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.

Engagement document updates

Earlier this year, Council completed new policy on the review process for scale agreements and engagement policies. These are the core documents under which members are contracted. They take two forms:

• negotiated, where the terms and conditions of engagement are the result of mutual agreement with an engager or association of engagers; and
• promulgated, where Equity itself sets the terms, based on the negotiated terms of like-type agreements.

The new policy enforces two key requirements: members must be aware of and have the opportunity to contribute the review process for each cycle, and members must be informed of the results of that work. Policy details can be found in section EL-11 of our policy document.

Since agreements are reviewed/revised in different ways, these two requirements will necessarily have different implementation across the full range of engagement documents. In the case of the Ballet Agreement, for instance, the review cycle is quite apparent to all members engaged under that agreement. It's relatively easy to get the affected membership together in one place to discuss issues and possible changes, and to share information with them through the conclusion of negotiations and ratification

For many of the other agreements, particularly the promulgated ones, this process is much harder to replicate, since the affected membership is in constant flux and spread across the whole country.

Council's goal in establishing policy in this area was to provide a common-denominator standard to all reviews. Established processes that already exceed these expectations will continue to operate as before.

If you want to know what's coming up for review, and when, and how you can contribute, you can now find that information in one place, available to all members. Beginning with the Summer 2011 issue of EQ magazine, members will find a regularly-posted information block detailing upcoming contract reviews, a basic schedule for each, and information on how to contribute to the review or negotiation. All engagement documents are already dated to indicate the review cycle as a whole – review information will only be posted in EQ as the review dates approach.

We hope that members will make active use of this information, so that our engagement documents continue to reflect the expectations of our membership in this ever-changing business.

Independent Theatre Review Committee report

At the most recent Council meeting, the ITRC presented an initial report on the results from its member survey work, and you can find the summary document here. This report only covers the results from closed-ended questions (i.e. where a selection of possible answers were provided), and over 7000 open-ended text replies are still under review. As one may guess, collating and summarising these into a reliable data set is an enormous undertaking.

The ITRC also has a requirement to survey engagers and Equity staff on related matters, so that Council can have a complete picture from which to consider policy changes. This work is still ongoing.

Customer service standards

I wrote several months back regarding new customer service standards that were in the works, and they have recently been published on the Equity website. You can find all the details here, but these are the basics:

1. All persons dealing with Equity may expect to be treated in a courteous manner.
2. All persons dealing with Equity may expect a knowledgeable response to their inquiry.
3. All persons dealing with Equity should expect to receive a timely response to their request for services or in response to their communication.

Just as importantly, there is now a clearly identified process for dealing with complaints.

As with all policies, Council will regularly monitor results from this change, and that will be added to our review of policy EL-2, in June of each year.

In the context of the thousands of service interactions each year, problems are fortunately rare. However, we do recognise the impact that a even minor issues can have in the context of an individual production or members' livelihood. Equity is committed to identifying issues as they occur and working toward improvement. These new service standards are an important step in that process.

Philanthropic policy

For a while now, Council has been looking at the possibility of writing a new philanthropic policy, one that would allow Equity to use a small portion of its resources for charitable purposes.

In truth, Equity already does this in some measure, but it is peculiarly self-serving type of charity. In pursuit of specific goals (assistance with career transition, affordable housing, and financial crisis), Equity either directly contributes to the Dancer Transition Resource Centre, PAL and The Actors Fund of Canada, and/or specifically recognises them as preferred fundraising recipients. All three certainly qualify as charities, but we know that our own members are significant beneficiaries of their work.

What Council was exploring, however, were activities solely to the benefit of third parties. Many members will recall the 2006 Oruuano project as an example of this, where we assisted a fledgling sister artists' association in Namibia. By the way, if you are not familiar with that project, you can read about it here.

The topic engendered some spirited discussion at Council. Representing artists with precarious livelihoods, and being no different ourselves, there is a natural desire to assist those less fortunate. However, there is also a recognition that Equity works with very slim resources, and shouldn't charity begin at home?

In the end, we decided to go out and do a quickie poll of the membership, using the various regional CPAGs. We asked about member interest in this kind of activity, preferred targets, level of resource use, and whether we should seek Canadian or international beneficiaries.

Although two-thirds of respondents felt that Equity should be devoting some portion of its resources to philanthropic activity, the results on the various detail points (who, when, how, etc.) expressed a wide range of opinion. Without reproducing all the results here, it summarises the situation nicely to note that with 66% of members surveyed supporting regular philanthropic work, quite a few of the summary comments that came back expressed reservation about using association resources for anyone other than members, for activities elsewhere as opposed to here, for using resources for this purpose at all, and so on. A very mixed message.

What Council has taken from this feedback is that support exists, but it is hardly overwhelming and is significantly qualified in many respects. In April, Council passed new policy approving philanthropic activities, but respecting the following limitations:

• that fulfilment of this policy is not an annual obligation, so Equity can wait until a worthy project presents itself;
• that activities under this policy are capped at 0.5% of the previous year's revenues;
• that projects needed to be of a clearly philanthropic nature; and 
• that fulfilment of this policy may not compromise achievement of other key policies which benefit members.

What all this means is that such projects are now permitted, but within strict resource limits and only when the resources so used will not have a negative impact on our core services. 

In other words, Council intends to take the same approach most of us do in our own giving when someone shows up at the door: if we can afford to contribute, we will; but if our circumstances do not so allow, we will wait until they do.

Professionalism and a code of conduct

Partly as a result of recent discussions regarding professional status, Council ended up discussing a tangentially related issue: professionalism. In fact, we ended up there repeatedly. It's was pretty easy; there is a strong connection between the status (earning a livelihood, for instance) and behaviour (turning up for rehearsals on time).

Although professionalism is not a formal topic on the Council agenda at the moment, I thought it might be interesting to hear from the membership on the subject. So, I created a placeholder for a new post.

Shortly afterward, I received a link to a website article, which reports on a code of conduct created in 1945 for the Circle Players, an ensemble-based theatre in Los Angeles (thanks, L). I've copied some of it below, but you can see the original LASTAGE post here. A couple of days later I got an email from another colleague, proposing that Equity set standards for dressing room behaviour (thanks, B).

There seemed to be some kind of alignment in the stars on this topic, so over to you. As a professional artist, what would you nominate for a code of professional behaviour? Are there even "traditional" standards that ought to be relaxed or removed as no longer applicable.

And of course, it would be interesting to hear from members on the matter of dressing room and rehearsal hall etiquette, especially in regards to all the newfangled gadgetry that has shown up in the last little while. Funny, how we ask patrons to turn off cellphones, but we don't do it ourselves...

The full Circle Players code includes 17 points, but here are the first 7 to chew on for starters:

1. I shall never miss a performance.
2. I shall play every performance with energy, enthusiasm and to the best of my ability regardless of size of audience, personal illness, bad weather, accident, or even death in my family.
3. I shall forego all social activities which interfere with rehearsals or any other scheduled work at the theatre, and I shall always be on time.
4. I shall never make a curtain late by my failure to be ready on time.
5. I shall never miss an entrance.
6. I shall never leave the theatre building or the stage area until I have completed my performance, unless I am specifically excused by the stage manager; curtain calls are a part of the show.
7. I shall not let the comments of friends, relatives or critics change any phase of my work without proper consultation; I shall not change lines, business, lights, properties, settings or costumes or any phase of the production without consultation with and permission of my director or producer or their agents, and I shall inform all people concerned.

Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Joining Process - Part 2

Last year, I wrote about our discussions on the topic of the joining process. That discussion has advanced considerably, and I'd like to bring you up to date. If you want to read the original post, you can find it here.

As mentioned, we'd like to achieve a few things with a new joining plan. First, we'd like to ensure that the process works well for prospective members. Right now, through longstanding practice, if you accept an Equity contract, you join. That's pretty much it. We do have provisional and probationary memberships, but they are voluntary options and not often used. While we think it's great to welcome new members at any time, many join at a point in their career when they really need to be maintaining flexibility in their options, and when they are not at a stage that they can make the kind of commitment to the collective benefit of the membership that joining entails.

The second is that we would like to put the process of joining much more firmly in the hands of Equity; right now, most decisions to join are made in discussion with an engager. We typically find out we have a new member when we suddenly receive a contract with a name that we don't recognise. We haven't had the chance to say "Is this the right choice for you?" or "Have you considered this other option?" or even "Hi! Welcome aboard!" Depending on when we receive the first contract, new joins may get a welcome package before they begin work, while they are working, or even well after the contract has ended. That's far too late for the Association you have just agreed to join to be getting in touch for the first time and telling you what joining Equity involves.

So, what have we come up with?

We are exploring a dual stream approach, involving both apprenticeship and a form of permit membership very similar to our current probationary/provisional options. I'll use these terms in what follows, although they may yet change, as may some of the other details, by the time the new programme is implemented. Also, please note that this material relates only to performers in theatre at this point. Council will examine how it might apply throughout the membership, but as our largest member contingent, this was the best place to start the review.

Although apprenticeship is not well-used among performers, most of our scale agreements allow a percentage of non-professionals to be engaged on shows, and many of them will eventually go on to join. So, having some kind of entry programme geared toward gaining experience in the business is important. Apprenticeship will continue to fill that need on much the same terms as it does today.

For those offered their first Equity contracts, the plan under discussion would no longer make full membership immediately available, and only probationary membership will be offered. This will permit engagers to fulfil their professional quota requirements, and allow the artist to receive the full engagement benefits and protections, including representation by Equity, for the duration of the contract. Following the contract, performers would revert to the equivalent of apprenticeship status, and retain all the engagement flexibility that category offers.

There will be some, however, who do wish to join right away, and the new plan will accommodate that. Any actor engaged as a probationary member will have the option to take out full membership within two months of the start of their contract. The cost for joining will be the same as if they had joined as a regular member immediately.

One benefit of this deferred joining approach is that we will no longer expect engagers to serve as de facto front line staff in our membership office; we anticipate this will be a welcome change! Joining will instead be something arranged directly between the new member and Equity staff. Questions such as those noted earlier can be asked and carefully considered by the prospective member before a choice is made. Full membership will no longer be compulsory for engagement (although not indefinitely so) and the moment of joining will therefore be much more in control of the artist.

We've put the plan together in a summary document that staff is now examining. They will consider any anticipated administrative issues, review the fee structure, and propose suggestions they feel will make the change smoother to implement, and stronger in the long run. We will hear back from staff in June, and should have a final version to share with you not too long after that.