PAULA MCELWEE: We have some of your sticky notes.

Remember to do those again today, just as a kind of an announcement for a little bit of something to remember.

So make sure you write any questions or comments that you have on your sticky notes and put them in the center of the table and we'll pick those up during breaks and work your answers in when we can.

And when we can't work them in, we'll handle them like we are this morning.

So, is everybody ready?

Okay.

One of the questions that came up was, that someone asked us to explain a little bit more about the difference between cash accounting and accrual accounting.

And I think probably the easiest example to give you is your insurance bill.

So you know that when you buy personal insurance, if you decide to cancel it midway through the year, you get a refund back; right?

So when you book your insurance, you have to decide do I book it when I paid the bill or do I book it in the month when it's actually used?

A cash accounting system is a system where you would book the insurance when you paid the bill and the accrual accounting system would have you booking it month by month, even though you prepaid the bill, you actually only used the insurance on an accrual basis.

Now, some centers do what is called a modified accrual system because you need to get reimbursed because you don't have the cash reserves to pay the bill; right?

That's all kinds of stuff that is covered in our financial workshop.

So the financial workshop that we held in Baltimore a few months ago is all online and it's financial management.

And you can watch the videos.

They're captioned.

So you can see the information there.

The power points are there, all the handouts.

And if you'd like to go through in a little bit more detail on financial management, that's a good place to do that.

So please go there and then if you have questions, come back to me and we can help you in more detail about how that's working at your center.

But that's the quick and easy.

Yeah.

ROBERT HAND: so for the Leadership Academy, though, the important part from accrual versus cash as far as teaching people how to be board members is that if you're on a cash system and you get a financial report, it pretty much tells you where you are.

They just have to realize that if they're on an accrual system, you have to look at other things, like balance sheets, because, again, you may have billed $100,000.

It's going to show up as income because it was billed.

You may not have that money.

That's all they need to understand about it for that.

PAULA MCELWEE: yeah, that's a really good point.

And that's a point at which you might, again, mention that maybe some aging reports would be helpful if you're on an accrual basis, because they will tell you those things.

They will tell you what's been billed and hasn't come in or they will tell you what bills you have that you haven't yet paid.

So that's always good to keep in mind.

Also, there were comments on a couple of these around your own observations about boards, and it was really neat to see that you were applying the information that we're going to do in the Leadership Academy to your own situation.

That will be less possible today because, well, I guess the SILCs would still, maybe some of them are non-profits would benefit from that directly.

But your Leadership Academy is for, of course, how you train other boards.

If you learn some things that you want to take back to your own boards and help them be better boards, more power to you.

You can take the information here from the power points or from the, when they're posted from the videos and use them, certainly.

We understand that that's a good way to do it.

But we're not going to kind of comment on each of those things because there were several of them that were comments about your own boards, and that's a little bit off topic.

But if you want to talk to us about that separately, then we'd be glad to do that on the side.

One of the things that was asked was: how do you do recruiting?

How do you get good quality people to pass the torch?

And I guess our feeling is that the Community Leadership Academy really is, that's one of the reasons that we wanted to do this training, because it really is also a recruitment tool for your own boards.

How else are you going to get out there and find those people who are interested in serving on boards?

Now, how do you recruit for the Community Leadership Academy?

With your success, it will grow, and I think these guys would say that, too, that it kept getting bigger and you kept doing more; right?

ROBERT HAND: yeah.

As I said, before I left the agency, four of our last five board members were graduates of our Leadership Academy.

So it was a very good way for us to recruit board members.

PAULA MCELWEE: how about recruiting for the Leadership Academy?

How does that happen?

ROBERT HAND: we're going to be talking about, that's one of the themes that we're speaking of today.

And so when you talk about recruitment for the academy, it also is relevant for recruitment for your board as well.

PAULA MCELWEE: good.

And you guys had some questions to cover?

ROBERT HAND: shall I go?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: we'll go in order.

ROBERT HAND: okay.

So one of them I have is if the question is called, in other words, I called the question and they vote and it fails to pass, do you go right back to discussion?

And, of course, the answer there is, yes, you do.

So you have a motion and a second that's being discussed and somebody feels like it's been discussed enough, so they say, "I call the question." You get a second.

But when you vote on it, the majority of people don't want to stop debate, so it doesn't pass.

What that means is people still want to be able to talk about it.

So then you go back to just discussion just as if the call of the question never occurred and you just go on right from there.

And then what about teaching how to handle other people who are not following the rules?

And I'm going to take that within the concept of teaching about boards or councils, and there's really two situations.

There's board members who don't follow it and there may be members of the public, depending on the situation.

But I have to say there's not going to be just one answer, I can say just do this and that takes care of it.

I, and I'm sure Paula or Kimberly, would be happy to meet with anybody individually to go over it.

But I can say if it's a board member, your board needs to deal with that.

And as the executive director, you need to talk to them about it.

In fact, Paula was on my board, I don't remember if you were the president at that point or not, and we had a board member who was not acting appropriately within the role.

And when I discussed it with the board, then the executive committee got together and discussed it and got together with that board member and said, you know, here's the way we operate and you need to decide do you want to follow these rules or, you know, do you want to leave the board?

That's your choice.

But it's the board that needs to do that and that's why training your officers is so important.

For a board to run, it must be a group that works together, not individuals who attack each other.

That is not going to make for a successful organization, which means people aren't going to get good services.

And that starts with your officers understanding that their role, and particularly the chair's role, is to facilitate and moderate that.

Now, if you have members of the public who are trying to do more than what they're allowed to do as far as giving input and being disruptive during meetings, again, it's the board that has to deal with that as the board chair and the other officers.

You know, they may have to restrict that person from attending meetings.

And not so much in boards, but in councils, I've had to deal with that a lot in government councils.

So as we go through that, I'll talk about that a little bit more and taking input and stuff.

But, you know, it's people understanding that it's a real system that has a purpose of running this organization in the broader sense.

And if you are allowing anyone, whether a board member or somebody else, to inappropriately interfere with that, it's the individual consumer who suffers, because then people aren't getting the job done.

So it's not a personal thing.

We need to understand it, that it's the process and board members need to maintain that process.

Shall I go ahead with this?

My statement?

Or are you going to do your questions?

KIMBERLY TISSOT: let me do my questions and we'll go from there.

I had a question about guardianships and it said why no support?

In some cases this is necessary and important for those without appropriate cognitive ability.

The reason why I said that CILs typically do not support guardianship is because guardianship strips the rights and independence away from an individual.

A lot of times people assume that people with disabilities cannot make decisions and guardianship is kind of rubber stamped in the court system.

A lot of people do not know that there are a lot of less restrictive alternatives to guardianship, like supportive decision making and there's other kinds.

But we can actually talk about that one on one afterwards if whoever wrote this would like to.

But my point is that someone who has a guardianship would not be able to vote on your board.

They're not allowed to sign contracts.

They're not, employment is an obstacle when you have guardianship, so they're really not allowed to make decisions.

That's why I said someone with a guardianship can't always serve in an advisory position.

And then the other post-it note was what about doing HR audits?

And I'm interpreting maybe the board doing an HR audit, and that is not the responsibility of the board of directors because the board delegates that responsibility to the executive director.

Now, they can go in and review the personnel file of the executive director.

So I hope that answers that question.

And, if not, we can always talk about that afterwards as well.

Now you can go into that.

ROBERT HAND: okay.

I wanted to talk about one other aspect just about the Leadership Academy and its kind of role in CILs that I didn't really, I think, emphasize too much last time.

But CILs are known for, and we talked about it a little bit.

These people out in the community make decisions not considering accessibility, not considering inclusion, and then we find out about it and then we run out and protest and tell them they did everything wrong and they've got to change it, and that's a very appropriate role.

That's a role of an outsider.

Here's the insiders making the decision.

Here's the outsiders being excluded, and we've got to force our way in.

And the independent living center has been known for that in many ways and it has a very legitimate role in getting changes made.

But this is about a different role, because, you know, if you only have one weapon, in effect, if you only have one tool, let's say, to build what you're trying to build, then you're not going to be very effective.

There's an old saying that if all you have is a hammer, you're going to treat everything like it's a nail.

And if all we can do is protest, then we're always going to be outsiders.

But the whole purpose is to become insiders, is to become part of the whole system, and that's what the Leadership Academy is about.

It's about becoming one of the decision makers.

And that's what we're all after, of course.

But the issue is it takes a different mentality.

The mentality of attack the people because they're doing things wrong is sort of that activist protester, but this has to be I'm one of those people now.

You know, I can't be attacking the people around me because I'm one of them.

What I need to do is help guide them, and help them learn, you know, what's important as far as inclusion and stuff.

So all of this aspect of it, it's important to keep in mind that that's what we're teaching here.

If you lead a Leadership Academy, you're teaching people not to be outsiders who are trying to fight their way in, but they're already in and they need to learn to work with the other people to accomplish things.

We had a comment?

Make sure you use the mic.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: okay.

So in regards to what you just said, I guess in looking, I teach sociology on the college level, so, and that was actually going to be one of my questions in terms of the model of leadership, and I think what you just expressed is definitely a, I don't think it's an unheard of view in terms of the activist leadership model, but I do think that there is a few other views that doesn't pose the activist.

And I guess I'm saying activist where you said protester and even outsider, right?

I think there are many, many models that don't pose the activist as outsider, because there's an end goal, there's an end goal to activism.

And I think that even within the independent living model, the end goal is to make people with disabilities not outsiders.

ROBERT HAND: right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: and even the strategies have to change once you become an insider because you're still holding people accountable.

So I think that, I think that, I think that it matters that kind of letting me know, that's kind of letting me know the definition of leadership that this training is working with, and I think that's very important, because that was the basis of a lot of questions I had from yesterday.

So I think what you just said cleared up the model of leadership, but I would, I guess my input would be to maybe think about broadening that view that is, I guess, driving the type of leadership that you see as not being as productive, because that's kind of what I hear you saying, that the protester outsider model is projected in this kind of dichotomy, which isn't necessarily true.

Protester versus, I don't know, I guess you said it, insider, and I think that that's not, I don't think that that's true in a lot of instances.

But I do believe that that is a view that is widely held in that they're seen as opposite and I just don't think that they have to be or even that they are.

But, and what I'm overall saying is that that cleared up a lot of the questions that I had yesterday, because one of the things was if you're on a board and, you know, these standards are being violated, what I heard said yesterday, well, one of the, one of the resolves could be either leave the board or try to bring it up and resolve it.

I didn't hear the other option, which is organize people.

ROBERT HAND: yeah.

And, of course, when I say that, I'm talking about a, kind of a generic statement in order to make a point.

There are certainly lots of nuances within all of that and the really good activists obviously do work to include people and to do that.

But I've seen, I guess, in my experience a number of CILs where they were such strong, strongly oriented towards the role of protesting what everybody else did that they never got beyond that to get inside.

Like one example is at one of the Department of Rehab meetings they asked me to speak because we had formed the Central Valley Coalition of Human Services to bring all of these different non-profits together to work together.

And one of the directors of a CIL said, well, before you work with them, how do you make sure they know IL philosophy?

And I said, well, that's not the point.

If they're using IL philosophy, I'm probably already working with them.

But if I refuse to work with them because they're not, then I'm never going to show them the value of that and get them to do it.

So it's just that concept.

And it's the concept of, yes, I mean, the only reason we want people on these boards and councils is so that they'll promote the IL philosophy and the inclusion agenda, but getting them to realize, at least in our center, we had a number of people who were, quite frankly, very aggressive in their interactions with people in the community and we were working with them to say, yes, keep your agenda, but now work with them, bring them with you rather than try to hit them and say, no, you've got to change.

So it's just that kind of philosophical concept.

And some people already have it no matter what they're doing and others really need to learn that if they're going to be on boards, because you don't want to take responsibility as an organization for promoting someone, getting them on a board and then having them literally verbally attacking everybody else on that board and becoming a problem.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think the missing component in that is that after you make someone aware of an issue in your activism, that other party has the responsibility to act and they can act based on the new information that you've given them or they can continue on and, I don't know, I guess we can call it problematic behavior that they displayed before.

Again, I think there's a process, but, again, I think there's a certain model of leadership that one has to buy into.

ROBERT HAND: right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: okay.

Yes.

Thank you.

ROBERT HAND: okay.

Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't know if this has to do with just having been involved with the IL community for as long as I have, but I really appreciate what you said about why you're doing this, why ILRU brought this type of training, especially for the independent living community.

That saying that you have to be in it to change it is so true.

And I think that you were clear, at least from my perspective, yesterday about this type of approach, this type of leadership development will raise the legitimacy and effectiveness of independent living centers.

I think that came through loud and clear and I think this model stands to give us yet another really powerful tool to be at the table and to affect change.

And let's face it, the change that we're seeking is excruciatingly slow to achieve and it's frustrating as hell.

ROBERT HAND: and it's not to replace the other, it's just an additional tool to use.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: sure.

KIMBERLY TISSOT: a comment back there?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: thanks.

And I too appreciate what you've said.

I think one of the things that people that go through your program need to be cautioned about is it's a fine line.

If you come in with an agenda of change in terms of that agency or that organization changing the way that it approaches issues, incorporating the IL philosophy, if your primary goal is getting along with everyone, it's going to be easy to forget what your initial objective was.

So I think that's subject to not just training, but ongoing support, because it's very easy, early in the movement we had people who were our initial advocates and activists and then they got jobs in DC and they said, well, we're not bureaucrats, they coined the phrase we're "advocrats" and the problem with that is where do most belong, which side?

I don't think you necessarily have to get inside to make change.

I think it's one of the things in the tool box.

But what's important is internally to know what is your objective?

Is your objective to be one of the old boys club or is your objective to change the old boys club?

And that can be done through many means.

But we've seen it happen far too often where people then become somebody's, for lack of a better word, pet.

So they joined and then they're the pet gimp and everybody is happy and they forget what they came on for because they really kind of like the mayor liking them, things like that.

So just something to caution folks about to make sure that they don't lose sight of themselves and their objective.

PAULA MCELWEE: good point.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: for me that begs the question, then, what are your ethical obligations to the board?

You can have your own agenda, but when you talk about the individual versus the collective, at some point it would seem that if you have agreed to be on this board, then a decision has been made that ethically you're obligated to at least be behind, you know, the, you may disagree, but, can you speak to that a little bit, about the ethical obligations of being a board member?

ROBERT HAND: yes.

And we were going to cover that a little more even because it's even stronger when you're on a council, but the concept is the same thing.

Yes, you go in there, remember as I introduced all of this one of the things I said is we had people who were on boards and councils, but they were pretty much the token person with a disability, because they didn't have the tools to know how to effectively change things from the inside.

So this is certainly not to just get people inside and then say everything's fine.

It's to maintain that passion about inclusion and accessibility and change, but doing it from the inside.

But the other part of that is you do make an agreement.

When you're on a board, and it's even more significant on a government council, and they make a decision, you are obligated to support that decision.

Now, what I always teach is if you disagree with it, resign and then you're free to say that was a horrible decision and they should have never done it and they need to change.

But if you're on the board, just as an employee, you know, when I'm executive director and I have to make a decision, some staff may disagree with it and they can say that to me, but publicly they have to support it.

That's what it is.

We're a group.

And it's the same on a board or a council.

And a council it becomes even more significant.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would think that that's then a time where you let the chips fall where they may and you document what happened and you really write about, well, this could have been better, so that when, the next time it comes up, you really have facts to back up your advocacy and saying we turned away so many people because this wasn't an accessible venue or whatever and really document that so that it can be shown to them, you know, step by step by step.

ROBERT HAND: yeah, I mean, you never change your objective of inclusion and accessability.

You just don't win every battle when you are trying to get it.

Whether you're doing it by processing or whether you're doing it as a member, sometimes you have to accept I didn't get this one, but I'm going to keep that in mind, I'm going to make sure I know why and I'm going to keep working on it.

PAULA MCELWEE: and sometimes ethically you decide you can't continue to work with that group and you resign from the board.

So you find yourself with that decision whenever the board goes a direction that you're not able to influence.