| | We believe that an ongoing and continually updated plan for continuity of mission, operations, training,
etc., should also be in place at the earliest possible moment for any
organizations that professes to want to continue to accomplish their mission. We have
observed, since arriving in this town in 1993, that too many organizations, founded by
good people, lose their way when the second, third, fourth or later generations of management
take over. Promises made become promises not kept so many
times. Anyone, be they volunteer, contributor, beneficiary, or merely an
observer, lacks the assurance that what the organization is doing today, may or
may not
be what it does tomorrow. We also believe that transparency
also includes making much of the "continuity"
(as defined below)
available to the public.
Among the many points that you should consider
are the following points that good "continuity" plans include:
 | 1-a mission statement that discloses what the organization
is attempting to accomplish including the who, what, where, when, and why of its
mission. |
| 2-a set of by-laws that explains the mission and how it is
to be accomplished in great detail. |
| 3-a recording of the minutes of meetings (mostly for
historical purposes but also an aid in training your successors) documenting the discussions that go into the decisions
that end up in changes or additions to operating procedures or even reasons
why a discussed thought was NOT adopted. |
| 4a-written operating procedures, policies, rules, processes, etc. that
describe just how every part of every process that culminates in the operation
of the entire organization and its mission is to be accomplished by providing new personnel (or even
long-term participants new to each job or position) written words describing
how the particular job, assignment, task, etc., has been accomplished in the
past. Training new people becomes easier and there should be no need
to reinvent the wheel any time a new person starts an old assignment that is
new to them.
An organization chart (which itself will change periodically) is probably the
first step in creating the abovementioned descriptions of the processes that
operate your organization. Each box on that chart should have as underlying it a "transition memo" that aids any new
replacement for that position in his or her understanding of how to do that job. |
| 4b-as the MPWCFoundation has been in continuous existence since 2000, we have finally come to the point where THIS web-site
will have to provide 99% of the information in HOW a grantee is to create
all annual input that they send to us. We have answered all of your
previous unanswered questions as
asked (and immediately ALSO placed the new or amended answers on the web-site as well) so
it is now up to each grantee to maintain files of our answers, suggestions,
emails, etc., so that each grantee now knows that we are no longer going to
TEACH you how to do your annual input. From now on, you have to train
and re-train all successors in the process of creating the annual
input. You are on your
own and we will not duplicate prior instructions from past annual Comments
letters. In isolated cases, if asked well before each December 31st,
we will answer specific and well-phrased and documented questions that have not been asked before, but we will not
repeat them from then on. |
| 4c- a well-created "To Do" list for use by
(and contributions to it from) all members (temporary or permanent,
volunteers or paid workers) of your organization that tells date by date how
and when to do things that re-occur. This would include things that
must be done on weekly, monthly, semi-annual, annual, etc. bases and would
be things that must be done by your people for the MPWCF as well as any and
all facets of your mission or management of your mission. |
| 5-a summary listing describing all significant contracts
or agreements plus individual extracts for each of the items on that
listing. The extracts and/or the originals of the contracts or
agreements with any other parties (be they
contributors, vendors, organization office holders, volunteers, beneficiaries, whatever)
should be maintained in a secure central
location and a specific person should be designated to be in charge of keeping the historical integrity of such
records. This contemplates the creation of "written notes to the
file" for any important agreement with anyone which has not been
committed to paper (contractual or otherwise). |
| 6-each grantee organization should have a plan that includes a method
that tracks the performance of their organization, their programs and/or its participants. This tracking should define
clearly their main objectives as well as the obstacles. This plan should also enable anyone to
evaluate the effectiveness of any plan and its methods. If a grantee
organization won't commit to measure their own return on their own investments in
themselves, how can others measure it or otherwise evaluate it? Among
your plans should be the following points:
 | 6a-insiders and outsiders need insight
into your plans for what happens when your current grant increases to as much as
us$20,000 to us$50,000 a year. |
| 6b-How will you handle the transition
(your current grant quickly increasing each year in steps like - say -
$10,000 > $20,000 > $50,000 or more a year? |
| 6c-Certainly you know the details better
than I do but even I know that you will have problems that must be
addressed. For examples, you will:
 | 6c1-have much more to give to each
beneficiary of your mission - how will they and you handle that? |
| 6c2-have more money so you can help
even more beneficiaries - what are your thoughts on this? |
| 6c3-need more volunteers on your
staff to process all of this - how will you get them? |
| 6c4-need more volunteers on your
staff to mentor or otherwise guide each beneficiary - how will you get this type of
volunteer? |
| 6c5-have to think of expanding your
programs which, in turn, will create new and different problems. |
| 6c6-have to consider whether (and
how if you do) you will desire "partial pay-back in
kind" from graduates (lawyers, accountants, mentors for
current beneficiaries, etc.) |
| 6c7-have to consider the job prospects in
and around Guanajuato for students considering certain curricula |
| 6c8-have to consider how you are competing
with other local organizations for the volunteer staff you need and what
kinds of credentials are useful. |
| 6c9-have to consider how you are going to
handle (incoming, outgoing, investing, endowments, etc.) the vastly
larger sums of money coming in from us. |
| 6c10-have to think about how you are going
to plan for (and deal with) occasional annual grants that may be higher
or lower than a norm (we, too, have to plan for that). |
| 6c11-have to consider how will your own
endowment fund be structured and how will it be used |
| 6c12-have to implement controls over the
greater amounts of funds (internal audit, internal controls, more board
oversight). |
| 6c13-have to increase the amount and type of
information that you place in your internal (and probably external, too)
financial statements - You will need more and better narrative, fuller
disclosure, and more comparisons and explanations of variations need to
know the details of what every current person does so as to replace
their abilities if or when anyone leaves unexpectedly in any way. |
| 6c14-The above are just a few questions that
occurred to us that should already have occurred to you and your
organization as you are INSIDE and we are on the outside. And the
questions are the easy part. You probably should have already thought
about answers but now the details for each answer become more important.
Each answer should be, if you consider each problem, an answer that
creates even more new questions which should also then be considered. |
|
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| 7 - the above are the "beginner's
questions under Continuity" -- for the advanced-status Grantee, use
(and answer) the questions as presented on due Jan 31st |
Respond to the above points by using our templates
which do everything for you except fill in your unique answers. We
recognize that this is an ongoing process and recommend that you send us
your current responses to each of the above. But, don't reinvent the
wheel. Consider each "last year's response" as the printed
beginning point for "this year's response" and add to it, edit it for
errors or changes, and constantly update it. It should be a growing
document getting longer, better, and more detailed every year for the next
10,000 (well, maybe not that long) years. And, if you have a
web-site, your response to this question could be handled by reference to a URL
link to the page or pages that address this question (although we do insist upon
using our numbering/reference system on your website and in your reply).
None of the above is intended to say that evolution within
the organization should not occur or that such evolution is a bad thing.
What it is intended to say and do is to make evolution something that has been
discussed by the principals of the organization before it occurs and as it is
occurring and make it transparent to all interested parties.
"We have always done it this way" is the other extreme and neither
extreme works well. Change should always be considered but only in
knowledgeable comparison with past considerations.
And, as a supplementary definition, the following comes
from the Founder's estate papers:
"Also, regarding CONTINUITY,
the organization should have built up a ongoing and updated written (for
all to see) manual (or something similar) of procedures and policies and
discussion of its mission (together with current and future plans), its
operating processes, its job responsibilities and how to perform jobs, etc, so
that the organization (every time a new administration takes over) does not have
to reinvent the wheel and/or teach everyone what and how to do things, and also
to allow outsiders to have a reasonable expectation of what THIS organization is
doing and what it plans to do in the near future.
This, too, is further discussed on various MPWCF web-pages shown on its
site-map ,,, most specifically the “Transparency” and the “Continuity”
pages."
And, one more thing. If you want examples of
continuity's, or the lack of continuity's effect on what might otherwise be a
good idea or a good organization, I refer you to various projects,
a listing of the results of many of the efforts of our Founder during his years
here between 1993 and around 2005 (and later). His ideas were generally
intended to help others and/or to even enjoy, himself, things that he thought
might be good to "have existing here". Most of the ideas
worked as long as he kept them afloat. Others died when he lost the
stamina to continue and did not provide continuity for others. Some prospered without
him. The lessons learned from these actions and his experiences
inside and outside of the Biblioteca form the basis of his beliefs in the need
for CONTINUITY. You are most especially referred to the section of various projects
highlighted in GREEN about 2/3rds of the way down
that long page.
And, if you need one more shove, reflect on this poem from
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), "Oxymandias"
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
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