Hello,
I’m in the board of a permaculture association in Europe which is on a wabbling path (in my opinion) to consent decision making and sociocratic structure.
Today it was raised this issue: someone meant that family members and partners shouldn’t be allowed in the board, because of “conflict of interest” and “vulnerability for the organization”. I couldn’t see the reasons why having this addition to our by laws would bring us closer to our goals. So I came with an objection.
The feedback I’m asking here to you is to read your arguments and reasoning on yes/no to related people on the same board.
Before typing I did some research online and I see that in the US there’re some laws stating that these type of relationships on a board should be stated explicitly.
To add some context and disclosure:
I know that my partner has registered their interest to the “election committee” to become a candidate (it’s the annual meeting that votes the board members to enter the board). After my objection we started a discussion on if my objection was actually based on personal preferences (which I don’t think it is). It was a hard process: the facilitator who has been on the board from February (now it’s December) tried to round it up by saying that the majority was agreeing on the proposal of not having relatives. At this place in time I’m the only board member who’s studying sociocracy so I ended up trying to explain the process of the validity of an objection, but it was harder because of the objection being mine.