The Drupal Association has grown an immense amount in the past year and we have been busy building a stronger Association. Last year the Drupal Association made a decision to shift to a staffed organization to better support the community. In this process we recognized that we had internal faults with our governance and board management that would prevent the Association from reaching its next level of growth. In the Fall of 2010 we began a process to evaluate and create a new structure to help support the Drupal community in the future. We recognize that while we were busy researching, building, and changing that we have not been communicating as much with our community as we should have been. We can do better.
I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss how we are growing and learning to do better.
In the Fall of 2010 we hired a consultant to review our board structure and provide us with recommendations on how we could do better. We received this report in December of 2010. The report showed that we needed major changes to our board structure including the skills and diversity, governance, and the creation of permanent and temporary committees. This report made us realize that we had a lot of work in front of us.
At the start of 2011 we enlisted the help of Adam Goodman from Northwestern University's center for leadership to get us to our next level. Adam worked with us virtually and held an in-person retreat at DrupalCon Chicago, his work provided us with the tools to help us create a governance and leadership structure that would best support the unique community of the Drupal project. His report was provided to us in April of 2011. We left this retreat with a list of action items, which included items such a:
- Removing the Executive Director from the Board of Directors
- Adopting an annual board calendar
- Shifting from a working board to a policy board
- Creation of a governance committee, finance committee, and a conflict of interest committee
We have yet to implement this new structure but work is underway now. I want to cover a few topics and answer some questions that were submitted to the upcoming Town Hall meeting.
Nomination CommitteePreviously the Drupal Assocation waited for individuals to come to us, which resulted in several uncontested board seats due to low involvement. The nomination committee shifts this dynamic by seeking talented individuals for inclusion on the board.
Conflict of Interest Committee
A permanent committee with a charter of responding to or investigating potential conflicts of interest.
Governance Committee
Initially this committee worked to create the new governance structure of the Drupal Association. It has now disbanded but will be recreated to continually monitor and make changes to the governance of the Drupal Association, which could include a resizing of the board to include additional members.
There is a lot of work to be done and we are just scratching the surface of what we can accomplish in this new model. It is not perfect but it provides us with the flexibility to grow with our community.
more at Drupal Org
