I’ve been a part of many different organizations, from startups to sitting on boards of long established entities. The two things that annoy me to no end are:
- the superificial advisory boards (very nicely covered by Ed Sim in his blog entry)
- the complete lack of transparency in how an organization is run (especially in financial matters)
The second point I consider especially important for non-profit organizations in the post Sarbanes Oxley Era. I think the publically available 990s go a long way towards such financial transparency, but I believe all documents that is needed in order to compile a 990 should also be available.
Update: Since writing this post, I have spoken with the Director of the MAA, Mrs. Tina Straley and the director of the AMC, Dr. Steve Dunbar over several issues I had concerns with (including but not limited to the issues listed below). They were both very open and frank with me and I no longer have any outstanding issues with either organization! (The below post is preserved in its entirety simply for historical accuracy).
The impetus behind this post is my recent debacle with the AMC and its parent assocation, MAA. The AMC stands for American Mathematics Competition, and represents MAA’s sub-organization that runs the premier mathematics competitions in the high school level. Most of the people involved with the AMC (including me), are purely volunteers and I myself strongly believe that it should stay that way. What is concerning to me however, is that even with its mostly volunteer structure, the AMC currently spends around 1 million dollars each fiscal year (1,212,225 in 2004 to be exact). How does the AMC spend 1.2 million dollars in 2004? From what I can gather from MAA’s publically available 2004 990:
- Contract to University of Nebraska: $699,749
- Grant to AMC staff: $53,700
- Not a line item on 990: $458,776
I believe that the second bullet is justified. To the question why the other two bullets have such large numbers, your guess is as good as mine….
