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I thought Elie's letter states the rationale quite clearly:
I understand their concerns and agree with them that it is crucial that GiveWell has a board that plays a serious role in its governance. After discussing alternative board constructions with staff, current GiveWell board members, and my counterparts at other nonprofits, I believe that the direction we have chosen (which means a smaller board for now) is the right one for GiveWell. In a nutshell, I believe it will mean a more focused, intensely engaged board, and ultimately a more robust, more impactful GiveWell. I recognize there is room for disagreement on this point, and the board will continue to revisit this decision over the coming years. We will expand in the future if we believe doing so will help us further GiveWell’s mission most effectively.
Seems like Givewell had a sense that the current board was large, and this made it harder for the board to serve its function, so they decided to reduce it in size.
You may also be interested to see the thread about this on the EA facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/2209495562440122/
GiveWell recently published the recording from its April 2019 board meeting.
I was holding that this meeting would include discussion of why the members resigned, but I was mistaken.
It seems that Rob Reich, Brigid Slipka, and Tom Rutledge resigned before this meeting, then at the meeting the board voted to formally reduce the number of board seats.
So I'm not sure that there is any publicly available discussion of these resignations, apart from the statements GiveWell published in April.
(I haven't listened to the end of the recording yet; from the way the conversation is headed it doesn't sound like there's going to be any further discussion about the resignations or board size. Edit: I listened to the rest of the recording and this wasn't discussed.)
Relatedly, I'm curious to learn more about how the decision procedure around who would resign was structured.
Last month, I asked about this on GiveWell's most recent open thread.
They haven't replied yet; I just checked about it again on the same thread.
Good thought.
It looks like they haven't published a recording of the April 2019 meeting: https://www.givewell.org/about/official-records#Boardmeetings
(archived version, archived on 2019-5-22)
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?
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.
Sure, though I think it gets strange to think about what "GiveWell" decided to do for decisions like this, as the Board of Directors is an important constituent part of the GiveWell construct. (And some of the former board members seem to disagree with the decision.)
I'm guessing that Elie (& perhaps Holden also?) decided that the current board was too large. But that's just my speculation.