[Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

Wed Jan 25 23:06:48 UTC 2006

Angela wrote:
> Does anyone have experience or knowledge of how Executive Committees
> in other non-profit organizations are organized? Is there any benefit
> of one approach over the other?

I've been a member of a number of organizations, 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 527, 
charitable, educational, political, etc. Most of them had a three-tier 
command structure:

Board/Executive Officers - a fairly small number (4-12) of people, each 
with a defined role in the organization, have authority to act in the 
scope of their role and as authorized by the broader org (see EC and CC 
below), little role as a group beyond their individual jobs and often 
some charter requirements. Tend to stay in frequent contact and take on 
a lot of urgent things that can't be dealt with in committee in time.

Executive Committee - consists of the Executive Officers plus a number 
of directors, representatives of different subunits within the 
organization, the means of selection varies depending on the nature of 
the organization and its relative orientation (top-down or bottom-up; 
whether the org is a project of the Board and the rest of the org 
members are just those they've enlisted to help them in it or whether 
it's an association of people with a specific cause/interest/goal and 
the officers are chosen by the body of those to represent them). The EC 
can set rules, change policy, etc. Often the EC and the Board become 
conflated in people's minds, and often they're effectively the same 
entity, but the Board is the body with actual power under the rules and 
bylaws.

Central Committee - A much larger body of org members, nearly always a 
superset of the EC. In small organizations, this may consist of all 
members; in larger organizations it consists of elected representatives. 
It's not unusual for a CC to be a hundred people; in very large orgs 
with a lot of subunits, this may be several hundred. Its power varies 
greatly depending on how the body is organized. In some, the CC has no 
actual power and serves largely as a discussion place and sounding board 
for the EC, being informed as to the EC's activities and then being the 
ones, in turn, to share it with non-committee membership. (This is most 
common in top-down orgs.) In others, the CC has the full power of the 
organization and sets bylaws, elects EC members, and the EC can't do 
anything outside is granted authority without recieving authorization 
from the CC.

It's not unusual for an org to require all financial expenditures be 
authorized (not necessarily approved individually) by the CC.

Going back to your mail, now that I've drifted greatly... I've never 
seen an org with a smaller EC than Board. I know they exist, I just 
haven't been involved with any. One I can think of had a 30-person 
Board... when they decided to found an EC, they cut the Board down to 8 
members and made the EC 40 members. The EC had most of the authority the 
Board had had previously; in effect, you could say that the Board 
expanded slightly and was renamed the EC, with a new Board being made of 
only the highest-ranking members (in this case, chair, vice chair, 
finance director, executive director, communications director, research 
director, personnel director, properties director).

That probably wasn't too clear, but maybe it's helpful.

-- Jake Nelson