OHNo Swim Club: Organizational Governance and Mission (United States): The OHNo Swim Club is a small nonprofit organization whose board of directors is swayed from its mission by one of its wealthy members. In the pro-cess, the club loses control of its mission, makes a decision that comes close to financially bankrupting 1 the organization, and eventually loses several members before it rebuilds itself with a stronger dedication to its mission. Through the rebuilding process, it learns the importance of choosing board members with financial sophisti-cation, the difficulties of a start-up enterprise and the importance of maintaining a mission and communicating that mission to members. OHNo was first created in conjunction with some parents who wished to be more involved in competitive swimming. OHNo was the initials of the three suburbs that this club was meant to service. This collection of suburbs made up a school district with several elementary and mid-de schools and two high schools. Welliver was self-employed, but also served part time as the head swim coach for one of those high schools. He saw a shortage of quality swimmers who tried out for his high school team, not for lack of enthusiasm, but because the students had little preparation. Other sports, such as basketball and baseball, did not have such a problem because of a very rich system of community-based pro-grams, starting with very young children. For swimming, not much existed to prepare the participants for the level of physical conditioning and competition that they would face. OHNo was created with the goal of introducing children in the three suburbs to competitive swimming before they reached the junior and senior high level. It was relatively low cost to avoid discouraging parents who might balk at paying fees for yet another organized children's sport. It also provided an off-season training opportunity for high-school swimmers. In addi-tion, the spirit of the club was rather low key and encouraged individual accomplishments and improvement, rather than a focus on swim meet results. The club's goals were to introduce children to competitive swimming, develop their stamina, improve their techniques, while at the same time not "burn out" the children on the sport before they were old enough to compete at the junior and high school level. Welliver considered the burn-out factor to be very important because swimming is a sport that could be run all year round, unlike other sports such as baseball or soccer, where the weather and facilities automatically forced students to take a break. In the greater metro area there were at least a dozen other swim clubs, many of whom had aggressive competitive missions, more stringent participation requirements and higher fees. OHNo was going after a market niche that these other clubs did not consider important and that was in a school district that could use the support. The workouts were conducted in the district at various elementary and middle schools that had swimming pools. The children were divided into three groups, based on age and ability, and each group had at least one part-time coach. The school district was very generous in not demanding payment for pool rental until the club was mature enough to cover costs. This favor came from the fact that the club had a mission: in the long run, it would support the swimming programs at the two high schools. For the first three years, the club survived by the efforts of a dedicated group of parents, the deferment of pool fees and Welliver's sacrifices. Besides coaching, Welliver would do many of the backroom chores such as registration, scheduling competitive meets, negotiating fees and hiring young, certified coaches. In theory, he was to be paid a salary of $20,000 per year, but Welliver would frequently forgo pay so that there would be sufficient cash to pay the other coaches. After three years in operation, OHNo had approximately 90 regular swimmers and an annual revenue of about $50,000. It owed the district approximately $6,000 in back pool fees and owed Welliver about $2,000 in back pay. Financially, the club was becoming more stable and was starting to chip away at its back debts. A volunteer with a good heart, but no accounting background, took over the treasury function to lessen the time demands on Welliver. Unfortunately, this caused the books to get temporarily out of balance by almost $20.000. THREE MONTHS AGo At this point, several events were set into motion. Welliver knew he would need to replace the current coach for the beginning swimmers group in five months because the current coach was going to college. He was immediately informed that a member of the board might have found a replacement named Sveltlana. Sveltlana happened to be a woman who was a two-time member of the national Olympic team for an Eastern European country. A condition was made that she had to be hired almost immediately. Welliver had a hard time understanding why such a person would want to coach six-year-olds at a newly started, small swim club for $12 per hour. The board member who recommended her happened to be the president of a multimillion-dollar firm. His wife was a very active volunteer, and he had two young daughters in the program. When Welliver asked for details, he learned that Sveltlana needed to have an employment sponsor for visa pur-poses. She had some experience coaching high school kids, but not young children. The board member was willing to pay for the legal costs of getting the visa. He was also willing to donate $6,000 to subsidize her pay temporarily so she could be paid an extra $8 per hour above the club's regular pay of $12 per hour, for a total of $20 per hour. The donation was conditional upon the hiring of this specific coach, with no promise that additional donations would be made once the $6,000 was used up. It was strongly implied by the benefactor that, somehow, this coach should be used for the group in which his two daughters swam. In addition, if this coach was no longer employed by OHNo, then the balance of this donation was to be returned to the benefactor. In a nutshell. Welliver was very concerned. First, it appeared that there could be potential legal liability with respect to hiring someone who was not a U.S. citizen. Second, this coach had to be hired immediately, rather than in five months. This would temporarily increase operating expenses, without causing an increase in revenue, at a time when the financial books were currently out of balance. Third, this coach was obviously not meant for the beginners. Therefore, a beginner's coach would have to be hired in five months anyway. Fourth, this coach would be paid more than all the other coaches, resulting in potential morale problems. Fifth, there was no guaranteed financing source that would exist after the $6,000 was used up. Sixth, it appeared that this kind of hiring would start moving the club away from its original mission. Last, it felt uncomfortable for such a young, small club to be financially beholden to one family. He had to admit his irritation that coaching decisions no longer appeared to be his sole domain. In the course of two board meetings, Sveltlana was hired. Welliver realized that the majority of the board was made up of parents who lived outside the school district that this club was intended to serve. They were very active volunteers to be sure, but in retrospect it seemed odd that they had not joined any of the other swim clubs that served the metro area. They were very enthusiastic about "taking the club to the next level." The board temporarily made the benefactor the president of the board and approved the hiring of Sveltlana. Making the benefactor the president was done to expedite the legal paper work of hiring a non-U.S. citizen. This group of board members was very interested in increasing the competitive nature of the club. They wanted more intense workouts and more focus on producing potential national- and Olympic-quality swimmers and were not as concerned about the burn-out factor. Welliver did his best under the circumstances. It just so happened that his intermediate coach wanted to start a special group for the children who were too fast for the intermediate group, but not mature enough for the senior group. By letting Sveltlana take over the intermediate group, this new group could be formed. It would also allow Sveltlana to get more experience coaching younger children. Also, some good news occurred when the books were finally balanced. The club still owed the school district for pool fees and Welliver for back pay, but the $20,000 error was a simple bookkeeping issue and not additional debt. A substantial number of the parents whose children were coached by Sveltlana seemed to be pleased with the rigor of the workouts. Welliver had to admit that he also had learned some new drills. However, Sveltlana really seemed to have only one coaching style. He felt that with some experience, she could be quite valuable to the entire club once she learned that children of different age groups needed different motivations and coaching styles. He felt she would be ready for that role in a couple of months. Unfortunately, the board could not wait. The next couple of board meetings were very uncom-fortable. Various board members felt that Sveltlana should be used immediately as a floating coach for all the sessions and not be used to staff a particular group- especially one in which their children did not swim. Some parents started switching their kids back from the "super intermediate group to the intermediate group, just to be with Sveltlana. Board members interrupted Welliver's own coaching sessions to air their complaints. At one point, a board member told Welliver that he should step aside and let Sveltlana become the head coach and threatened that if Welliver didn't agree, then maybe the board should replace him. This was the last straw, and Welliver decided to resign. Out of solidarity, Tim, the club's intermediate coach, decided to resign as well. Tim was a young college student who had been hired two years earlier. He turned out to be a diamond in the rough in the sense that the school district eventually recognized his skill and hired him to work part time as the swim coach for the other high school in the district. Welliver and Tim turned in their resignations with the agreement that they would stay for two months to end the current swimming cycle. Welliver suggested that his back pay could be paid off by letting his high-school-aged daughter swim in lieuof fees The benefactor immediately proclaimed that such a small swim club could not afford to pay such a large severance package to a resigning coach. Before Welliver could speak, Sam, a board member who did live in the school district and who had always been supportive of Welliver, reminded the board that this was back pay officially owed to Welliver, not a "severance package." Sam then resigned from the board that very night, in disgust. PRESENT EVENTS The next two months turned out to be even more chaotic. The school district announced that because of a failed school bond initiative, they would be demanding immediate payment of back pool fees and that the rates would go up. The club's board members soon discovered that there had been a lot of economic value in Welliver's leadership. For instance, it was discovered that Welliver's board membership with the state sanctioning body was instrumental in achieving the club's charter and aided its participation in and hosting of sanctioned swim meets. Also, the two resigning coaches were high school coaches within the school district and, thus, had building keys. Now the club would have the additional expense of hiring a district employee to unlock the pool area, stay for the workout and lock the building afterward. Also, if the replacement coaches were not certified life-guards, as the original coaches were, then lifeguards would have to be hired as well. In the process of juggling all these complications, no recruitment effort took place to get new beginning swimmers into the pipeline, while the senior swimmers started to graduate and leave the club. All in all, the financial outlook for the club began to look very bleak. In reaction to the resignations, a large number of parents, who previously were either apathetic or uninformed about governance issues, started to question the board in person and by petitions. Some parents even withdrew their children from the club. Eventually, the majority of the board mem-bers, including the benefactor, announced that they were going to resign from the board, quit OHNo and start their own swim club with a more intense, Olympic-style goal. They then proceeded to recruit members from OHNo by "cherry picking" almost 20 of the fastest swimmers in the club, and by taking Sveltlana with them. The balance of the donation was now returned to the benefactor. At this point, Welliver and the former intermediate coach agreed to come back, and the club started the process of rebuilding its membership. Though there was a huge drop in enrolled swimmers, the return of the coaching staff and Sveltlana's resignation resulted in savings that gave the club a reasonable financial outlook for the future. Make a executive summary and Memo