The Drupal Association is about to hold its first open elections of "at-large" (community-elected) board members--and your help is needed. Since these are community positions, we felt that it was important to get community buy-in to the process used. We need YOUR input on these suggestions to help come up with a fair and equitable voting process.

We're looking both for candidates and for input into the election process. Read on to find out how you can get involved.

Background

This discussion is meant to create a process for electing the two at-large members of the US-based 501c3 Drupal Association Board.

The purpose of the two at-large positions, as designed by the authors and approvers of the bylaws of the organization, is to give a broader community input into the board. The restructuring that occurred this past year resulted in a nominating committee which helped to choose several current board members. Now it's time to expand that board with 2 more people: the at-large members. Read more about the current board and governance structure.

Being an at-large member

At-large members are members of the board for a period of 1 year. While everyone on the board is meant to represent the interests of the broad Drupal community, these two seats in particular are direct representatives of the community. As a board member, you will be responsible for providing feedback on the Drupal Association's activities, and participating within committees to help the Drupal Association succeed in its mission.

All Board members are expected to work approximately 5 hours a week and attend 4 in-person meetings per year, two of which will coincide with DrupalCons and 2 of which won't. The Board members are expected to pay for their travel and costs associated with these trips though they may be reimbursed for those expenses as funds are available.

Selecting the At-Large members

The Drupal Association bylaws state that there will be two At-Large seats, but are purposefully not prescriptive in how those people will be selected. Section 3.4 of the bylaws simply states "At-Large Directors shall reflect and represent the Drupal community at large. There shall be two At-Large Directors, who are elected by the community and ratified by the rest of the Board to serve one-year terms."

To get the elections going, the DA board chartered an election committee, see the Dec. 10th Drupal Association minutes.Drupal Association Elections Committee charter. This year's committee chair is Nedjo Rogers. To get going, the committee has posted a wiki page at groups.drupal.org.

Ways you can get involved

  1. Add your ideas to the wiki page. As well as commenting on the options captured so far, please feel free to add new ones or to introduce new questions that we may have overlooked so far.
  2. Participate in planning and decision making meetings. We'll likely be organizing meetings to make decisions and put things in motion. We'll post meetings with call in information as events to the Drupal Association group on groups.drupal.org--so if you'd like to participate, please subscribe to that group and watch for meeting notifications.
  3. Consider running. If you'd like to serve as an at large board member, please consider running.

We're trying to keep all planning and communication open to the community, so please post first to the wiki. But feel free to contact Nedjo or another committee member if you have additional questions or points you want to discuss.

Thanks!

Drupal Association
Election Committee Charter

Mission and Objectives

The Election Committee is responsible for proposing candidates for the Board of Directors.

The primary objectives of the Election Committee are:

  • to come up with a process to elect ad-hoc members from the community
  • to elect two ad-hoc members for the 2012 year for the Board of Directors

Composition and Roles

The election committee shall be composed of the following roles, appointed by the Board:

  • Executive director
  • Two Board members
  • Two additional members, either from the Advisory Board or the larger community

A Chair will be elected from within the team, and is responsible for organizing meetings, and reporting to the Board of Directors. If necessary, the staff will help implement the process decided upon by the election committee.

Authority and Boundaries

For a period of one year, the election committee is responsible for setting up an election process for filling the ad-hoc board member positions on the board. If required, this committee can be re-chartered for 2013.

The Election Committee will need to agree upon and recommend to the Board an election process by the January 11 board meeting. If the process is approved, the Election Committee is responsible for notifying the community that elections are opened, to complete by February 15.

The process needs to produce two members who are willing to take on the role. Terms for ad-hoc members expire on October 31, 2012.

Resources and Support

The Election Committee may make use of whatever communication resources it deems appropriate and expedient, including Phone, IRC, and VoIP.  The Election Committee has access to any Association communication channels (e.g., conference lines) it requires to complete its mission.

Operations

The Chair will call ad hoc meetings as necessary. Election Committee members may participate in meetings virtually.

Comments

zzolo’s picture

Not sure where to have this discussion, but have talked about this a bit with nedjo and webchick. I also mentioned it a bit here:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/199178#comment-657193

The expectation of 4 in-person meetings, which admittedly creates better discussion among members, excludes a lot of potential candidates. This is a HUGE financial burden for (dare I say most) people.

I was told that given need, the DA can fit the bill, but I have never read that anywhere in the call for candidates, as far as I can recall. I, personally, kind of stop reading after that part as I know I can't guarantee that I could cover those costs; I am still unsure if I can go to Denver.

I do think this is a fair thing to budget for, if an in-person meeting is that necessary. The mission of the DA is to support the community, but it is still an organization that has costs; I would say this is a fair cost to have.

Maybe it should be more about sponsorship. Board members should try to get some sort of sponsorship. This is still limiting, but brings the burden off the individual more. Maybe this is the candidate finding sponsorship, or the DA on behalf of the individual.

Are in-person meetings that important? They are extremely helpful, but we seem to be a culture that is alright with remote interactions. Even setting the expectation that the candidate would have to be at 2 of the 4 would be a huge difference.

Overall, this expectation is excluding a huge group of people, and directly ensures the lack of diversity on the DA board.

jredding’s picture

Board members are stewards of the Association and as such are expected to use the community's funds to the best of their ability. This primarily means that board members should be responsible for their own expenses by either directly paying for them or finding a sponsor. However, this is not a barrier to nomination or elections. These at-large board seats are nominated by the community and elected into office by the community. If the community decides to elect a member that does not have the means to directly fund or find a sponsor for their travel then the Association will assign a budget for them.

I do not see this as a limiting criteria, rather it is a method of communicating that we do expect board members to be fiscally responsible for the organization. In the end it is the community's decision on who they want on the board.

nicl’s picture

If it is not a limiting criteria than you need to be pretty explicit that travel will be paid for.

I read the above announcement and it basically says pay your own way. There is a small suggestion that some financial aid might be forthcoming but is was hardly explicit or clear what this means in practice.

We should not require board members to pay at all for travel or lodgings for the meetings.

In the early 20th century MPs did not get paid in the UK. Then people realised that it was much better to provide an income so that anyone could be an MP - so that it could be based on merit, not financial ability. That was something like 90 years ago...

Travel to and from the states with accomodation 2 times a year (plus the 2 Drupalcon's) is hardly a small financial requirement - we're talking thousands of pounds. So it needs to be made explicit that money shouldn't be an issue for whether people decide to apply or not.

arianek’s picture

http://groups.drupal.org/node/199178#comment-658028 (cross-posting) as I just saw this thread on the association site and agree wholeheartedly

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I do think how/how much funding might be available is extremely important, and shouldn't be diminished. For example, simply funding say $600 towards a flight is hugely insufficient relative to the costs involved.

To illustrate the point (and just to be clear, I'm not planning on running as I prefer to focus my energies elsewhere, just trying to make this more concrete), someone might consider me a good example of a candidate, but I would not be able to do this without significant funding/support from the DA because:

A) Despite being in North America, travel from Canada is extremely pricey - because I'm on the west coast, somewhere like Portland I might be able to do for $400 round trip. East coast US would be more like $900. Europe is going to be more like $1200. For others who are outside of North America, especially since now the DA offices are further from Europe as well, I can only imagine it's comparable or significantly more for contents outside of NA/Europe.

B) I am not salaried - I work part time and am paid hourly, so despite having a steady job at a good company, even 2-4 days (being inclusive of travel) 4x/year would take a huge chunk out of my annual earnings.

C) There is a limit to how much small to medium sized companies can support their employees for professional development and open source contributions. They may be happy to send someone to Drupalcon, but 4 trips a year is something that only larger companies will likely be able to support.

D) If I had to do 3 annual meetings in Europe that would be extremely daunting - so the chances that someone outside North America would apply for a position where they had to do 3 trips to western US in a year is unlikely. Between the jetlag, the extra days off for travel distance, etc. it's a huge sacrifice.

Yes, I'm reiterating a lot of points above, but I think the costs of this are being hugely underestimated for anyone who isn't both living in the US, and working for a large company. Saying that enthusiasm for the position is the only factor that should be considered is really downplaying some very concrete issues for potential candidates.

From what's been said above, it does sound like it's quite possible that the DA can cover these costs if needed, which is fantastic! But I don't think anyone in my position (which is already pretty lucky/well supported as far as I'm concerned) or in more need of support would even consider applying without much more clarity around what costs can be covered. Support "in theory" really isn't enough when stepping up to make such a large commitment.

And as a last point, I think it's extremely important that we enable more people to be eligible for these kinds of positions. We have a lot of room to be more inclusive of anyone who might be an effective and passionate candidate, and it'd be great to see more diversity among those who make decisions that affect the entire community.