MMHA 6452 Week 3 Board Decision Memo Example

Memorandum

To: Board of Directors, Westfall Community Health Center

From: Director of Community Engagement (MMHA student)

Date: Month Day, Year

Re: Decision requested: direct the CEO to bring a volunteer program proposal and policy to the board within five months

The Request

At its next meeting, the board is asked to adopt a resolution directing the CEO to develop a volunteer program proposal for the board's consideration within five months, and referring a draft volunteer policy to the Governance Committee, with the understanding that no volunteers will be recruited until the board has acted on both.

Background

Westfall does not use volunteers today. Two developments prompted this request. First, the Patient Advisory Council, which reports to the board, recommended in its last two reports that volunteers help patients find their way through the main site and complete insurance and sliding fee applications, citing long waits at the front desk. Second, a coalition of three congregations near the east site has offered to provide volunteers and has begun asking when they can start. Staff have not accepted the offer. The center's insurance carrier has advised that volunteers would need to be covered and screened before any work begins, and volunteers who see patient information would count as part of the center's workforce for privacy purposes (45 C.F.R. § 160.103).

Why the Board Should Act Now

Volunteers in a health setting are not a staff convenience. They carry the center's name, they may see protected information, and if something goes wrong, the board answers for it. The board should set the frame, a policy on what volunteers may and may not do and how they are screened and supervised, before the program exists rather than after.

The offer from the congregations creates pressure to start quickly. Starting without a policy would leave front-line staff to decide case by case what volunteers can do, and those decisions would be inconsistent across sites. A five-month planning period is long enough to write role descriptions, a screening protocol and an orientation, and short enough to keep the congregations engaged.

Volunteer programs in hospitals have been associated with benefits for patients and organizations, but those benefits depend on how volunteers are managed (Hotchkiss et al., 2014). Planning first is how the board makes sure the benefits appear and the risks are controlled.

Options Considered

Three courses were considered. The board could accept the congregations' offer now and let staff manage volunteers informally while a policy is written; this would answer the Patient Advisory Council quickly but would put untrained, unscreened people in patient areas, which the insurance carrier has advised against. The board could decline volunteers altogether and ask the CEO to address front-desk waits through staffing; this avoids risk but loses the community's offer and the Advisory Council's idea without testing either. Or the board could authorize planning, as requested here, keeping the offer open while the frame is built. The third course is recommended because it is the only one that lets the board set the rules before the work starts. Boards govern best by defining the limits within which management acts, rather than by reacting to each operational question as it arises (Carver, 2006).

What the Proposal Will Contain

If the resolution passes, the CEO will return with a proposal containing: role descriptions for the first two or three volunteer roles, with the tasks each excludes; a screening protocol tiered by the access each role involves; an orientation outline covering privacy, safety and boundaries; a retention and recognition plan; a resource estimate by category; and the reports the board would receive once the program operates. The Governance Committee will review the draft policy in parallel and bring it to the board at the same meeting, so the two can be considered together. The coordinator role, which the proposal will also describe, is likely to be a part-time staff position, and its cost will be the largest single item in the resource estimate. The proposal will also report what the congregations have said about their volunteers' availability, since a program designed around weekday mornings will fail if most volunteers can come only on evenings and weekends.

What This Memo Cannot Establish

This memo does not establish that a volunteer program is the right response to the front-desk waits; staffing or scheduling changes might address them better, and the proposal will need to compare options. It does not estimate costs, which depend on design choices not yet made. And it does not resolve whether volunteers could help with insurance applications, a task that may require certification as an assister under federal or state rules; the proposal will address that question.

The Request, Restated

The board is asked to adopt a resolution directing the CEO to develop a volunteer program proposal for the board's consideration within five months, and referring a draft volunteer policy to the Governance Committee, with no volunteers recruited until the board has acted on both.

Attachments: (1) Patient Advisory Council recommendations, last two reports; (2) letter from the congregational coalition; (3) insurance carrier's advisory note; (4) draft resolution.

References

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

Definitions, 45 C.F.R. § 160.103 (2024).

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