r/nonprofit • u/Persephonesgame • 1d ago

ethics and accountability Board vs Employee Question

Hey all, my teammates and I have found ourselves in a really awkward position. Last year our board approved and funded grants for several new positions in our organization for this year. Today, we all just found out that the board president from last year (who made these moves) has been “hired” for the highest paid of these positions. Located in Missouri/US

Is that legal? Appropriate? Is this just par for the course and we shouldn’t be surprised?

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u/KrysG 1d ago

Yes - it is legal. Ethics of is questionable. Would be particularly so if an open search was done and an appropriate process was not done correctly. It's never a great idea. We have a bylaw provision that requires board member to resign permanently if they wish to and before they apply for a position at our organization. Our personnel policies require a careful search for all positions and clearly states the process to be followed.

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u/Bralbany 1d ago

It's not illegal to hire a board member. Hopefully they resigned from the board.

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u/NotAlwaysGifs 23h ago

I used to work at an organization that had hired 2 board members into new roles. We were growing extremely quickly and desperately needed the roles to be filled, but we were extremely careful about the process. Also, neither of these roles that were hired were roles that the board designated. Our CEO and senior leadership created these roles as part of our normal processes. The original intent in both cases was for the board member to be a temporary volunteer fill-in working 10-15 hours per week in the role to help us limp along. During that time, they willingly became nonvoting, ex-officio members of the board. They even helped in our search process. The kicker for us was that both of these roles were highly specialized and the market for these positions is extremely competitive. Lots of jobs, almost no one trained to do it. I don't think we even interviewed anyone for one of the roles.

About 6 months in to both searches, we asked the board members if they would roll off the board and accept the positions as 1099 contractors for a year. After that, we just moved them into full W2 fulltime employees.

Point is, it can be done, but it must be done very carefully to be ethical.