprise three current Board members and two non-Board members. The voting on nominees will be conducted by mail and/or e-mail to produce a new Board for the Fall 1999 meeting. In subsequent years the nominating committee can be reduced to three members.

So it seems we need to:

• agree on the qualities and skills we need represented on the board;
• outline a call for nominations with a simple form to fill out and return;
• gather and consider the responses;
• e-mail the non-competitive slate of proposed board-members and officers;
• gather and announce the results (we've been advised we should send out the slate electronically and ask for responses both in electronic and paper forms, for legal purposes).

As our Board Meeting is October 1, I would propose, for discussion, the following timetable:

Monday Aug 16	first meeting; decision on qualities we need represented on the board; creation of nominating form and announcement (Committee).
Tuesday Aug 17	circulation of call (David)
Monday Aug 30	deadline for nominations
Week of Aug 30	conference call for consideration of nominations; how do we turn nominations into a slate?; creation of slate; (notification of those on the slate?) (Committee)
Friday Sept 3	circulation of slate (David)
Tuesday Sept 7	reminder of deadline for voting (David)
Monday Sept 13	deadline for receiving votes
Tuesday Sept 14	toting votes, conferring (possible conference call)
Wed Sept 15:	notifying new Board members and office holders (David)
Week of Sept 20	Orientation (packet/meeting) of new Board (?)
Friday Oct 1	Board Meeting (and champagne party for Nominating Committee)

2. WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR IN OUR BOARD MEMBERS: SKILLS & QUALITIES

Well, here's my starter list of areas of understanding, knowledge and skills that we want to employ on the Board. This is where I need the strongest help from those with experience running boards (and organizations). Are these the right categories? Should we specify a target number of people in each group or is that too mechanistic an approach?

Overall, I'd say we need people who are flexible and who favor new, fresh approaches--as NINCH is striving to be ever-new and flexible--but also with some fiscal conservative types who ensure we don't go out too much on a limb....

• Finance: probably specifically someone who can be the treasurer and who can chair a finance committee and a few others who have expertise/experience in fiscal management
  
• Organizational Management: people known for their organizational management skills and experience
  
• Board Development/Strategic Issues: people known for their expertise in handling boards and in thinking in long-term strategic ways
  
• Membership: Someone with experience in running a membership organization, who will ensure that, although this is not conceived of as a "membership service" consortium, still must be in-touch with and responsive to its very diverse membership (i.e. the importance of keeping the top-down: bottom-up balance in all that we do: "the leader that listens")
  
• Knowledge of the Field/"Practitioners": the "doers" as opposed to the administrators--those actively engaged in digitizing, networking, preserving ("at the coal face") as a daily job

Within this we will need equal representation of the "sector" constituencies: libraries, archives, humanities computing, scholarly societies/academic, museums, arts institutions/organizations.

Added to this an equal or fair representation of "media types:" text, image, sound, moving image ?

3. WHAT SHOULD THE NOMINATING FORM LOOK LIKE?

A. Questions:

1. How many people can people nominate? Maximum of one for of the categories we come up with?
   
2. Can people nominate themselves?

B. Suggested Form

(I could have this done as a web-form that people could complete, like the NINCH Membership Application form at <http://www.ninch.org/ORGANIZATION/Memberform.html>

Name of Nominator:
Organization:

A. CATEGORY:

Check One:
Finance		Organization Management
Membership		Board Development/ Strategic			Knowledge of Field/ "Practitioner"

Name
Title/Position
Organization
Reasons for nomination:

Nomination for President?

Yes No

President Elect?

Yes No

Treasurer?

Yes No

B. CATEGORY:

Check One:
Finance		Organization Management
Membership		Board Development/ Strategic			Knowledge of Field/ "Practitioner"

Name
Title/Position
Organization
Reasons for nomination:

Nomination for President?

Yes No

President Elect?

Yes No

Treasurer?

Yes No