Talk:Non-board committees

Volunteer?

Other committees such as the ARC are volunteer driven, unless we consider that trustees are not volunteers. Should these other committees be recognized as a volunteer committee with delegated powers and a separately defined scope, rather than making it seem that they are not volunteer committees? --Fæ (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2014 (BST)

The board committees have their own separate charters, which I think is right given their very different roles. So, while you are right that those are indeed volunteer (trustee) led, it makes sense to deal with them separately. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:34, 7 May 2014 (BST)

My point was not whether to deal with them separately, but to recognise that the wording drives a procedural wedge between "volunteer committees" that welcome volunteer participation and "delegated committees" which in practice do not appear to attract volunteers.

For the sake of historic context, "sub-committees", i.e. committees that may have delegated powers, were not originally expected to be wholly composed of trustees and employees. In fact we originally hoped to not need more than one or two trustees on these committees so that several other interested members of the charity could take a more leading role without being trustees. For example, the Governance Committee and the Audit and Risk Committee have no named non-trustee observers, indeed despite my offering twice to do so, I have been unable to become an "observer" on the ARC, yet we deliberately wrote the terms of that committee to enable observers with relevant experience to contribute and remain involved. This is a poor practical measure of the transparency and accountability of the charity to its members. --Fæ (talk) 16:04, 7 May 2014 (BST)

Recognized?

The documents lists four volunteer committees which are recognized by the board. Are there minutes of a board meeting that document this happening? --Fæ (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2014 (BST)

If I remember rightly, the December board. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2014 (BST)

Closing committees

I wonder whether the reference to closing committees be made more explicit. We cannot stop volunteers from forming groups to discuss the charity's activities (or indeed, whatever they want to discuss). What we can do is something like: recommend committees cease their activities, withdraw staff and board support, and discontinue requests for board reports. Sjgknight (talk) 15:59, 7 May 2014 (BST)