| by Cynthia M. Adams, CEO, GrantStation
One Step at a Time: The MOA and a Name
Part Four
Last week, I explained how the Advisory Board developed
the motion necessary to pursue the establishment of the endowment
fund. At the next Board of Directors meeting, where the motion
was passed, I promised to help work out the details of the
Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Community Foundation
that's on board to manage the fund.
Here's an example of
the MOA, as it was presented to us by the Community Foundation.
What kinds of questions and concerns did we have?
Concerns included:
- If something happens to the Community Foundation (they
are sued, or go out of business) would our endowment be
at risk?
- If something happens to our organization, who decides
where our endowment goes?
- Can the Community Foundation change the 1% administrative
fee without any notice? If we do get notice, how much time
will we have between the notice and when the fee is due?
- Can we have quarterly and annual reports on fund management,
including the growth of the fund?
Based on these concerns, I developed a list of questions
and sent them to the Community Foundation. They answered
some of my questions immediately. They'd never encountered
some of the other questions and needed to take them to their
Finance Committee for clarification.
I didn't want to lose momentum at this point and I asked
if they could answer the questions within the next two weeks
so we could draft the final MOA and bring it to the Executive
Committee of our Board for review and signature.
You'll note I said the Executive Committee of the Board.
I stated several times in the full Board meeting, and again
afterwards to the Board President, that this final MOA should
only be reviewed by the Executive Committee, not the full
Board. Again, the idea was to retain momentum.
While we were waiting for the Community Foundation's Finance
Committee to answer our questions, I thought it would be
smart to settle on a name for the fund. To do this, our working
committee developed a list of potential names, and then we
sent out a survey using Zoomerang as
our survey tool. I sent the list of possible names to the
full Board of Directors, Advisory Board, staff, and some
volunteers.
If you were following a step-by-step tutorial on establishing
an endowment fund, you'd want to focus on writing the Case
Statement next.
But life doesn't like us to get too comfortable. Life likes
to present us with challenges, as you'll read in the article
next week. |
