Talk to Council! We're listening.

Council is your board, and for us to do our work well, we need to hear from you. We've recently upgraded the website to make that even easier.

Take a moment, and stop by EQUITYONLINE. (Go ahead: click it!) On the front page, top right, are a few new links. Talk to Council will take you to a page where all the Councillors are listed. Clicking on the photo of any of them will open a new email window, so you can drop your Councillor a note. The Council Committees link will take you to a page with mandate and contact info for each of Council's several regional and issues committees. The final link, Request for Council Action (login required), will open up a form you can use to suggest an agenda topic for Council to tackle. And, of course, if clicking and typing is not your thing, a letter or phone call to Equity Council, via our national office, will connect you up as well.

We'd also like you to know what we are up to…

A couple of days before each meeting, Council's agenda will be posted online. Within a few days after each meeting, a summary of all motions passed will be posted. Following adoption at the subsequent meeting, full minutes will be added. You can find these under the Council Reports heading of the members-only section of the website (login required), along with a full year's worth of monitoring reports on all aspects of Equity's operations. Copies of any of these documents, as well as recent archived copies, can also be requested by contacting the office.

And while we're on the topic of Council meetings, did you know you are allowed to attend them? You can - both in-person and teleconferences. A list of upcoming meeting dates can be found here. If you would like to attend, please let us know at least a few days in advance, by contacting the Council President at president@caea.com.

Executive Director contract renewed

Council is pleased to announce that Executive Director Arden R. Ryshpan has been engaged for a further three year period, effective the beginning of April.

Evaluation of the Executive Director is conducted annually, measuring performance against each of Council's Ends and Executive Limitation policies, and the most recent cycle was completed at the recent February Council meeting. Arden has consistently met Council's expectations over the years, and support for her contract renewal was unanimous. We are very fortunate to have such a capable administrative leader at the helm, as we complete (and continue) the many major improvements to how Equity operates and serves its members.

Please join us in thanking her for all of her hard work to date, and in welcoming her aboard for another three years.

Saskatoon Council meeting cancelled

Beginning in 2006, Council changed bylaws to enable us to take one in-person meeting of Council on the road each year. Equity is a national organisation, and we felt it was important that members across the country had access to Council meetings, similar to that enjoyed by Toronto-area members. Since the implementation of this policy, we have held meetings in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal, Halifax and St. John's. Our meeting this summer was to be held in Saskatoon.

Regretfully, Council has had to cancel the Saskatoon meeting due to financial constraints and the meeting will, instead, be held in Toronto. Convening Council outside Toronto entails significantly greater cost (potentially as much as $15K more), and meetings across the country have attracted scant or no attendance by the local membership. Despite our desire to continue making Council meetings more accessible, we cannot currently afford the cost and the time-consuming long distance planning required for these to continue.

Council will be reexamining the bylaw on meeting locations at its February meeting, with the goal of maintaining as much cross-country access as possible, while reducing expenses. We welcome ideas for how Council can help members across the country remain connected to their elected representatives.

Board governance podcast

OK. This is one of those posts that I know will have a limited audience – it's about organisational governance – but I figured I'd publish it anyhow for those of you who would like some sense of what Council does and how it operates.

I was recently invited to speak on an online radio show focussed on non-profit governance. Governance, by the way, is a catch-all term for the leadership work done by the board of any organisation. The radio show is called Nonprofit Spark, and it is hosted by Renee McGivern, a consultant, coach and trainer in Minneapolis, who works extensively with non-profit boards. Renee's goal is to provide resources and ideas to the thousands of non-profit boards across the continent. Depending on the topic of the week, the show reaches 5-7,000 listeners, which is pretty good, given the highly-specialised subject matter.

Many non-profit boards are comprised of volunteer members, as is ours, and not a few of them struggle with issues of knowing what the board is supposed to achieve, and whom they are supposed to represent. Those that manage to figure that out then typically go on to struggle with actually doing it. As a result, there are a lot of board members who curse the day they ever got suckered into agreed to take on a board role.

I take some pride in noting that the recommendation as a guest on the show came from an outside individual who knows our Council and its work, and who suggested Equity as an example largely free of these common dysfunctions. We're not perfect, of course, but on the whole I'd agree that we have the typical head-banging issues covered.

Here is a link to the show. If the topic of governance is of particular interest to you, I'd suggest you start from the top and also listen to Susan Mogensen, owner of Brown Dog Consulting, who has some useful points to make on board dysfunction in general. My interview starts at about 27:15 into the show, and is focussed on Equity Council. I hadn't heard Susan's segment before taping mine, and it's intriguing to hear some of the same topics arise in both. As always, questions are welcome in the comments section or by email if you want to know more.

Thanks to Renee McGivern and the Nonprofit Spark Radio Show for having me on as a guest. If you serve on other non-profit boards and are seeking the kind of resources she offers, check out her topic archive for a whole range of subjects.