Mapping the process of the new board nomination and review process

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) board of directors has drawn up a detailed diagram showing the procedure that the FSF is using to solicit advice from the community about possible new board members. The diagram details the roles and responsibilities that different stakeholders hold in the process, as announced on January 18, 2022.

The board has settled on a rigorous and thoroughly considered process designed to be transparent and engage members, while still also ensuring the FSF's core principles are protected. Recently, the FSF published the board matrix, which lists the three fundamental requisites for board members. It also lists other qualities considered valuable for board members to have when it comes to expertise, capacity, relationships, and diversity, as well as skills and experiences. The board matrix highlights some desirable attributes in new potential board members to help guide nominations. With this in mind, the board member nomination process has started by following the steps outlined in the diagram.

All associate members can nominate potential board members. Once nominations are received, the selected nominees are moved to a discussion process. Eligible associate members will be invited to join a discussion forum to then evaluate and comment on those nominees, with the goal of providing a community recommendation to the board. Eligible associate members are the current associate members who were associate members or donated a comparable amount at some point between 5 years ago and 3 months ago, plus other individuals explicitly invited by the FSF board.

The process of adding new directors started by opening nominations on November 29th 2022, with a closing date of XXX, and the FSF will continue to publicly announce each stage in the process. Work to put the necessary infrastructure for supporting the discussions in place is underway. For more information, please also review the January 18 publication and visit the FSF's Web page dedicated to the organization's governance work from the last fifteen months at https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/board. If you have any questions or comments about the flow chart, or the steps in the process, please don't hesitate to contact campaigns@fsf.org.