MMHA 6452 Week 11 Board Program Proposal Example

Board Proposal: Establish a Volunteer Program at Westfall Community Health Center, Beginning With the Main Site

Student Name

Walden University

MMHA 6452: Board Governance and Volunteer Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Board Proposal: Establish a Volunteer Program at Westfall Community Health Center, Beginning With the Main Site

Decision Requested

Westfall's board is asked to approve the establishment of a volunteer program at Westfall Community Health Center, beginning with one role, the Wayfinding and Waiting Room Volunteer, at the main site for a twelve-month initial period, and to adopt Policy GOV-14, Volunteer Engagement, as recommended by the Governance Committee. Approval would allow recruitment to begin. The board may approve, decline or hold the proposal over to a later meeting for further information.

The Program and Where It Sits

The program would place screened, trained volunteers at the main site's entrance and waiting room on weekday mornings and two evenings a week, to help patients find the right place and to alert staff when waits run long. It responds to a recommendation of the Patient Advisory Council and to an offer of volunteers from a coalition of three congregations. The program would sit within the Community Engagement department, managed by a part-time volunteer program coordinator who reports to the Director of Community Engagement. The center's experience with this first role would inform any proposal for further roles or sites. Starting small is deliberate: a single role at a single site lets the center test recruitment, screening, scheduling and supervision with a manageable number of volunteers, and lets the board judge the program on evidence rather than on its promise. Volunteering nationally has become harder to sustain (Grimm & Dietz, 2018), so the first year will also show whether the coalition's offer translates into steady weekly service.

Governance: What the Board Approves, Delegates and Receives

The board approves: the establishment of the program for twelve months at the main site; Policy GOV-14, which sets the limits within which the program operates; and the role description for the first role, because it is the first role and sets the pattern.

The board delegates to the CEO: the screening protocol, the orientation program, the retention and recognition plan, scheduling, supervision and day-to-day management, all within GOV-14. Boards that define limits and expect reports, rather than approving each operational step, keep their attention on outcomes (Carver, 2006).

The board retains for later decision: any role involving unaccompanied patient contact in non-public areas; any expansion to other sites; any written agreement with an outside organization that places volunteers; and the decision whether to continue the program after twelve months.

The board receives: a report twice a year, as described under oversight below.

Resources

Resources are listed by category, with the source the center would draw each from. Amounts will be presented by the CFO at the meeting from current quotes and salary data.

Table 1

Resource Categories and Sources

Risk

The principal risks are a volunteer causing harm to a patient, a privacy breach and a volunteer drifting into clinical or administrative tasks the role excludes. Each is addressed by documents the board has already seen or that are attached. The screening protocol tiers checks by access and places the first role at its middle tier. The orientation outline requires privacy, safety and boundaries training before any patient contact, with a signed confirmation on file. The role description lists the exclusions and gives every volunteer a supervisor on site. GOV-14 bars clinical tasks and the use of volunteers to replace paid staff. The board is not asked to evaluate each control in detail, since that work belongs to management and the compliance officer, but to confirm that the controls exist and to hold management accountable for them through the reports below. Hospital studies tie the gains from volunteers to how carefully they are managed (Hotchkiss et al., 2014), and these documents are the center's plan for managing well.

Oversight

The CEO would report to the board at six and twelve months on: the number of active volunteers and shifts covered; the six-month retention rate from the retention plan; screening and training compliance, confirmed by the compliance officer; any incidents, privacy concerns or patient or staff complaints involving volunteers; and the Patient Advisory Council's view of whether wayfinding has improved, gathered at its regular meeting before each report. The program would not be added to the board's seven-item oversight plan, which already asks a great deal of a monthly two-hour meeting, which is reserved for organization-wide measures; the twice-yearly report is enough for a program of this size. The twelve-month report would come with a recommendation, and the board would then choose among keeping the program as it is, widening it or closing it.

If the Proposal Is Declined

If the board declines, the CEO would inform the congregational coalition that the center will not place volunteers at this time and thank them for the offer, and would report back to the Patient Advisory Council with an alternative response to its concern about front-desk waits, most likely a review of front desk staffing at peak hours. The policy and planning documents would be kept on file for future consideration. If the board holds the proposal over, the CEO asks the board to say what further information it needs, whether cost figures, legal advice on screening or the views of front desk staff, so that the coalition can be given a realistic timeline. Declining would carry no direct cost and no new risk, but it would leave the Advisory Council's recommendation without a test, and the community's offer, which reflects a wish to support the center that many organizations would welcome, might not be repeated.

References

Carver, J. (2006). Boards that make a difference: A new design for leadership in nonprofit and public organizations (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Grimm, R. T., Jr., & Dietz, N. (2018). Where are America's volunteers? A look at America's widespread decline in volunteering in cities and states. Do Good Institute, University of Maryland.

Hotchkiss, R. B., Unruh, L., & Fottler, M. D. (2014). The role, measurement, and impact of volunteerism in hospitals. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(6), 1111-1128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764014549057