The nomination process for the Advisory Board for the devi co-op is now beginning! We’re excited to embark on this important step in our journey to identify individuals who will serve on the cooperative’s board, guiding us and providing recommendations as we organize to create abolitionist and non-carceral solutions to gender-based violence in the South.
Interested in nominating yourself? Apply below. Feel free to forward this page to members in your community that you think would be a good fit for the cooperative’s collective vision for liberation
Board Member Responsibilities
As a board member for The Devi Project, you will advise and provide oversight to a decentralized and collectively managed worker self-directed nonprofit (WSDN). In this regard, there are two core duties that board members will uphold:
- Duty of Care: Stay informed on the nonprofit’s business, make sure it’s working toward its mission, and provide financial guidance.
- Formalize language in either the bylaws or a board resolution that explains the rationale for implementing worker self-direction.
- Establish formal means by which workers update the board on the activities of the organization
- Critically review and approve a staff-created statement of ethical guidelines about how the staff governs themselves and interacts with other groups..
- Maintain an accounting manual detailing which staff member is responsible for essential functions of the organization at any given time.
- Regularly review balance sheets and income statements. Provide feedback regarding financial planning. Support use of best practices regarding finances.
- Ensure legal compliance by spotting potential legal issues and retaining general counsel when necessary.
- Create opportunities for staff to reflect on whether or not the governance system is serving the mission of the nonprofit.
- Create opportunities for staff to formally and critically reflect on their alignment with their mission
- Duty of Loyalty: Act in a manner that is of the best interest of the organization, and appropriately handle conflicts-of-interest (compensation, use of property or confidential information, or material benefit to an individual from their position in the cooperative).
- Conflict disclosure forms are filled out by both board and staff.
- Establish whistleblower procedures and/or hotline
- Regular audits- If these are prohibitively costly, organizations can get CPA reviews
- Require formal approval for non trivial monetary transactions- This approval comes from the worker governance system, not the board. It functions to ensure checks within the governance system, not as a check from outside of it.
- Monitor staff roles to ensure that duties and powers are arranged to create peer-to-peer checks and accountabilities. No one person should be in a position to completely control all aspects of a transaction from initiation through approval.
- Ensure workers are trained on the types of decisions that could create risks of malfeasance (like determining their own pay) and institute process to get board approval for such decisions.
- Oversee financial team to insure contributions are used for donor’s specified intent.
- Delineate responsibilities of directors, officers, and staff who serve affiliated but separately incorporated entities in the performance of their duties for each entity.
For more information on board responsibilities for Worker Self Directed Nonprofits and legal compliance, please click here. If you are interested in applying, please fill out the “TDP Call for Board Members Google Form” below by March 12th, 2021. You will be contacted by March 19th, 2021 for an interview with TDC’s worker-members. We are happy to host a meeting with you and members of the cooperative if you would like to chat prior to your interview; please respond to this email with your availability and we will arrange a Zoom call. After interviews, TDC will then vote in eight individuals, some to serve in an advisory capacity, and others to serve in both an advisory capacity and as one of the four oversight “Owls”. For more information on the oversight roles, please click here.
It is helpful if nominees have had an active history participating in grassroots organizing movements and/or working with people, particularly surrounding racial, gender, disability, immigrant, and/or reproductive justice, with a specialized lens in gender violence, commutation campaigns, and/or transformative justice. TDC is considering nominees that possess life experiences and community access to radically shape our work to center the most marginalized (formerly/currently incarcerated, survivors, undocumented individuals, Black/TGNC, etc.). If you have further questions, please contact us at general@thedevicoop.org.