Even if Eddington’s role as Executive Director of the organization isn’t as dramatic as you’d find in a legal thriller, the need for reduced rate or free legal services in our area has never been greater, and the prospects for funding sources to meet those needs are changing rapidly.

In the past, pro bono legal services in Indiana (including the District 9 office that serves Wayne County) were funded largely through the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA)  program run by the Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Bar Foundation.  Basically, lawyers around the state would pool together their deposits from paying clients in a shared bank account that would accumulate interest, and that interest income would be used to cover expenses for pro bono work.  You may have heard that the global economy hasn’t been doing so well in the last few years, and when your bank account interest rate is approximately zero, it’s hard to earn much money on it.  Pro bono offices around the state found out recently that IOLTA funding would cease at the end of 2011, leaving them to revert to the State’s plan for filling in pro bono service coverage: one part time person trying to handle all of the cases across many counties.

“We can do better,” Eddington told me.  The Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission, a 501(c)3 non-profit, has decided to try to meet the legal needs of low-income community members in Wayne County through the support of donations and the time and efforts of their legal team and board.  If you’re at 125% of the Federal Poverty Level ($13,612 gross yearly income for a single person), the Commissions’s services will likely be at no cost to you.  If you’re at 200% of that level, your out of pocket expenses are capped at a reasonable amount.  The process starts with a fairly simple application form available at their 712 E Main Street location in Richmond.

The Commission is having a luncheon tomorrow, Thursday December 15th, to share more information about their work and to raise some funds.  They also recently received a grant from the Wayne County Foundation to help keep operations going as they seek out longer term sources of income.  You can contact them at (765) 935-5053 for more information.

I would certainly rather live in a world where access to legal advice that might make a significant difference in someone’s ability to live a happier life (or, more pressingly, keep their home or fight abuse) doesn’t depend on their own personal wealth.  While the court system provides public defenders for someone caught up in a criminal case, there’s no such protection in civil cases, but the stakes can sometimes be just as high. The reality is that people do find themselves in situations beyond their personal control, and sometimes good legal counsel does make all the difference.

I hope we can explore sustainable, long-term solutions for meeting these community needs that don’t depend on fundraising.  But for now, I’m grateful that the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono group is working to meet this need in our community today, and I hope they continue to receive support along the way.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I’m on the board of the Wayne County Foundation which recently awarded a grant to the Commission, and I’m part of an LLC that rents out the office space the Commission uses.)

I’ve written before about things you might consider when leaving a volunteer board of directors for a non-profit or other community organization. I’ve also had some good conversations recently about the process on the other side of that kind of community involvement, deciding whether or not to say “yes” to joining a board of directors or taking on some other leadership role. For your sake and for that of the organization, it’s important to do some research and reflecting before accepting that invitation, to make sure your involvement is a good fit and that the experience will be rewarding for all involved.

From my experience, here’s a list of steps to take and questions to ask when you’re considering whether or not to join a board of directors:

1. What’s the function of the board? Is it purely advisory, or does it make and enforce policy? Is it involved in big-picture strategic planning, or is it managing day-to-day operations? What role does it play in the life of the organization?
2. What’s the time commitment? Some boards meet a few times a year in intensive sessions, but don’t otherwise expect much from their members. Other boards meet monthly, with multiple committee meetings and community events in between that you might be expected to attend or even organize. Some boards have very active e-mail mailing lists, others are quiet. Learn how much of your time and energy – in the form of meetings, events and other communications – you’ll be expected to expend.
3. What’s the leadership structure? Who sets the agenda for the board meetings? What’s the relationship between the board’s executive committee or other leadership and the rest of the members? What’s the relationship between the board and the staff? Are there “covert leaders” who have exceptional but unofficial or unnamed influence?
4. How are decisions made? Do board conversations seek to build consensus, or is discussion about convincing a majority to vote a certain way? When there are concerns or conflicts, how are they resolved? Are stakeholders consulted, or informed after the fact?
5. What’s your anticipated role? Are you being invited to join because you have a specific skill, affiliation or resource that you’ll be expected to use (e.g. you’re a lawyer and they need free legal advice)? Do they already know what committee or project they want you to work on, or will they wait to discern what might be the best fit for you?
6. What’s the new member orientation process? Are new board members formally oriented to the processes and culture of the board, or are they just expected to show up and figure it out? Who does the orienting, and what approach do they use?
7. How is institutional memory preserved? Does the board create and publish thorough meeting minutes? Are past decisions and discussions easily reviewable so that conversations aren’t re-hashed with board member turnover? Are key documents like bylaws, member contact lists, and financial statements made easily available?
8. What’s a meeting like? Ask to sit in on a board meeting as an observer and see how it’s conducted. Are the espoused values and mission of the organization manifested in the way the board members interact with each other? Is member participation even and equitable, or unbalanced and dominated? How does it feel to spend an hour of your time in that setting?
9. Why did other board members say yes, and why are they still there? Talk to other members of the board about their experiences, what they think works well, and what they see as areas for organizational growth. What frustrates them? What projects and successes get them excited?
10. Check your schedule. Even if the answers to all of the above questions point toward a “yes,” look at your existing time commitments and personal aspirations, and ask whether or not you can fully engage in the life of the organization without compromising those. Do you have enough time in the day for a new role?

Are there other things you take into consideration when deciding what good causes and organizations you give your own time to?

Having served on the CRC board in the past and having volunteered as a trained mediator, I came to greatly appreciate the idea that members of a community can resolve our interpersonal conflicts in ways that promote non-violence, justice, reconciliation and a deepening of connection, without resorting to the sometimes scarring machinations of the legal system. The CRC existed to facilitate those experiences, through its mediation program, educational work with local youth, and its rich history of related efforts in the Richmond area and beyond.

As a mediator, I had the honor of witnessing some magical moments between family members or co-workers where the conversation transitioned from accusation and battling to understanding, compassion and hope for moving forward. As a board member, I had the honor of working with a driven and passionate group of volunteers and staff who believed in what the CRC was about and what it could do for the community.

While the principles and practices of mediating conflict are certainly still available to anyone who wants to pursue them, it’s sad to see that a place like the CRC can’t sustain itself right now.  My hope, of course, is that this is an ending that will lead to other beginnings down the road.

Many people have given life and breath to CRC’s mission over the years, and I’m so thankful for their work.  I’m especially thankful for the careful and surely painful work that the current board members have taken on in reaching the conclusion to lay the CRC down.  I hope that Richmond can find some way to honor what CRC did and stood for in the ways that we carry forward.

While I commend the efforts of those who are seeking to maximize the funds that have a direct impact on the actual aid work, I’m not sure that this particular request makes sense to me.

First, a little background on how processing fees work:

How money gets from here to there

Most donations that any of us give to any organization flow through some sort of multi-step process before the funds are actually available to that organization.  The simplest form, of course, is that I walk down the street to the organization’s headquarters and hand them cash that comes out of my wallet.  The cash is in their hands, ready to use however they might need it.

A more common flow is that I write a check and mail it into the organization.  The costs and hassles here are still minimal – I might pay 42 cents for the stamp, I probably had some envelopes laying around, the additional staff time needed at the organization to convert the check to usable funds is probably wrapped up in a deposit they’d do anyway, and their bank probably doesn’t charge them for that process.  But still, it’s a little more overhead and infrastructure than the cash transaction needed.

Which brings us to credit card transactions and other forms of electronic giving.  When you pay for something with a credit card, there are a slew of institutions involved in making that transaction successful.  There’s your relationship with your credit card company that allows you to have the line of credit in the first place.  There’s the receiving organization’s relationship with a credit card processor, which allows them to take you credit card number and hold some dollars on your account.  There’s the credit card processor’s relationship with other credit card companies, which allows them to talk to your credit card company to make sure you have those funds available.  And then there’s the credit card processor’s relationship with the receiving organization’s bank, which allows them to deposit your money into the bank account. Similar relationships are in place when you use online payment services like PayPal.

Of course, all of this happens with the swipe of a piece of plastic and some behind-the-scenes bit shuffling, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an incredibly complicated series of relationships and many pieces of physical and technological infrastructure.  It’s understandable that there are some costs involved.

Do they really need to charge that much?

Now to be sure, I think that the credit card companies and PayPal are making quite a nice profit margin on their operations.  Between the fees they charge the receiving organization for using their services (usually a monthly charge plus per-transaction fees) to the interest and account fees they make off of each credit card holder, it’s arguable that they’ve got quite a nice little racket going.

But this reality doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not the transaction is being made for a charitable cause – I use my credit card regularly for things that I think are good and necessary in my life, the life of my community, and the larger world, and they may or may not be going to an IRS-recognized 501(c)3 charity.  If the credit card companies choose to use some of their earnings to give back to the relief effort, that’s their choice, but I’m not sure we can demand it within the capitalist context of the financial ecosystem and our on-demand society that allows them to exist and thrive in the first place.

Another angle to this is that there are some very clever, entrepreneurial people out there who have pioneered the technologies and relationships that let you do things like send a text message to a certain number in order to donate funds to a good cause – one that’s gotten some attention with the Haiti giving is mGive.  If someone has created a tool that didn’t exist before allowing faster, easier donation of funds in a way that raises more money, I think they should be allowed to make a business model around that creation.  Choosing to donate some or all of their proceeds back to the relief effort would be an admirable thing for them to do, but I’m not sure we have a right to be indignant if they don’t.

Refocusing on the bigger issues

When we give money to a relief effort, we expect that that money isn’t going to end up in the pockets of the people in need of help.  It will be used to buy things and services that help them, and it will be used to fund the infrastructure needed to get those things and services delivered.  Donation processing fees may not be as tangibly or obviously necessary as the cost of a supply airlift flight or medical supplies, but they’re still a part of that infrastructure and ecosystem.

Again, I’m not saying that credit card / electronic transaction processing fees or the whole credit system is fair or just – I suspect that is not true at all.  But calls to change it should be focused on the broader industry practices and the culture that enables those, not the temporary diversion of fees charged during charitable giving.  And those calls are out there – major retailers (e.g. 7-Eleven) have launched campaigns to fight back against the fees they’re paying to accept credit cards, and there are plenty of private and governmental efforts to cap interest rates on cards.

If you’re interested in these issues and like watching glowing rectangles, I highly recommend the Frontline special “The Secret History of the Credit Card” and the film Maxed Out.  I also suggest you talk with the people who run the businesses and organizations you support, and ask them how credit card processing fees affect them – you may find yourself writing more checks or even handling cash more often.

What happened?

I honestly didn’t expect anyone to really notice the challenge, but a few people did, and “retweeted it” [what's that?] to their own Twitter followers accordingly.  In the end, I had 10 new followers in that time period, about a 7% increase in my relatively modest following.  Who knows which of them came because of my challenge and which would have followed me anyway; it doesn’t really matter.

Today I’ll write a donation check for $20 to the Boys and Girls Club.

As I said, this was just an experiment to see what would happen.  I think there are some great opportunities to “harness the power of social media” for charitable giving campaigns, especially with great tools out there like Fundable.org, and I look forward to playing around more with what’s possible.

Thanks to all who noticed the challenge, stay tuned for others like it.

One aspect of board culture that seems to be in total chaos everywhere is how a board member can leave a board of directors before their natural term is up in a positive and professional way. Based on my own experiences – sometimes as a board member who did a poor job of leaving early, sometimes as a board leader who was disappointed in how others parted ways – I’ve some unsolicited advice to offer:

1. Don’t Board Fade. Board Fading is the practice of slowly and quietly starting to disengage from the life of the organization. First you miss a few meetings, then you miss a few more without even sending your regrets, then you stop paying attention to the e-mail listserv, and then you just stop caring altogether. It’s a common and tempting practice in the world of ridiculous conflicting priorities, but it leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, I think. If you find that you cannot serve out your duties as a board member, confront that head on and do something about it.
2. Don’t Resign by E-Mail or Voicemail. Ultimately, boards are still groups of people who have relationships with each other as they work to achieve some common goals. I think we owe each other the courtesy and care that comes with talking face-to-face about the things in our relationships that are difficult. To resign from a board with an e-mail or voicemail message is not only unprofessional, it does not provide any closure. You should take the time to meet with the board president or some other representative, and talk about why you’re leaving, what kind of relationship you’d like to have with the organization in the future, and what could have been done differently. If you still want to put your resignation in writing for everyone else, that’s fine.
3. Don’t let past board members become ghosts. If you’re in a leadership role on a board that someone is leaving early, or even if you’re not, the resignation discussion is not the end of the process. The person was originally on the board for a reason, and so it’s worth it to find out why their board experience didn’t match up with those original expectations. Your development efforts will also benefit from finding ways to maintain contact with the former board member, so that they can remain an informal spokesperson for the organization, and continue to offer their own support (volunteering, financial contributions, or otherwise). Just because they can’t come to board meetings any more doesn’t mean they can’t still participate.
4. Don’t speak ill of your former organizational colleagues. Or, at least don’t speak ill of them to others without first communicating your concerns directly to them first. Like all relationships, just because there’s a shift in its status, it doesn’t mean that you’re free to be reckless in your comments about it to others. You may find that you have other connections to those people that matter to you in the future, or that another organization you want to join will hear about how this parting of ways went and what was said. If you have concerns about how things were handled, work that out with the person(s) involved, don’t gossip about them.

That’s what I’ve got for now.  The theme here, of course, is to try to live out organizational relationships with the same intentionality, humanity and sensitivity that you would use in personal relationships.  I think we sometimes forget that organizations (even the largest corporate enterprises) are just groups of individual people, most of them trying to do the best they can.

If you have experience in the parting of ways with an organization’s board of directors or similar kinds of “endings,” feel free to share the practices and principles that you think should help shape those acts.