Question 5: Do you agree there should be a limit to how much funding should come from any one organisation or individual? Should organisations be able to contribute at all?
Question 6: Should the ombudsperson be their own charitable entity?
To put a little more context on the independence concern, some of the proposed ombudsperson tasks carry significant legal risk—the most obvious example is “publish[ing] an independent view of the evidence” of potential criminal activity. It’s not appropriate for an organization to put all of its assets on the line for an independent ombudsperson’s actions or inactions. On the other hand, if the ombudsperson has to get approval from a major organization’s risk management function (and potentially at the board level for major actions), they are pretty lacking in the independence category. That pushes me strongly into the “own charitable entity” category.
On question 5, I agree on capping donations and would add that ideally only the ombud organization’s treasurer (or finance committee members) would even know who the donors are. [1] By analogy, most well-run religious congregations are set up in a way that the lead ministers are shielded off from knowing which parishoners give money and how much they give. The reason for that policy is to guard against the risk of partiality. Another possible funding mechanism would be a large one-time grant with a clear commitment for the donor never to give again (cf. generally how the “Facebook Supreme Court” was funded in a way that gives it significant independence from Facebook).
Donations over $5,000 from other nonprofits would generally have to be disclosed on the donor org’s Form 990, Schedule I, although everyone involved could promise not to read other orgs’ Schedule I.
To put a little more context on the independence concern, some of the proposed ombudsperson tasks carry significant legal risk—the most obvious example is “publish[ing] an independent view of the evidence” of potential criminal activity. It’s not appropriate for an organization to put all of its assets on the line for an independent ombudsperson’s actions or inactions. On the other hand, if the ombudsperson has to get approval from a major organization’s risk management function (and potentially at the board level for major actions), they are pretty lacking in the independence category. That pushes me strongly into the “own charitable entity” category.
On question 5, I agree on capping donations and would add that ideally only the ombud organization’s treasurer (or finance committee members) would even know who the donors are. [1] By analogy, most well-run religious congregations are set up in a way that the lead ministers are shielded off from knowing which parishoners give money and how much they give. The reason for that policy is to guard against the risk of partiality. Another possible funding mechanism would be a large one-time grant with a clear commitment for the donor never to give again (cf. generally how the “Facebook Supreme Court” was funded in a way that gives it significant independence from Facebook).
Donations over $5,000 from other nonprofits would generally have to be disclosed on the donor org’s Form 990, Schedule I, although everyone involved could promise not to read other orgs’ Schedule I.