Community Exchange Guidelines and Procedures

• Introduction
• Guidelines
• Procedures
• Tips for Participation
• Getting Help

Introduction

The purpose of the Community Exchange section of the Global Forum on NGO Governance (Global Forum) is to provide professionals around the world with an interest in good NGO governance with an opportunity to learn, discuss and debate new ideas, ask questions of each other, and share promising practices and models.

Individuals who join as members of the Global Forum are a part of a professional online community that accords a high level of professional respect to all its members. The guidelines and rules in this section and in the Terms of Use are designed to foster a positive and professional discussion environment.

Guidelines

1. How do discussion forums in the Community Exchange area work? There are three areas in this web site where you can participate in conversations with other members of the community:

• Ask and Discuss – a forum for questions and answers
• Member Announcements – a forum to share news relating to NGO governance
• Working Groups – a collection of forums for project work or more in-depth, focused conversations

2.Who may participate?

Any individual that works with, or serves on, a board of a nongovernmental organization, or that works to promote good governance and accountability in the NGO sector worldwide.

3. Rules related to content of your postings. Below are key rules for submitting postings in the discussion forums of the Global Forum on NGO Governance.

• Focus your postings to the subject-matter of the discussion forums.
• Please do not post requests or solicitations for funding, jobs, volunteers or board members.
• Please keep your postings professional and courteous.

Off topic postings may either be removed by the administrators of the Global Forum or re-posted to another relevant section of this Web site. Solicitations or offensive postings will be removed and may result in loss of membership to this Web site. For more information about rules related to the content of your postings, please review theTerms of Use of this Web site.

4. All Views Permitted. We welcome diversity of thought. Provided that a submission comports with the Terms of Use policy of this Web site, we won’t exclude submissions because of any particular viewpoint. Differences of opinion are welcome. Personal attacks are not. We appreciate your focus of critiques on the topic, not the person.

5. Include your signature in your postings. We strongly encourage you to sign your postings, particularly if your user name is not your full name. The easiest way to do this is to change your user name to your First and Last name. People appreciate knowing who made a post. We also strongly encourage you to fill out your profile with your organizational affiliation and location. Every post is linked to your profile.

6. Avoid over-quoting. It is not necessary to quote an entire prior posting or thread simply to compose your reply to a posting. This is especially true if you are replying via email. Quote only what is needed to properly frame your reply to the community. If you are reading a message in email and are unsure of the context, use the link in the email to click on to the site and see the full context.

7. Responding to Requests for Assistance The Global Forum on NGO Governance administrators shall endeavor to respond within 48 hours to requests for assistance from our Contact us page. If you are having technical problems, please include what browser you are using (i.e. what version of Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari) and describe the problem.

Procedures Subscribing, Unsubscribing and Other Forum Functions.

Subscribing, Unsubscribing. Individuals may participate on The Global Forum forums by email or on the forums section of the Global Forum web site. To participate in the discussions on the website, you must be a registered member. To participate in discussions by email, it is necessary to both be a member and to subscribe to any/all of the discussions. To make it easy when members first join, everyone is automatically subscribed to “Ask the Community” and “News and Announcements.” You can unsubscribe from these at any time. You must subscribe to Working Groups.

How to Post to a Forum

There are two methods to post to a forum: the email method and the web-based method.

• Web-based Method. First Visit to Web-Based Forum System? If this is your first visit, you will be prompted to submit your username and your system password. Then you can navigate to any Working Group, News and Announcement, or Ask and Discuss topic. Click into the topic and towards the bottom you will see a box where you can add your response.

• The Email Method. If you have subscribed to any Working Group, News and Announcement, or Ask and Discuss, you should be receiving an email for each additional post made to that area. Simply hit reply to that email, strip out ALL old material in your email response box, type your response and send the email. Stripping out the old message is really important, so please take a moment to do that.

Tips for Participation

Here are a couple of tips for useful forum participation. This is also known as Net Ettiquete, or Netiquette!

• Be explicit and clear. It is easy to misinterpret, especially in a global form. Watch the use of jargon and explain your acronyms.
• Assume good intent. If someone’s post irritates you, try and read it in another way. If you feel angry, wait a while before you respond. Time is a great moderator.
• Critique ideas, not people. Diversity of view is productive when we focus on the issues.
• Ask good questions – there is amazing expertise to be tapped in our community, just waiting for someone to ask for it.
• Share your knowledge! Global NGO governance is an important topic and we’ll move the field forward together!

Getting Help

Use the web-based contact page. The Global Forum team shall endeavor to respond within 48 hours to requests for assistance. In most cases, response is substantially more prompt.