I'm not a Mozilla insider or anything but I took a look at their bylaws and afaict they have a self-perpetuating board, which means they're not formally accountable to anyone.
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I'm not a Mozilla insider or anything but I took a look at their bylaws and afaict they have a self-perpetuating board, which means they're not formally accountable to anyone.
I prefer a member elected board (like the PSF has). It's hard for leadership to stray too far from member values when they're elected by members.
I know too many self-perpetuating boards who destroyed what they were supposed to be safeguarding, or even enabled abuse.
Governance matters.
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@shauna I would guess the hard problem for orgs like Mozilla and others is how do you define “members” in a way that matches the mission and is resistant to bad actors abusing it (in science fiction circles the Hugo awards/WorldCon’s have struggled with this at times as a real world fairly recent example). Especially when an organization has real revenues (and perhaps in some cases a substantial endowment) as well as influence in the large world
Curious how the Poetry Foundation navigates this
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@shauna (poetry foundation is in reference to them receiving a massive endowment in 2003. I see that in 2022 they changed from an operating to a non-operating foundation and now make grants so guessing they are still 20+ years later navigating how to manage it. Successfully it seems.
About the Poetry Foundation
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org)
(I often find examples from other industries can offer useful cases)
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@shauna add another wrinkle and MZLA (the Mozilla entity that houses Thunderbird) - has a co-governance model between a board and a Council, elected from contributors. This gives the community immense power (we can't approve a yearly budget without the Council's input, for instance). While it has been hard to have so many different stakeholders, I believe it has kept us honest and true to the mission of great open source communication software that champions open standards.
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Andromeda Yeltonreplied to Shannon Clark last edited by
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Shannon Clarkreplied to Andromeda Yelton last edited by
@thatandromeda @shauna I remember thinking at the time (I lived in a Chicago when the bequest happened) either this means the creation of a perpetual (in a positive sense) supporter for poetry and writing.
Or it would be a huge scandal and disaster where too much money created new problems and attracted bad actors (glad that as best I can tell this didn’t happen)
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I'd be interested in talking to someone at Poetry Foundation too if you can connect me. It sounds like they navigated their issues fairly well; I'd love to help them share what they've learned.
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@shauna @thatandromeda I don’t think I know anyone there but I can check (I do know a lot of Chicago based writers, poets and folks with an interest in non-profits so non-zero chance someone I know has an affiliation with them) I’ve been looking for more coverage of how they have navigated things - on a quick first take seems like their switch to a non-operating/grant making foundation was fairly recent and in part due to some pressure on them to make grants vs “sit” on their endowment