Have you signed your prenup yet? »
No one likes to think about divorce, especially when they just got engaged! Yet, especially when the stakes are high (e.g, one person already has children, one person is much wealthier than the other), prenuptials are common. Why? Because divorce statistics, last time I checked, say you have about a 50% chance of divorce, and too much is at stake! Better to figure out ahead of time what a fair parting would look like, while everyone is still in love.
The statistics for sanctuary founders leaving their sanctuary someday are even worse…100% ultimately leave the sanctuary! Unless you are VERY different from the rest of us, someday you are going to die. And hopefully you are going to be replaced, so that your work will live on. So you need to plan for that. And set a good precedence by signing a prenuptial agreement with your board. The stakes couldn’t be any higher….the lives of the animals in your care and their well being is on the line.
While you may be 100% convinced that your Board will never fire you, I can give you a list of executive directors who thought the same; no, actually they KNEW FOR SURE that they would never be dismissed, and yet they got fired. In fact, the ones we tend to know of are often known for the very reason that it seems so unthinkable that it happened! Yet it did. So to protect you AND your nonprofit, it should be clear NOW, while everything is fine, what would happen if there were a falling out. As an added benefit, this will be in place for when you ARE replaced someday (100% guarantee you will leave someday, remember), and it may be needed then, for the next executive director may not work out for one reason or another. (You’ll be hard to replace!)
You are not off the hook, by the way, if you are an all volunteer director. As you read through the issues below, you will see that they apply to your situation, as well as to a paid director’s position.
Your prenup should cover items such as:
If you personally own the land and lease it to the nonprofit (you DO need a lease, even if the rent is $1 per year), does your firing mean the lease is broken? How much time is the nonprofit allowed to relocate the animals? How much access or interaction would you be allowed, if fired, with staff/volunteers on site, with the animals? What rules govern the nonprofit volunteers/staff coming on your property at that point? Are any of the animals your personal animals? How will their care be handled? Who pays if property gets damaged at that point?
Many of the same questions apply if the nonprofit owns the land and you live in a house on site, except the question is, how much time will you be given to vacate the premises? Is the lease (formal or part of your compensation) automatically brought to an end when you are terminated? What kind of repair state must you leave the house in? If your animals are on the premises, do they remain? Do you begin paying for their care? How long can they remain? How often can you visit?
Another consideration: How would a termination decision be reached? The more you iron out the process now, the less hard feelings there will be if it ever happens. To determine the best process, picture in your mind an evil successor who is pocketing donations. If illegal activity is suspected, how will the Board proceed? Is there an automatic suspension? In that case, what applies regarding land use/house use? If it is a matter of conflict (over productivity, skills, management style, decision making, etc), how will the Board proceed? A process can be set up for that scenario that includes an outside mediator or mediators, perhaps one even representing the voice of the animals, for long-term bonds may be at stake. The important thing is to agree in advance on a process and how it will be funded (if at all) and a time table.
Also to be considered are donor and funder relations. Should the executive director agree to certain terms about confidentiality and what will be announced to the public, in return for the Board adhering to the outlined termination process? (Get legal counsel on this one!)Under what circumstances would the executive director be released from those terms? And in any case, how long before the x-executive director can contact the donors to solicit funds for a new venture? What if the donors make the contact?
One special footnote: If you own the land and rent it to the nonprofit, what happens in the case of your sudden death? This needs to be clearly spelled out and a trust is usually more rock solid than a will. Make sure your appointed executor understands and agrees with the terms you have arrived at. If you have not set up a trust, you need to do so immediately. Otherwise, upon your death, your nonprofit may be on the 5 PM news, begging for foster homes, or frantically calling other sanctuaries, as your heirs may have given them 36 hours to get off the property.
These discussions can be time intensive, painful, and often require a legal eye to look over the final agreement. All that is hard to make time for. But it is a small investment of time and money and emotion compared to what is spent dealing with a parting gone bad.
So, if you haven’t already done so, hammer out that prenup. It is a way of helping to insure that your nonprofit will always be there for the animals, and that any falling out will have minimal impact on the support for their care or the quality of their care. We owe them that.
Great resource on succession planning for you and your Board, full of PRACTICAL and EASY TIPS: http://www.help4nonprofits.com/NPLibrary/NP_Bd_SuccessionPlanning_Art.htm
To professionalize even more…
http://www.compasspoint.org/assets/526_buildingleaderfulorganiza.pdf
Fire! »
Sept, 2009. The prestigious Ryerss Farm for Aged Equines had a two-story barn destroyed by fire. No animals or humans were harmed. Perhaps that is because Ryerss had done much right. There was a fire alarm in the barn. It did ring inside the main residence. The fire occurred despite the fact that the barn was made of stone walls and a metal roof. Ironically, according to the newspaper report , that fire-proof exterior “ insulated the fire and allowed the temperature inside the barn to get extremely high and was causing the hay to smolder.” Also according to the newspaper report: “one of the biggest challenges about fight the fire was the (limited) water supply.” Two horses and a potbellied pig who were in the barn at the time, got out uninjured.
How about your facility? If a fire broke out, would you escape with only structural damage (devastating as that is)? Would an alarm ring? Even better yet, would a sprinkler system activate? Are animals ever locked in a structure? How long would it take to reach them? To get them out?
Yesterday, for 250 exotic birds, the answers were not good. The newspaper report begins with this horrible sentence: “Hundreds of exotic birds and a dog have died in a blaze that destroyed a building at a private Las Vegas nature preserve and sanctuary.”
The Value of the Accreditation Process
Just before a pilot takes off, s/he reads aloud from a checklist, just to make sure everything vital is checked out. The pilot tests each critical piece of equipment, and checks that all is clear before takeoff. Doesn’t matter if the plane has never had an accident. Doesn’t matter how experienced the pilot is. The checklist is used.
Similarly, the GFAS accreditation application is a chance for a sanctuary to check for critical pieces, and make sure all are in operating condition. The GFAs accreditation process starts with a thorough self-evaluation checklist.
After joining GFAS, on one of my first visits to a model sanctuary, we discovered a smoldering fire in progress when we opened the door and stepped inside a building housing animals, bedded down for the night. I don’t know if everything happens for a reason, but that site visit drove home to me the importance of the accreditation process. If a model sanctuary could have a building with more than twenty animals in it, with a heater running inside, and no fire alarm, no fire extinguisher, no sprinkler system ….I knew it could happen any place. It is all too easy to overlook something, given the overwhelming task that sanctuary work is. The GFAS accreditation process helps a sanctuary spot overlooked areas of risk or weakness and correct them.
Two Common Disasters
By far the two most common disasters (beyond shutting down) that I have seen hit sanctuaries since beginning with GFAS are: 1) barn fires and 2) the sudden departure of the founder.
Think neither can happen at your place?
We all know the unthinkable can and does happen.
You know what to do. Put in place fire alarms which also ring in the main residence, fire extinguishers, and better yet, sprinkler systems. Hold fire drills. Think through your water supply. Have emergency numbers posted. Have everyone equipped with a cell phone. Test emergency equipment often. Store hay in a separate barn from your animals. Have the fire department come out and give recommendations. Make sure they can get into your facility and are familiar with it. These are not luxury items. These are critical pieces from day one. Taking basic precautions against anything that could kill your animals is not something to do “someday”, but rather something to do TODAY, if you have not already done so.
Regarding the founder’s sudden departure, I’ll address that next blog.
