Milan_Griffes comments on Why did three GiveWell board members resign in April 2019?

Milan_Griffes 31 May 2019 23:21 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
Continuing with this… Catherine of GiveWell replied on the open thread, pointing me to Elie’s letter.
I followed up with this:

Thanks, Catherine.

I took a look at the letter – some questions I have after reading it:

- Why wasn’t the recording of the April 2019 board meeting made public? (As far as I can tell, recordings of all previous board meetings have been made public.)

- Was there a catalyzing event that led to the decision to reduce the number of board members? If so, what was this event?

- Did Rob, Brigid, and Tom volunteer their resignations, or were they asked to resign?

- Which current member(s) of the board is most likely to provide an accountability function to GiveWell’s executive leadership?

- Going forward, under what conditions will GiveWell decide to expand the number of board seats?
- Milan_Griffes 4 Jun 2019 15:57 UTC
  6 points
  0 ∶ 0
  Parent
  Catherine’s reply:
  
  Hi Milan,
  I’ve responded to each of your questions in turn:
  – Why wasn’t the recording of the April 2019 board meeting made public? (As far as I can tell, recordings of all previous board meetings have been made public.) We plan to share the recording of the meeting publicly, as we typically do. In the past, we have often had a lag of multiple months between the meeting date and publishing the recording.
  – Was there a catalyzing event that led to the decision to reduce the number of board members? If so, what was this event? There was no catalyzing event. Senior leadership and the Board regularly discuss the Board’s role and state.
  – Did Rob, Brigid, and Tom volunteer their resignations, or were they asked to resign? We are not planning to share this on their behalf, as we consider this private information between the individual Board members and GiveWell.
  – Which current member(s) of the board is most likely to provide an accountability function to GiveWell’s executive leadership? The role of the Board is to provide accountability for GiveWell’s work, and so we expect all current members of the Board (other than Elie) to serve that function.
  – Going forward, under what conditions will GiveWell decide to expand the number of board seats? We will consider expanding the number of seats on a case-by-case basis, and make decisions by weighing the benefit of adding the person to the Board relative to the cost of doing so.