Succession
I think there is a good model in (for instance) the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Committee members are allowed a certain number of terms, three I think, of limited time each (again I think three years) after which they must be replaced. The membership was originally staggered so that each year the permissible re-elections or replacements were possibe. Thus a part of the committee is replaced every year and stagnation tends to be avoided by having a permanent and increasingly conservative membership. Also chairs have a term of office and only a certain term as chair allowed, which means they cannot come in as a chair on the first year and effectively require several years to get there, thus accruing experience. There is also more than one deputy chair so that chairing is not thrown off by non-availability. I recommend people take a look at that Committee and similar and begin to take it from there. I have been on lots of committees, been in local government office, a charity trustee and so on so have seen the direst messes as well. The UN model is pretty good compared to many others and easily adaptable. Discussion would be good.
I made some typing errors and found that the edit function is not working, so please excuse me for not catching some of the such as toward the end: 'I am and old hand...! should read 'I am an old hand...'.
Thank you for the positive comment Peter. I reread what I had written and saw that with my own experience of committees of various kinds I had learned a couple of further very important pointers but forgot to add them. Firstly there is the committee size and structure. A small organisation, which is to say with few people voting, needs a small committee but it goes into the opposite extreme with limitations. A large membership means a larger committee but not one that is too big to manage. Since it should be representative of members it certainly needs to have a spread out rather than concentrated geographical distribution with, perhaps, one 'deputy chair' representing a large region/continent or whichever physical division is chosen. That avoids having a global organisation with a committee of 20 out of which 18 are from the USA and Europe which has happened far too often. Then there is the question of typologies since we all come from different discipline areas and thus the last thing we would want is (again hypothetically) 18 mathematicians, a psychologist and a geologist. Getting the proportionality right is quite complicated but necessary and thus needs some kind of pre-selection system for new committee members. That would probably need to be by delegation. Without further ado let us also consider other issues such as gender and possibly ability/disability that need to be taken into account but there discussion is imperative because being aggressively politically correct can be destructive rather than constructive if taken wrongly into account. Then there is another question that some people will absolutely never think about. I have used the example of a 20 member committee so let's stick with that number. Actually it is a silly number. It could lead to a 10:10 hung issue, so what it should be is 19 or 21 so that the uneven number offers the chance of less hung decision although abstentions can naturally reintroduce the same problem. The chairperson might well be given a casting vote in the committee's constitution to avoid that. In other words, if there are 19 members when a vote is made the chair does not vote until the 18 voting committee members are counted. He or she has an opinion anyway, so then he or she can cast their vote anyway. However, if it was a nine:nine hung vote the chair has the options of calling for further discussion and voting again or casting their own vote to reach a conclusion. The same can easily happen with abstentions.All things need to be put into a constitution or articles of association. As with a charity I helped start, we also included a review period so that every two years we looked at our constitution to see whether it needed to be amended: for instance, after the first two years we needed at least two new trustees so amended then added.I am firing ideas at everybody/anybody who happens to wish to contribute here. It does not mean I am aiming to be on the committee. There has to be a delegation and election system in place and candidates need to be asked and have the choice of acceptance or decline. I, for instance, would consider committee membership but decline chairing or even deputy chairing because there are periods when I travel and even working online becomes tricky. In my own opinion I am also not only and old hand at committees but also an older researcher and in all I do am always trying to encourage 'new blood' to bring in younger, fresher ideas and energy. So a first round committee perhaps, if I thought we had a workable constitution only, but probably no more. I am adding that because since I am responding and some people might see somebody willing to make such considerations a natural committee member that is not, in fact, where I am coming from. My thoughts are to contribute at this stage then see what follows. Now I believe I have done my bit and would like to see others get it actioned.
Thanks,
This is definitely a model that we should think about, and perhaps aim for.
A first step towards this will be to establish a volunteer advisory group of people with experience and interests relevant to the aims of the network. The network currently lacks any visible prospects for succession as it is still managed and financed by one person (me), and I have not yet found anyone with similar experience and dedication to collaborate with on the project. So... there is no active committee and base to support formation of a supporting Trust, or a legally registered NPO (for example).
We are still in the Catch 22 phase of not having enough activity, as a network, to attract financial sponsors, and not having enough financial support to boost network activity (especially in terms of membership growth, and useful interactions between members).
Yet the network is steadily growing, and many people have joined because they think a network such as this is useful.
The Research Cooperative time line
2001 - Inception with trial bulletin board system.
2008 - Switch to Ning supported network more suited to the purpose.
2008-2011 - Elaboration of the Ning-based network using only standard features, as no funds are available for customisation, and the standard system is automatically compatible with improvements made by Ning over time.
2010 - Used direct mail promotion using a dedicated academic email listing service (approx USD 2,000 cost). The mailing company noted a remarkably low rate of negative responses to the advertisement sent in this way.
The network is now naturally growing at a rate of about 350-450 new members per year, but with not too much cost, the rate could easily be increased to 1,000-2,000 new members per year, based on my experience so far. I am trying to save funds for this. I suspect that the threshold for self-sustaining rapid increase and also for real utility of the network will be around 5,000 to 10,000 members (we currently have almost 3,500).
When the activity and utility become more obvious, we will probably attract more interest from potential sponsors and collaborators, for development and management of the network, and this is when we will need to have a more definite plans for a formal NPO structure, and for succession.
Other members may have different views about this.