[foundation-board] Fwd: Continuing on the OKF Board?

Mon Aug 23 13:01:09 UTC 2010

Dear all

Per our f2f meeting earlier this month, I have contacted Paula and
invited her to reaffirm her commitment to the Board. I'm delighted to
report that she has responded in the positive (see below).

Welcome back, Paula!

Rufus, you took an action to lay out the next year's worth of Board
meetings in the OKF calendar - is this now done? Are the meetings
showing the up-to-date ones?

Cheers

Becky

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: paula le dieu <paula at ledieu.org>
Date: 16 August 2010 12:10
Subject: Re: Continuing on the OKF Board?
To: Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com>

Hello :)
I confess I have been following in the background all the fantastic
things that have been going on with OKFN - a fabulous win for you all
and a complete turnaround from the financial and project profile of
last year.
I would be delighted to stay involved. It sounds as if the new
structure could work much better for me as I can formally secure a
quarterly commitment with work. It is now a year at the BFI and I hope
that I will be able to come out of the rabbit hole a bit more ...
although balance has never been one of my strengths I would like to
try and once again engage with the wider world.
Thanks for sticking with me - very grateful for the Board's ongoing support.
p
x

On 13 August 2010 11:53, Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Paula
>
> It's such a shame you missed the face-to-face Board meeting yesterday
> - I think you would have loved to be there. It's seems strange that
> only last year we were talking about in the abstract what this year's
> come seriously to fruition.
>
> I have been asked to write to you and ask whether you still want to be
> on the Board of Directors. When you joined, you showed us what a great
> contribution you could make to OKF, and everyone on the Board would
> still really value your participation. You warned us when you started
> your new job that it would take you out of action, and so this email
> is partly to ask whether that period is now over, and partly to say,
> even though it feels like it's been a long time, we'd love to have you
> back :)
>
> In terms of how the Board's operating, changes are afoot. We've
> elected to strip back the role of the Board to its formal functions,
> and to move Board meetings to a quarterly framework. We've spotted
> ways to improve internal processes so that Board members are in
> receipt of management accounts and activity reports ahead of meetings.
> A new Project Coordination committee, which Jo Walsh is chairing, has
> been established out of project leads picked from various activities
> around the network, and is emerging as the kind of collaborative
> governance space that I think suits the vision of OKF's founders,
> without compromising the financial and legal health of an organisation
> that now has around £100K in the bank. At this year's f2f meeting, we
> voted to make around £5K available to the coordination committee as an
> experimental funding pot - possibly even as seed money for a
> micro-loan system - to see how they might establish processes for
> distributing OKF's operating surplus to projects less likely to
> receive direct funding.
>
> There should be really exciting times ahead, and we would all really
> welcome your expertise as we see how these changes pan out. What do
> you think? The next meeting is on 21 September, with following
> meetings in December, March 2011 and June 2011.
>
> Much love
>
> Becky