<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I have sent the article below to the NGO Landmines Working Group only, since the Halo Trust is primarily a mine action organization. However the criticisms leveled by Angelina Jolie and this editorial comment by Rick Cohen could equally apply to problems of governance and improprieties of board members that may be found among NGOs working in any sector.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I suggest that the NGO Resource Center staff forward this to all working groups, or to the entire NGO RC membership, whichever is easier.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">CHUCK SEARCY</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"></div>=========================================</b></span></font></div><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b>CHUCK SEARCY</b></span></font><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b>International Advisor, Project RENEW</b></span></font></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b style="font-size:10px;color:rgb(153,0,0);font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif">Vice President, Veterans For Peace Chapter 160</b><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b style="font-size:10px;color:rgb(153,0,0);font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif">Co-Chair, NGO Agent Orange Working Group</b><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b style="font-size:10px;color:rgb(153,0,0);font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif">71 Trần Quốc Toản, Hà Nội, Việt Nam</b><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b>US +1 404 740 0653<br></b></span></font></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b>VN +8 490 342 0769</b></span></font></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b>E <a href="mailto:chuckusvn@gmail.com" target="_blank">chuckusvn@gmail.com</a></b></span></font></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b style="font-size:10px;color:rgb(153,0,0);font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif">Sk chucksearcy</b><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b style="color:rgb(153,0,0);font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:10px">=========================================</b></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><b><font size="4"><a href="http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/09/03/angelina-jolie-leaves-halo-trust-over-board-members-paid-for-work/?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=21788785&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8GTu61SzdmjeY-wXDBm3WknTDiT5sZFH_ven0jIHAIfzAwgHdCfUhW0xS8kObcjUYtKv3t8JawjWHrDRkBfOOncIDu3Q&_hsmi=21788785">NON-PROFIT QUARTERLY</a></font></b></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><h1 class="" itemprop="headline" style="margin:0px 0px 12px;font-family:proxima,proxima-nova,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(67,79,90);line-height:1"><font size="6">Angelina Jolie Leaves Halo Trust <br>over Board Members Paid for “Work”</font></h1><h5 class="" style="font-size:14.64px;margin:0px 0px 12px;font-family:proxima,proxima-nova,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;color:rgb(67,79,90);line-height:1.3"><span class=""><span class="">By</span> <span class="" itemprop="author" style="font-weight:bold;text-transform:uppercase"><a class="" href="http://nonprofitquarterly.org/author/rcohen51/" title="Read All Posts By Rick Cohen" rel="author" style="color:rgb(51,51,51);text-decoration:none">RICK COHEN</a></span></span><span class=""> <br>September 2, 2015</span></h5><div class="" itemprop="articleBody" style="font-size:16px;margin-bottom:24px"><div id="attachment_116752" class="" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-bottom:12px;max-width:771px"><a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/files/2015/09/Angelina-Jolie.jpg" style="color:rgb(230,100,89);text-decoration:none"><img class="" src="http://145rnijm0ab3n57zj39in2y1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2015/09/Angelina-Jolie-771x578.jpg" alt="Angelina-Jolie" width="601" height="451" style="vertical-align: middle; border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; margin-right: 0px;"></a><i style="line-height:normal;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;color:rgb(85,85,85)">Angelina Jolie calling for an end to rape as a
weapon of war / <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(230,100,89)">UK Department for International
Development</span></a></span></i></div><div id="attachment_116752" class="" style="margin-bottom:12px;max-width:771px">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.25in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Congratulations to Angelina Jolie for demonstrating an
awareness of trustee propriety that unfortunately seems to escape too many
others. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3219384/Angelina-Jolie-quit-Princess-Diana-clearing-charity-row-trustees-paying-500-day.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(230,100,89)">Jolie quit the board of the Halo
Trust</span></a>, a charity that clears land mines from war zones, in protest
of two other trustees being paid as much as £500 a day for a total of £122,750,
to conduct a review of the charity’s governance, compensation, and structure.
They also received payment for other costs on top of their £500/day
remuneration. She also protested the practice of the charity to pay for the
school fees of the children of selected staff.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.25in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The Halo Trust responded to the criticism reflected in
Jolie’s resignation that the board had voted to authorize the organizational
review, paid the trustees for “carrying out this work and running the
organization,” and got approval for the arrangement from the UK’s Charity
Commission. In other words, the deal seems to have escaped falling into
illegality. It doesn’t appear that other trustees of the charity, such as Cindy
McCain, wife of Senator John McCain, were as nonplussed with the trustee
payments as Jolie.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.25in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Good for Angelina Jolie!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.25in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The notion of board members being paid for work to benefit
the charity they are charged with governing is troubling. Was the board likely
to tell the two trustees—one of whom, Amanda Pullinger, a former hedge fund
manager, was the chair—that this plan might have been inappropriate? Assume
that Pullinger and the other paid trustee, Simon Conway, recused themselves
from the vote to authorize their remuneration. Does anyone think that the board
wouldn’t have nonetheless been influenced by knowing that payments to two of
their peers would be nixed if they were to vote against the deal? If board
members are being paid, what kind of due diligence and oversight of their work
is likely to be conducted about the quality of their product? It would seem
that the Pullinger-led review of the Halo Trust’s human resources, financial
planning, organizational structure, and compensation practices apparently
didn’t take a critical eye to compensation of trustees.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.25in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Don’t take this story lightly. It takes a special kind of
integrity, even for a major Hollywood star like Jolie, to walk away from a
nonprofit board because of practices that inappropriately benefit one’s peer trustees
or other insiders, even if they are legal—particularly because the practice of
self-dealing in charity may be more common than one might suspect. Although the
study is a bit dated, Francie Ostrower’s 2007 study of nonprofit governance was
truly shocking with its revelations of financial transactions in nonprofits
involving board members, and we suspect that practices haven’t radically
changed in the interim. <a href="http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/411479-Nonprofit-Governance-in-the-United-States.PDF"><span style="color:rgb(230,100,89)">Consider this striking finding from Ostrower’s report</span></a>:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:9pt;line-height:normal;background:rgb(221,221,221)"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">According to respondents’
self-reports, financial transactions between organizations and board members
are extensive, particularly among large nonprofits. Overall, 21 percent of
nonprofits reported buying or renting goods, services, or property from a board
member or affiliated company during the previous two years. Among nonprofits
with more than $10 million in annual expenses, however, the figure climbs to more
than 41 percent. Note, however, that among those nonprofits that say they did
not engage in transactions with board members or affiliated companies, fully 75
percent also say they do not require board members to disclose their financial
interests in entities doing business with the organization, and thus,
respondents may have been unaware of transactions that do exist. According to
respondent reports, among nonprofits engaged in financial transactions, most
obtained goods at market value (74 percent), but a majority (51 percent) did
report that they obtained goods below market cost. Under 2 percent reported
paying above market cost.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.25in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-size:12pt"><br>We would guess that among those U.S. charities, there were
board members who might have been uncomfortable with paying their board
colleagues for functions that might have been more fairly purchased from
outside vendors and sometimes at less cost. One wonders whether the £500 a day
paid to Pullinger and Conway was far enough below market value to justify the
arrangement; we doubt it. Jolie appears to have thought that if the charity
wanted to call for a review of its operations, the trustees could have paid it
from their own pockets. Even then, however, having just two trustees conduct
their own review could mean that the board might have some difficulty in giving
the report an unbiased review. Jolie’s action is a reminder to Pullinger,
Conway, and all other charity board members that their first and foremost
function in a charity is to oversee and govern its operations, not to confuse
themselves for staff or vendors.</span><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">The
Halo Trust was a favored charity of the late Princess Diana and an occasional
venue of charitable activity for her son, Prince Harry. For us, it is now a
favorite for a different reason, a case study of a board which paid selected
trustees handsomely for certain tasks, but where one trustee found the practice
unseemly enough to warrant her dropping off the board. Our admiration for
Angelina Jolie, already an activist in the humanitarian sphere, has just risen
several notches more.—Rick Cohen</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><img src="http://145rnijm0ab3n57zj39in2y1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2015/04/Rick-Cohen-96x96.jpg" alt="Rick Cohen"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:18pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Georgia,serif;color:rgb(51,51,51)"></span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Georgia,serif;color:rgb(51,51,51)"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:18pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><b><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(47,180,233);text-transform:uppercase">ABOUT <span style="color:blue"><a href="http://nonprofitquarterly.org/author/rcohen51/" title="See all posts by Rick Cohen">RICK COHEN</a></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;color:rgb(51,51,51)">Rick
joined NPQ in 2006, after almost eight years as the executive director of the
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Before that he played
various roles as a community worker and advisor to others doing community work.
He has also worked in government. Cohen pursues investigative and analytical
articles, advocates for increased philanthropic giving and access for
disenfranchised constituencies, and promotes increased philanthropic and
nonprofit accountability.</span></p><p class="" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);margin:5px 0px 0px;line-height:1.5;font-style:italic"><br></p></div></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="Tahoma, sans-serif" color="#990000"><span style="font-size:10px"><b><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"></div></b></span></font></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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